May 14th

I went and met Chris at the airport to try and install the exhaust mount on his plane.  Unfortunately the clamp that he's got is bigger than I'd guessed at, so I'll need to make it again, but bigger.  I took the new clamp home, so I can at least test it as I make it.  It shouldn't take too long, as I'm just changing the dimensions from something I've already built :o)

May 11th

I spent some time in the garage making up a new exhaust mount for Chris' plane.  Here's hoping it fits and works well :o)

May 10th

We'd talked again about flying, but the wind was really gusty, so gave up and did stuff around the house.  I mocked up a new exhaust mount for Chris' gyro and sorted out the home theatre PC after they changed the over the air broadcast channels at the beginning of the month.

May 9th

There had been talk about going flying, but Chris' gyro is still waiting for new carb floats to arrive, and there was a T-38 flyby from Beale, so we met at Lincoln.  We were heading to lunch on scooter and bicycle when Mary said there was a broken light on the runway (somebody had hit it), so we went to look for that.  There was some debris that we cleared out, but no sigh of the light itself.

We headed down to the cafe and had lunch.  The flyby looked to have gone over the town, rather than near the airport, as we heard them, and saw them heading off to the South.

By the time that was all over, we were all feeling meh about flying, so just headed home again.

May 3rd

I've been tinkering with GoPro videos and trying to get the telemetry out of them - I'd thought it was in the .LRV files, but it's mostly in the .MP4s themselves.  Having managed to get that to show up, the altitude seems to be wildly inaccurate, like by thousands of feet.  I'll have to look into this further to see if there's something I'm missing.

We balanced the blade on the AC fan, so that hopefully that'll be a lot quieter now... there was a lot of vibration from when I replaced the motor, and pulled the fan off the old one.

In the afternoon, I went and met Randy at the airport so we could fly with his neighbour.  We went over to Folsom Lake, then flew up the North fork canyon and over the Foresthill Bridge, before heading back to Lincoln.

May 2nd

I got up early and went to the airport to talk to Ken.  My biennial Flight Review is due as of yesterday, and we chatted about the new 90 day waiver that the FAA have put in place - basically if I've flown more than 10 hours in the last month (check) and have at least 3 points in the Wings Safety online seminars since January, I can fly.  I had 2 points, as I'd done a runway incursion seminar a while ago, and I did a safety course in preparation for my BFR, so I went home and started doing some more classes.

While my GPS was updating with all the latest maps, we went and met Randy for lunch.  He'd intended to fly a neighbour this morning, but it's been gusty all day, so he put that off until tomorrow.

When we got home, I knuckled down and finished up a radio class and a safety class, and now I have 3.5 points since January.  I can now fly again :o)

May 1st

It's a new month, so here are the stats:

Power billed

Power generated

I'd been intending to get more solar panels to cover the power we use with the car, but having spoken to Roseville Electric, I'm not going to bother.  It's a shame, but they've changed the way they do everything with solar now, and if I add panels, I'll get dragged into their new system.

Right now, (and I'm rounding all these numbers, it's actually worse than that makes it look), for every kWh I generate above what I'm using at the time, I get paid 9c.  For every kWh I use above what I'm generating at the time, I pay 9c.  So the grid is acting as a big battery for me.

In the new system, for every kWh I generate above what I'm using at the time, I get paid 6c.  For every kWh I use above what I'm generating at the time, I pay 9c.

So, let's throw a few numbers around to see how that works out.  Let's say I generate 10kWh a day, but I only use 2kWh during the time I'm generating, but I use the other 8kWh overnight - this seems reasonable(ish), as a lot of the electricity usage is air conditioning in the late afternoon and recharging the car in the evening.

Right now, based on the time shifting of my power, my bill is (9c * 8kWh) - (9c * 8kWh) = $0.00.

In the new system, my bill would be (9c * 8kWh) - (6c * 8kWh) = $0.24.

In the new system, it's also physically not possible to get that bill down to $0.00, as you're not allowed more capacity than you actually need.  I figure I'd need about 1kW of panels to just catch up to where I am on the old system, and I can only add ~2kW of panels.  Based on my bill last year being ~$400 for electricity for the whole year, it's hard to justify spending something ~$10,000 on panels.  If our power was more expensive, it would make sense, or if they paid what they charged, it'd make more sense.  The guy at Roseville did start to rattle on about it's not all about money, and I pointed out I knew that, as I'd paid an awful lot for panels that probably won't pay back what they cost already.  He also suggested I could charge the car in the middle of the day, and I pointed out that it was at Vic's work at that time.

Meh, they're supposed to be putting in car charger's at Vic's place, so she can charge it there once or twice a week and we won't use so much power anyway.