June 6th

Sutter were having a display day, so Chris stopped at Lincoln and we took the gyroplanes over for lunch.  Bruce flew his Cardinal over too, so he could get a display day sign off, and complained and complained about how bumpy it was flying under 1600' to be below the Beale shelf :o)  I flew South of the airport to do a 45 degree join to their (right hand) pattern, and Chris did an overhead join, so he got there before me.

Chris and I spent quite a while talking about gyros, and were the last people to get lunch.  One of the Sutter organisers, Carin, asked if we'd take a look at a gyroplane she'd had in her hangar for years from her uncle.  It looks like a Bandit, and we chatted about it for a while - they want to sell it, and I also suggested seeing if the McClellan museum might take it as a donation.

We flew back along the Feather River to Bear Creek, then headed back to Lincoln.

Chris had a problem with a fuse holder in his dashboard a while back, and I jumped past it (so the line is unfused) as a test.  Well, everything's working fine now, so he bought some circuit breakers.  He brought those, along with crimping tools and so on with him, so we replaced the 3 fuses in his panel with circuit breakers.  I checked when he'd got home, and everything was still working fine, so I believe myself to be up to date with everybody else's aircraft projects :o)

June 5th

Tilly's still not thrown up, even though she's back on kibble, so I'm thinking she's healed :o)  My arm and ribs are still sore - I'm hoping I haven't cracked a rib.  Again.

I took the afternoon off so I could take our new fridge to the hangar and get that unpacked and plugged in - we'll now have soda and ice cream bars :o)  After that, I taxied the plane to the gazebo where we talked about the plan for the fly-over for Amy's graduation.  We had 8 planes, including me and Randy in the gyros, and I thought we had a reasonable plan - Randy and I, being the slowest, would leave first, then tag along behind John in his Citabria.  Well, we flew further South than I'd thought, waiting for them to catch up with us, and then Jim in his 175 and Jay in his Waiex were behind John - I saw Jim, but Jay flew under me - I'm not convinced he saw me at all :o)  Anyway, we flew over Amy's, she said "thanks" on the radio, and we went back to Lincoln.

Back at Lincoln, there was a guy waiting to get out in a Cessna somethingorother.  I said he could get out in front of me, as I'd extended my downwind to let John land, and the Cessna said he was happy to wait.  I told him we were on a 1.5 mile final with a groundspeed of ~38mph (>20mph wind at this point), so he gave up waiting and took off first.  I flew to midfield before landing, so I could pull off and let the rotor spin down, and Randy could land and get off at the first exit and let his rotor spin down too.

Randy mentioned that he was now at the point where he could do his oil change, so we did his oil change - struggling because he'd overtightened his oil filter when installing it.  It's until the gasket touches, then 3/4 of a turn, not "as tight as you can get it".  Anyway, it's all done now.

June 3rd

Tilly's managed to go a whole day without throwing up, and we're out of boiled chicken, so, much to her disgust, for supper we've gone back to kibble to see how she does.

In the evening, I joined the online EAA IMC club, as they were talking about a scenario where a VFR rated pilot flew into IMC conditions and was killed.  It sounds like he did pretty much everything wrong, so I'm not sure I've learnt anything from that :o)

I think you deserve to see teddy bears on a rollercoaster.

June 2nd

Tilly got me up early this morning to go and throw up, and it was a small ball of rice.  She's still been eating grass, so we've decided to put a stop to that.  She's very much in favour of the rice and chicken though, and enjoyed the pumpkin baby food this morning.

I'm still a bit sore around my ribs, so I'll stay off the bike for a while.  It's supposed to hit 105F tomorrow anyway...

June 1st

A new month, so here are the stats:

Power billed

Power generated

I've had to do the calculations from my TED5000, as I can no longer read the little plastic screen on the inverter.  Still, they should be within an acceptable margin of error.

I think I should make my ringtone the dog horking up (again). It certainly gets you out of bed in the morning.

Tilly got me up a couple of times overnight to go and throw up, so I'm thinking she should be pretty much empty by now.  She threw up after a breakfast of just rice, too, poor ickle thing.  She's perfectly happy though, so we've just she'll be on a bland diet of rice and chicken, and sometimes pumpkin baby food (for the fibre) for a couple of days.  I also bought some oatmeal, for variety.

On my lunchtime bicycle ride, I crashed.  I didn't go back and see what I'd hit, as I was banged and scratched up a bit.  Still, I managed to ride home, albeit a bit slowly.  I'll probably be sore for a couple of days, and then maybe I'll try staying off some of the trails - they're always full of bloody people right now anyway.

May 31st

I went over to the airport and cleaned the plane while waiting for Randy.  We changed his rod end ball joints, and now, as far as I'm concerned, he's ready for his annual inspection - he can change his own damned oil.

We had lunch at the Spitfire, then Randy headed off home to put up his new TV.  I went back to the hangar and took the plane out for a quick flight... it was pretty windy, but there were a load of people in the pattern, making it interesting joining again to land.

Tilly's been throwing up today, and this evening she horked up a large, pinkish thing.  We're hoping that was the cause of all this, as she was instantly feeling better.  No idea what it was though.

May 30th

I started the day hacking the grass in the garden, and after pottering around, we went and met Chris for lunch, as he was in Roseville getting his guitar tuned.

After that, I went to the airport and took the plane out for a quick flight to beat the rapidly worsening weather.

There was a 172 doing circuits on runway 15 when I left, and the wind was blowing around 12mph from 250 - ie the wrong runway.  Still, I sucked it up and took off, but when I was on my way back, it was now 12mph at 260, so I called and suggested we use the correct runway, 33.  He agreed, and I said to sort himself out and I'd come in behind him.  The instructor then piped up and said it was more or less across the runway, so to use 15.  Fine, I'll do an overhead join and bitch about you later.  Oh no, as I was heading North to do the overhead join, I saw them stopped on the runway.  Then they called to say they were heading back to the hangar.  Sigh.  I did an extended base leg and landed on 33, then taxied back and put the plane away.  It threw it down on the way home, but when I got to Foothills Blvd, it was totally dry.