What did you do today?

Made it home! 13.7 on the Hobbs. Stopped overnight at Huntsville to visit the space center today. Beautiful day to fly today.... if you were going south. Had 15kt hw the whole way home. Descending into to cmi got beat to hell by turbulence, but the old girl held together.

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Albany Tom said:
Do not, repeat do not, start building one of those engines.
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Lol.. the F1 engine may be my favorite man made object. They had a pristine one there laid on its side so you could get close to the complicated part....I could've spent hours looking at it. Just magnificent.

Id have to really step up my welding game.

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Not today, but Thursday, I told the folks at work "see ya!"

bugged out at lunch time...and spent the rest of the day running errands and making calls..but not fun calls. calls back and forth with my dad's doctor, my sister, and my mom trying to get dad's meds squared away, and calling my wife's office condo association trying to get a roof repair done + some calls trying to get my new dental insurance squared away.
Then on Friday I spent the day making some emergency repairs on my daughter's winterguard team's prop in preparation for an out of town competition that's happening today.

My son called me yesterday to check in. I was frantically trying to get the repair work done in time to get on the road, and he told me that I should be fishing today.
Smart kid.
 
Helped pull the wings off an RV-12 and trailer it to a shopping mall (remember those?) where it joined a glider, some R/C airplanes, and some rockets and other stuff for an Aviation STEM Day event.

It's in the mall on a Saturday so it will be seen by dozens of people.

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MauleSkinner said:
I assume you’re referring to the airplane, not your wife.

Though I also assume your wife held together.
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Honestly, i think she'll snap before the airplane, Piper wing spars notwithstanding.

The back seat is always way worse as it's so far behind the CG, whereas the pilot is essentially sitting on it. Like riding in the back of the school bus. I asked the girls about it today, and they said it was a pretty wild ride back there. Lucy said it was the first time she'd been scared in the plane.

I've been in worse, but that was probably #3. In hindsight I should've turned the autopilot off. It was weird that it was so bad when it was a beautiful clear night and totally smooth at 6500. About 4500-3000 was awful, and then 3000- ground was bumpy, but not untolerable.
 
Glad everything worked out and the plane stayed happy!

Today I'm setting an alarm so I can order some boxes from B&H photo when Shabbat is over. I don't know exactly what Shabbat is, but it's kinda nice that somebody believes in something enough to put their company on pause for it. Other than it's all electronic and computerized, it feels a little bit like part of the 60's.
 
Jim K said:
Honestly, i think she'll snap before the airplane, Piper wing spars notwithstanding.

The back seat is always way worse as it's so far behind the CG, whereas the pilot is essentially sitting on it. Like riding in the back of the school bus. I asked the girls about it today, and they said it was a pretty wild ride back there. Lucy said it was the first time she'd been scared in the plane.

I've been in worse, but that was probably #3. In hindsight I should've turned the autopilot off. It was weird that it was so bad when it was a beautiful clear night and totally smooth at 6500. About 4500-3000 was awful, and then 3000- ground was bumpy, but not untolerable.
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As a kid I got a lot of back seat time in a Cherokee Six…we considered that the second-best seat in the house. My older brother and I generally swapped between that and the left seat with Dad giving instruction.

After a bunch of Baron/Bonanza time, I’ve found that the best way to minimize at least the lateral movement back there is to counter the movement of the vertical Turn & Bank needle with rudder. If you’ve got one, it’s a pure yaw instrument. It’s pretty easy to get 180 degrees out of phase if you’re chasing the ball back and forth.

Autopilot can take care of the rest if you want, or hand fly and accept some of the ups and downs while maintaining attitude.
 
After a few days of strong southerly winds splashing salt spray all over the campsite, I scrubbed down our bicycles and lubed everything I could think of. My wife’s was pretty accessible, but mine has so much crap on it that I’ll probably take it completely apart when we get home. I’ll probably treat the inside of the frame tubing with BLO while I’m at it. My front wheel spokes seemed to collect some deeper rust, so I’ll probably be relacing it within the next couple of years.

Would’ve been nice to have my maintenance stand along, but this worked ok.

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MauleSkinner said:
As a kid I got a lot of back seat time in a Cherokee Six…we considered that the second-best seat in the house. My older brother and I generally swapped between that and the left seat with Dad giving instruction.

