March 8th

I'd agreed to meet Chris and Randy for breakfast in Auburn at 09:30, forgetting that the clocks were going forwards overnight.  So, I got to the airport at what seemed like a really early time in the morning - well before Randy was there.  Having pre-flighted my plane, I built up a shelving unit I'd brought with me, and put the stuff that was previously stored on the ground away neatly.

I decided to do some circuits while waiting for Randy, but by the time I took off, his plane was outside and the circuit was busy, so I decided to just head out.  I ended up tracking South for a bit before turning East, as there were a lot of low clouds raining around, and I didn't want to get wet.  I spent a lot of time carefully explaining my position to a Cessna also on its way in to Auburn until they saw me, and I slotted in behind them in the pattern.  And ended up extending out quite a way because flight instructors like doing loooong patterns.  They ended up going around, so I landed and parked and went to wait for the others in the restaurant.

I watched Chris take off on Flightaware, and he and Randy both landed on the opposite runway to the one I'd landed on.  We were waiting for our breakfast when we saw a bunch of CHP fliers looking at Randy's gyroplane, so he went out to chat to them while his breakfast got cold.

After breakfast it was an interesting flight back to Lincoln - we all had to fly around clouds along the ridge between Auburn and Lincoln - I was originally thinking I'd head a ways North and fly down a canyon to avoid them, but then saw a break and headed through it.  I spent some time giving way to an RV-9A at Lincoln, then parked up.

Chris had bought some vortex generators for his RV-6A, so we taped a bunch of chopped up shoe laces to his right wing and went up to do some stalls.

I shot some video of the wing, and you can see the laces detach just as the wing stalls.  We stalled clean, with flaps and with power, then headed back and installed the vortex generators on the wings and a few on the tail (we were about 50 short of doing the whole tail).

We then went out and did a bunch more stalls - all at a lower speed than before, thanks to the better airflow over the wing.  The laces didn't detach several times, and the powered stall is now just a mush down at ~700'/min rather than a breakaway.  It's also supposed to be better in a crosswind, which is why Chris really wanted them, but we didn't test that.

Of course, this was all for a tennis tournament down in Palm Springs that he was supposed to be flying to.  That got cancelled today.