I'm on call this weekend, so didn't get much done today, but I did throw together a short video from yesterday's flight to Nut Tree.
I went and met Shane, Henry, Randy, PJ and Ken (who flew in from Reno to see Henry) for lunch. Didn't get around to flying, as I was pretty tired.
Randy came and picked me up, and we met Henry, Shane and Liza at the airport. We had originally intended to fly to Lampson, but as we'd had the crap beaten out of us on our last couple of cross country flights, we decided to try Nut Tree, with a divert to Sutter if it was too turbulent.
It wasn't turbulent, so we got to Nut Tree, and met Steve, another MTO pilot, from Petaluma.
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| Henry, me, Randy, Shane and Liza, Steve |
After lunch, it was decided to stop at Woodland on the way back, and Steve said he'd fly there with us.
When we were setting up to leave, us to Lincoln, Steve to Petaluma, Steve's pre-rotator broke - it's a mechanical linkage on the Autogyros, and the link pin had failed. We explained to him that he could manually pre-rotate, and Randy span the rotor up, to about 20rpm, and left him to run down the runway. One of the issues with the Autogyro is that it has a pneumatic, push button pre-rotator, and it seems Steve doesn't understand how pre-rotation works, as he slammed the cyclic back and the propeller hit the rotor. We were amazed that the design would allow that to happen. Oh well... we found space in a hangar for him (George, a Magni pilot allowed him in,) and Randy flew him back to Nut Tree to get picked up to go home. Shane, Liza and I flew back to Lincoln and waited for Henry and Randy to get back.
The weather forecast for today was crappy, so we'd declared it a maintenance day and decided against flying. Obviously it was a nice day, but I did get to go to the optician's and do the 50 hour service on my plane. We also installed an old digital altimeter I have in Randy's plane, mostly so he can see the vertical speed indicator :o)
I went out to the airport, and Randy, Henry and I flew one of Randy's cow-orkers up to Auburn for lunch.
We flew back down the North Fork, then sat in the hangar and chatted for a while.
I picked Shane up and headed to the airport, where we met Randy and Henry and flew to Willows. It was a bit of a cluster... Randy had been playing with the balance screw on his rotor, and left it so unbalanced that he turned back to adjust it again, leaving us to press on as we were supposed to be meeting a guy out of Petaluma at 13:00. And he bailed out while we were in the air, apparently. So after being battered by turbulence for over an hour, we got there and waited for Randy to arrive.
After lunch, we flew back via the valley to the West that's where they're going to be building the Sites Reservoir.
I've taken the week off while Henry's here so we can do some flying. So obviously I started the day at the Chevrolet dealer dropping the Bolt off ("is the check engine light on?" - "it doesn't have an engine") so they can look at the battery - I reckon they'll end up replacing it per the recall.
Randy picked me up when I got home again, and we went to the airport, where he, Shane, Henry and I flew to Oroville for lunch.
We had talked about going via Feather Falls on the way home, but the wind was a bit rowdy, so we shelved that idea. I've bought a suction mount for the Insta360, so I slapped that on the side of the plane for the flight up, and when everything seemed OK, I screwed the camera to it for the way back. It's pretty damn stable, and I'm giving Henry the footage to integrate with his footage from his 9 (!) cameras.
Chris, Henry and Randy were heading to Half Moon Bay, and I didn't feel like getting out that early, so I pottered around the house and went out to the airport later. I did a short flight, then changed the left hand tyre as the old one has some flat spots on it.
I was just finishing up as Randy and Henry got back - they'd only got to Petaluma and tooled around there for a while. Chris had got to Half Moon Bay (despite the fog) but he was in an RV-12 that he's going to be helping sell.
