What did you do today?

Elected to go commercial to denver for the CPA mountain ground course. Weather was crap enroute and chance of thunderstorms in Denver when we'd arrive. Guy that stores his corvettes in the hangar is a southwest captain and got us non rev tickets. Flight was delayed twice. First delay was welcome as traffic sucked getting to midway. Was able to eat and then boarded. Another 1 hour delay. Stayed on. Hour later, another 2 hour delay. Got off and 30 minutes later they rescheduled to Saturday 10:30 am flight. Won't work. CPA ground course is 8am.

Weather looked like it was moving out. The southwest flight out of Milwaukee was able to depart. Bought tickets at ORD for a 9:57 flight. Raced there but late for boarding. Didn't matter. Delayed to 11:30. Then delayed to 12:39. Then another hour delay. That's when we through in the towel. Get home at midnight... Delayed til 6am
 
Fixed my Dremel. It rattled something fierce at high RPM, and I figured I’d need to replace bearings. I found a YouTube video on replacing bearings, and started taking mine apart while I watched. Figured out just before he did that my bearings were good, and it was just the front bearing wobbling inside its groove. A little tape around the outside of the bearing, put it back together, and it works great!

Still recommend YouTube University for such things, however. ;)
 
Instructed. Ugh.
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Went to a concert at French Lick IN Resort. Fantastic Hotel at West Baden.

Main Act was Jamey Johnson. Never heard of him but one of the GF’s favorites. She Country, I’m Jazz. Amazing we survive “discussion” over the car radio which has been settled by whose car we’re in controls the selection.

In any event, Johnson was fabulous even to these Miles Davis ears.
 

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Finally moved a Backyard Buddy 4 post car lift from my hangar to my new to me garage.
I have been putting it off for 2 months now. It has to be on a Sat or Sun because I borrow a service truck from work with a crane on it. That allows it to be a one man job for the most part, my lovely wife helped a couple times.
It started out with a dead battery in our mustang that was parked under a wing at the hangar. I took it out, my wife ran to the auto parts store to get one. She helped a lot today. The car had to be moved so I had room to get the lift out.
It was really hot today and yesterday when I moved everything off the lift so I could move it today. I had a lot stuff under it stored also. Spent 2 hours yesterday preparing the hangar for the move and from 8-6 pm today actually moving it. It was in the back of a T hangar with plenty of stuff in front of it. It's a oversized lift, which makes it heavier and tougher to disassemble and move.
It's in the new garage. Still have run the cables and set it up but I got everything put together that I needed the crane for. Long hot day.
It was a oversized adjustable height storage shelves for the last 5 years in the hangar.
It was originally at another shop and I never used there so I moved it to the hangar. Tight fit in the back of the hangar.
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I moved it put it up in the hangar by myself a few years ago.
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X3 Skier said:
She Country, I’m Jazz. Amazing we survive “discussion” over the car radio which has been settled by whose car we’re in controls the selection.
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My wife is country, I like blues. Driver controls the radio…when she drives, it’s country. When I drive, it’s off and I use an earbud. :rofl:
 
Flew over a foggy landscape to get "cheap" avgas today. The airport I was flying to doesn't have an AWOS, but was between an airport that was IFR due to fog and one that was clear. I took my chances and lost. I had plenty of gas to get home, but not enough for another round trip. Sigh.

This was the general condition over Puget Sound. Heavy fog over the water, but most of the land rose out of the fog.
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and my destination airport was nestled in this band of fog. Sigh. In another 2 hours it was probably clear, but I didn't have the fuel reserves to loiter that long.
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Bottom photo is Anacortes. Where was the cheap gas?
 
