Monday, November 26, 2018

November 25th

The DRZ hadn't hydrolocked again, so I put the rest of the fuel in the gas tank and left it to see if I've finally fixed the problem.

Chris had suggested going flying, so we threw everything in the van and headed to Lincoln, where the visibility was bugger all due to low clouds.  Chris had taken off from Placerville, hoping it would get better, but it didn't, so he went to Auburn to wait for a bit.  I finished up a bit of safety wiring, then got the plane out and warmed it up so I could start running in the new pre-rotator belts.  Imagine me sitting in front of the hangar running the rotor up and down for 15 minutes or so.  When I wasn't getting the bendix engaging any more, I stopped the engine and texted Chris to say it was starting to brighten up.  He left Auburn, and we waxed the rotors while waiting, but he gave up as the low cloud we'd been seeing was heading towards him.  We took the plane out for a couple of circuits, and the first one had the bendix engaging a bit, but the second one was much better.  We were pretty close to clouds, so we stopped and put the plane away and headed to lunch.  Of course it was glorious when we left the restaurant, but headed home.

The DRZ doesn't seem to be hydrolocked again yet.  I'm still leery about draining the oil and putting everything back together just yet, but this does seem promising.

November 24th

I fought and struggled and got the carb back in the DRZ, and with Vic's help put the rear subframe back on (I'd unbolted it to get more space for the carb, but it didn't help at all).  We got the gas out of the engine, and left it with a little gas to see if that's fixed the problem.

November 23rd

I took a look at the carb for the DRZ, and discovered I can blow through the new float valve.  I can't blow through the old float valve, so I replaced the dried out O ring with a Viton one, and put it all back together.

November 22nd

Today was Thanksgiving.  We did our usual turkey dinner, and Jen came over in the evening for pie.

Thursday, November 22, 2018

November 20th

I spoke to Randy about the plane's annual again, and there are still a couple of things he needs to do (gearbox lash and teeter bolt runout), but he's talking about deferring those (as it's an Experimental, it's not required to do everything).  I'm hoping I can grab Ken soon and do them just to get them off my list of things to do.  It sounds like the paperwork is all being done (but I have to sign the stuff I did) and I'm hoping it'll be reasonable weather on Friday so I can meet him and get that all finished up.  I'm also hoping to start wearing in the new pre-rotator belts, so that'll probably mean flying :o)

November 19th

I spoke to Randy, and the annual is going fine.  Not done yet, but he had a couple of questions that I (hopefully) answered.  He was having problems getting the spark plugs out for the compression test, so I pointed him to the spark plug socket I have in my toolbox, and that was all solved.

November 18th

As I couldn't get anything done at the airport, I spent the day cleaning the hot tub and firing that up for the winter.  I even got the water tested.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

November 17th

I plugged the speedo cable back in on the van (it seems to have slid down, so I had to get under the front and fiddle with it).  I went to the airport and finished my preparation stuff for the annual (hopefully Randy can get it done next week), then stood around and talked for a while.

In the evening, we watched "Alpha", and Tilly enjoyed it most of all.

November 11th

I went to the airport and met Ken, and we (well, mostly he) got the oil tank all back together.  He also injected grease into the rotor bearings.  I put oil in, and ran the engine to get oil pressure, and hopefully all the bubbles out of the cooling system, did some safety wiring, then went home.


Sunday, November 11, 2018

November 10th

I went to the airport and cooked lunch for the EAA crew, then went and got the oil filter off the plane.  I still couldn't get the oil tank together, so I left it for the day and went home.

November 9th

I went to the airport and started the plane to get the oil warm then drained the oil out.  I took the tank apart (per the maintenance schedule) to find that there was nothing collected in the bottom, but I couldn't get it back together properly (it's a lot of parts that need to be held together at once).  I also couldn't get the oil filter off with Ken's wrench, so I'll wait until I have my strap wrench.  I also changed the coolant. 

It's getting closer to having everything all done, and hopefully Randy can get it inspected next week when he gets back from Mexico.

In the evening, I changed the oil in the Jeep.

November 8th

I struggled and struggled and got the carb off the DRZ.  I was then too pissed off with it to work on it, so I went and cut the grass and threw out a load of the hay for the guinea pigs that they don't like.

When Vic got home, she said the "check engine" light was on.  Great.  I plugged in the ODBII reader, and found it was a problem with the evaporation system.  The gas cap wasn't on tight.

November 7th

I decided to look at the DRZ - it didn't look like the carb was leaking, so I put more gas in the tank, and then it was leaking.  The engine's back to being hydrolocked with gas again.  I think the float in the carb doesn't necessarily float any more.

November 6th

I went to the airport and started working on the plane.  I got the pre-rotator flex cable and the bendix all apart and cleaned, then back together.

Monday, November 5, 2018

November 5th

I've taken the week off to get stuff done, so obviously I had a teleconference at work I needed to join at around 11:30 - I didn't want to get into anything before this, so I just played Warcraft and caught up on Last Week Tonight.

I changed the spark plugs on the van.  I was thinking I'd do the brake pads, too, but I think I really need a hand with that to stop me going insane trying to hold the calipers and get the pads out.  I then started in on the DRZ - it took me a while, but I replaced the float needle stuff, to hopefully stop the engine filling up with gas (again).  I've left it with a little gas in the tank and the petcock on "Prime", so if it's going to fill up with gas yet again, it'll do it quickly and I hopefully won't have too much to do to get in there again.  Yay.

November 4th

I went over to the airport to meet Chris, and we flew to Half Moon Bay via the Marin headlands, just North of the Golden Gate bridge.  I took a bunch of pictures - basically just pointing the camera in the right direction and pushing the button as I sure couldn't see the screen.  It was fairly pleasant until we got over the ocean, when it got really cold, really fast.  We had hoped to fly back up the bay, but air traffic didn't get back to us to say we could, so we flew back the way we came.  Well, I say that, we went straight over Sacramento International at ~3000' (per Norcal approach), which was nice :o)

Sunday, November 4, 2018

November 3rd

I started the day at the airport cooking breakfast for 20 or so of my closest friends.

After that, I changed the pre-rotator belts on the plane, and left the propeller loose as I didn't bring safety wire to put it back together.

Friday, November 2, 2018

November 1st

A new month, so here are the solar stats:
Power billed

Power generated

October 30th

Cosmos, the cuy (meat guinea pig), has been at UC Davis for the weekend.  He had his foot injured in an accident at his regular vet, and has been fighting an infection since then.  Vic asked me to talk to the doctor from UC Davis, as she wanted my opinion.  He has an antibiotic resistant infection in the only foot he doesn't have bad arthritis in, and they've been giving him injections of antibiotics twice a day.  He's obese, because he's a food breed, and is designed to get fat, quickly, so the possibility of amputating his foot is a problem because he'll just stop moving entirely.  They were talking about debriding the infection out of his foot, and at the same time taking a culture so they can figure out if whatever's eating one of the bones in there is the infection or cancer.  At this point, we decided to call it a day, as this would be a risky proposition in a young regular guinea pig - in a 4.5 year old cuy, it's very unlikely that he'll survive the surgery and the post-treatment (regular bandage changes and antibiotic injections - possibly for months).  We figure he had about a year of life left (we were originally told cuys lived 3 years, but as time goes by, more and more are getting better health care, so the estimate now is 5-6 years), and it seemed wrong for his to be miserable for a quarter of it, assuming everything went well.  We've donated the body so they can figure out what happened here.