May 21st

Randy's fuel lines are starting to crack, so we'd talked about replacing them.  He was flying a friend in the morning, so we'd agreed to get lunch, then look at them.  I got the airport and pulled the plane out to wait for him to get back from his flight.  When he did, he'd tried replacing one of the lines, but the fuel hose I'd used was too big, so he'd put that line back on.  Tony was zipping around on his scooter, so I suggested he meet us up in Auburn for lunch.  He asked if we had a spare seat, and I said we had two, so we ended up flying both the lads in his workshop, while he flew the Cub.

It's funny, as he took off right behind me, and flew alongside shooting some video with his phone.  The thing is, he's used to videoing other fixed wings, and when he hits a thermal, so do they.  Well, he hit a thermal and bounced up, and we didn't bounce up, so it looked like we were diving away from him :o)  After lunch, we headed home, where we saw some ridge lift at Bald Hill, he was bounced all over the place - he said he was seriously considering going around (on a 6,000' runway, no less) due to the crosswind that we didn't really notice :o)

Randy's headed off to get 1/4" fuel line (rather than the 5/16" I had) and we're going to look at it again tomorrow morning.

May 20th

It looked pretty clear at Lincoln, so I took the plane and headed to Daffodil Hill in the Sierra foothills, where there was a lot of low, puffy cloud.  I took a bit of a beating, and luckily there was nothing there any more - should have come out sooner, methinks.

I decided to head for flatter ground before heading back.  I had to avoid a Blackhawk, and George in his Kitfox on the way back to Lincoln :o)  When I got home, I found that I can get a .kml file of my trip from Flightaware and drop it in to Google Earth:

That's kind of cool, no?

May 19th

Still quite blustery, and the puffy cumulus clouds suggested that flying wasn't a great idea, so I didn't.

May 18th

I've taken this week off because Dayton's going to be delivering Jamie's new plane, and we figured we'd get him to dynamically balance our rotor blades while he's here.  Only Jamie's postponed the delivery because she wants to order some new helmets or something.  I'm sure it all makes sense somehow.

Anyway, it's raining, so I just sat and watched TV.  I did get to wear my face mask by going shopping at Costco.

May 17th

There's a storm a'coming, so I gave up on getting much done.  We did manage to get out between showers to finish trimming the shrubbery down the side of the house, so that's finally off my to-do list :o)

May 16th

I went over to the airfield and installed the exhaust mount on Chris' plane, and got it all safety wired up.

I hung around and waited for Randy, who was going to go and get Chris, then flew out to Cameron Park with him.  There was a fair old wind blowing from the South, so it took us longer to get there than usual, but we got back quickly.  I ended up bringing Chris back.

Having landed, Chris said he was happy with the exhaust mount, and we went and got lunch at Mary's, where a nice old guy bought us lunch because he likes to see bunches of pilots talking about flying :o)

Vic's oldest guinea pig, Jasmine, has been losing weight for a while, and hasn't been eating for the last day or so.  We looked at her and decided it was time, so we went to the vet and had her put to sleep.  The vet thought it was probably cancer, so it's not like there was anything that could be done :o(

May 15th

I made up a new exhaust mount for Chris' plane, and got it mounted on the clamp he bought.  I debated about going over to the airport and installing it, but in the end I couldn't be bothered :o)