Domenick said:
Bottom photo is Anacortes. Where was the cheap gas?
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Anacortes has the cheapest 100 LL around at $6.58/gallon. It isn't exactly cheap, but it is cheaper than any other airport in reasonable range. It is also along the route I regularly fly to the San Juan Islands. I don't like to fly direct from my home base at 0S9 to KFHR - too much very cold water between here and there, and the shore would not be within gliding distance unless I climbed unreasonably high. At 3,500', Whidbey NAS lets me through their airspace and if I cross to Guemes, Cypress and Blakely Islands from Anacortes at 3,500', I stay within gliding distance of one shore or the other as I enter the island group.
 
Took delivery of one of my grail machines - Eckold Kraftformer (metal shrinker/stretcher.)

Early the other morning, my phone dinged and woke me up with an auction keyword notification. It was so inexpensive I almost fell out of bed hitting 'Buy It Now' - I figured I was getting scammed, but it actually showed up via LTL freight today. Came with a few pieces of extra tooling, too. The guy must have had no idea what he had.
 

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ColinD said:
Took delivery of one of my grail machines - Eckold Kraftformer (metal shrinker/stretcher.)

Early the other morning, my phone dinged and woke me up with an auction keyword notification. It was so inexpensive I almost fell out of bed hitting 'Buy It Now' - I figured I was getting scammed, but it actually showed up via LTL freight today. Came with a few pieces of extra tooling, too. The guy must have had no idea what he had.
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I have no idea what you have. :)
 
Dave Theisen said:
I have no idea what you have. :)
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Think English wheel and planishing hammer built into one. Hope that helps.

I wish I had floor space for it. I'd never see the ROI for what we do. But it would be fun to fool around with. Have had requests for for things this would have been great for.
 
Yeah, this machine is going to live a pretty relaxed life under my care. Thankfully I scored the deal of a lifetime, so ROI isn't a concern.

I started converting a Libert circle shear into a recip machine a few years ago. Modified it to accept 3/4-inch square shank pullmax style tooling, thinking I'd put thumbnail shrinking dies on it.

I got to the point where I needed to paint it and then reassemble and wire it, decided to give it the P40 shark mouth treatment. Then I decided the pedestal looked kind of bland, painted a pin-up girl on it and airbrushed a bunch of rivets on it. I was looking at airplane photos for inspiration and thought, "huh, I should call the airport and see if I can get an intro flight."

Machine still isn't fully reassembled and now I'm a CFI. :lol:
 

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ColinD said:
I started converting a Libert circle shear into a recip machine a few years ago. Modified it to accept 3/4-inch square shank pullmax style tooling, thinking I'd put thumbnail shrinking dies on it.
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How much does that beast weigh?
 
It's not too heavy - the casting is hollow. If I had to venture a guess, probably 500-600 lbs on the roller base.
 
Visited Shenendoah NP, traveled part of Skyline Drive, and hiked to one of the waterfalls. TIL that, when a hiking pamphlet describes a hike in the mountains as "moderate," we Florida flatlanders should interpret that as "may result in a moderate heart attack." Other than that, it was a pleasant day, lots of pretty scenery and mountain views, many deer, and a nice change from the typical August Florida sauna.
 
Half Fast said:
Lewis Falls.
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I admit I had to look it up. Young me has been to Big Meadows more than a few times but old me doesn't remember going to Lewis Falls. Anyway, it's all changed a lot since my time there but I'm sure it's still beautiful. I spent most of my time there between the Rockfish Gap and Swift Run entries (and points further south).

Half Fast said:
LOL! Lots of loose rocks on that trail, and SWMBO took a moderate tumble. She has a nice crop of bruises ripening into a palette of colors tonight.
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Ow.

Nauga,
having sympathy pains
 
Took the Cayman to Atlanta Motorsports Park for Track Night, had a fine time. There was someone in the Novice group with a nice shiny new Corvette Z06, not going particularly quickly. It did sound nice, wish I could have heard it at full throttle, but there isn't anywhere at AMP that an inexperienced driver could go full throttle in that car.

At the end of June the Cayman and I spent two days at Road Atlanta with the Peachstate region of the Porsche Club of America. In the drivers meeting, the chief steward remarked about how many very fast cars were at that event. There was a driver in the instructed novice group with a Porsche 911 Turbo S, that's a car that can do a 10 second quarter mile.
 
ColinD said:
Took delivery of one of my grail machines - Eckold Kraftformer (metal shrinker/stretcher.)

Early the other morning, my phone dinged and woke me up with an auction keyword notification. It was so inexpensive I almost fell out of bed hitting 'Buy It Now' - I figured I was getting scammed, but it actually showed up via LTL freight today. Came with a few pieces of extra tooling, too. The guy must have had no idea what he had.
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Dude, congrats, when opportunity knocks be quick to answer the door, it doesn’t often knock twice. I keep sizeable amount of liquid cash in a savings account for just such occasions.
 
Dropped dad off at the airport at 5am to go to Alaska. Finally some peace in the shop to get things done
 
Preping for Light Sport Repairman Inspection course coming up this weekend. Successfully completing the course allows me to officially sign off the Condition Inspection for my EAB plane that someone else built. Hard to find an A&P to do it around here not to mention avoiding a minimum $800 annual expense.
 
X3 Skier said:
Preping for Light Sport Repairman Inspection course coming up this weekend. Successfully completing the course allows me to officially sign off the Condition Inspection for my EAB plane that someone else built. Hard to find an A&P to do it around here not to mention avoiding a minimum $800 annual expense.
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Keep us posted. I'd like to hear what the course is like.
 
nauga said:
Young me has been to Big Meadows more than a few times but old me doesn't remember going to Lewis Falls.
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Young me used to do a lot more hiking; old me not so much.

When I was a yute at Ga Tech learning Laplace transforms and Maxwell's equations during the week, I often spent weekends in the mountains of north Georgia. Some buddies and I used to hike and backpack the area north of Dahlonega, and that was a wonderful escape from Atlanta. The AT does a loop in the area of Blood Mountain, and while we hiked the AT a bit we usually used it as a jumping off point to go elsewhere. We had topo maps of the area, and more often than not we'd pick out some peak or stream or pond to visit and try to hit it following a compass course. Sometimes we'd just park the car along the road for the weekend (those were simpler times and we had nothing worth stealing anyway) and just head straight into the woods. We'd usually use ribbon trail markers to flag our path so we could have some hope of finding the car again and getting back to school Sunday night.

I no longer have the stamina or desire for that, but it sure was fun back in the day. I'll never forget camping near a tiny brook one night, walking to the brook to fill the coffee pot in the morning, and finding bear tracks in the mud along the bank, probably 50' from where we were sleeping. These days I seem to prefer a hotel room with a microwave and coffee maker. :)
 
Finally got a morning without fog and flew to Anacortes for relatively cheap avgas. Online information says 100 LL is $6.58/gallon, but it was only $6.51/gallon when I arrived.
Landing 36 at 74S
 
Half Fast said:
Did he go willingly? And is he ever coming back?
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Oh yeah. He's 68 and was practically skipping to get out of Illinois. He has to come back so we can go elk hunting in New Mexico in 3 weeks. He didn't have to choose which trip to take. I did.
 
Racerx said:
Oh yeah. He's 68 and was practically skipping to get out of Illinois. He has to come back so we can go elk hunting in New Mexico in 3 weeks. He didn't have to choose which trip to take. I did.
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Is he up there hunting? I just got back this morning, I was up near Deadhorse.
 
Finished pulling harness for the old KCS 55A system system out of the Comanche. Man, that's a lot of wire. Felt a little guilty because whomever did the install did a magnificent job. Nicely bundled, tied with lacing tape every few inches. Secured properly. Really a first it rate job now in pieces on the hangar floor. Amazing all that gets replaced by a handful of data cables and a couple modules hardly bigger than a matchbox.

Seems like the hard part is over.
 
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