After a bunch of Baron/Bonanza time, I’ve found that the best way to minimize at least the lateral movement back there is to counter the movement of the vertical Turn & Bank needle with rudder. If you’ve got one, it’s a pure yaw instrument. It’s pretty easy to get 180 degrees out of phase if you’re chasing the ball back and forth.

Autopilot can take care of the rest if you want, or hand fly and accept some of the ups and downs while maintaining attitude.
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Dad is uncomfortable flying his pa32 unless it's at the absolute forward end of the envelope. I've put 100lbs in the aft baggage and we're still on the forward end. He either doesn't think I can calculate weight and balance as he hasn't done it in 20 years or doesn't believe the calculated empty is correct. He wants to weigh it and check rigging. Or would rather fly outside the forward end of the envelope.
 
Jim K said:
Lol.. the F1 engine may be my favorite man made object. They had a pristine one there laid on its side so you could get close to the complicated part....I could've spent hours looking at it. Just magnificent.

Id have to really step up my welding game.

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The F-1 still makes my head hurt sometimes. 55,000hp just to drive the fuel pump.
 
Wished I had bought this years fuel needs under a contracted price and scheduled delivery dates agreement yesterday.
 
Attended the Iceport fly-in on Mille Lacs Lake today.
 

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MauleSkinner said:
After a few days of strong southerly winds splashing salt spray all over the campsite, I scrubbed down our bicycles and lubed everything I could think of. My wife’s was pretty accessible, but mine has so much crap on it that I’ll probably take it completely apart when we get home. I’ll probably treat the inside of the frame tubing with BLO while I’m at it. My front wheel spokes seemed to collect some deeper rust, so I’ll probably be relacing it within the next couple of years.

Would’ve been nice to have my maintenance stand along, but this worked ok.

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Y’know, CorrosionX works on more things than airplanes.
 
- Cut open the oil filter from my recent oil change. Looks excellent! I’ll start oil analysis with the next change.

- Grilled a thick ribeye and split it with SWMBO. Uncorked a bottle of 19 Crimes Shiraz to go with it. Not bad!

- No more college football, so I watched the war instead.
 
Thanked god that my daughter’s fiancé (army reserve artillery man) was sent home a few months early from his active duty deployment a few weeks ago when they shut down and cleared out the base he was at in Iraq. It has not been easy for her with him being away, the stress of worrying about him being there was hard enough, what has unfolded today if he was still over seas would have been very stressful.
 
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Albany Tom said:
It's funny that my reaction isn't "you put an airplane in a shopping mall?" but rather "there are still shopping malls??"
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Yeah, but this one at least is moribund. Our EAA chapter has a 2000 sq ft storefront, formerly a trendy fashion store, for something on the order of $150 a month. There's a model train club with their own space too. It was busier today than I have seen it in years, meaning about what you'd expect at 10 AM on a Wednesday pre-COVID.

Racerx said:
I hope they're not filming another blue's brother movie this weekend
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We got the plane in and out safely, so no ex cop cars plowed through it. I was just there for the setup and teardown, but the flying club president who was with the plane said he must have had 60 or more kids in it.

And yes, we absolutely did discuss whether it could be landed on and/or taken off from the parking lot. General consensus was probably could, definitely shouldn't.
 
MauleSkinner said:
But with the headwind on the way home, you got back just in time for this late evening post?
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Haha. I of course flew home much lower and the headwind was 15 knots less than the tailwind.

I'm liking having these turbo'd engines to take advantage of the wind. Getting to 11k is a piece of cake and I was ready to go to 13k but the ride was terrible so I went back down to smooth air.
 
Albany Tom said:
Glad everything worked out and the plane stayed happy!

Today I'm setting an alarm so I can order some boxes from B&H photo when Shabbat is over. I don't know exactly what Shabbat is, but it's kinda nice that somebody believes in something enough to put their company on pause for it. Other than it's all electronic and computerized, it feels a little bit like part of the 60's.
Click to expand...
Shabbat is the weekly Jewish day of rest. It start at sundown on Friday and lasts until Sundown Saturday. during that time, certain types of work are forbidden.
 
Spent a good part of the afternoon playing cards with and listening to stories from a 76 year old who was on the ground support crew for F104’s during the Vietnam conflict. The cliff note takeaway is they were fast as all get out, climbed like homesick angels, but couldn’t dog fight well and in engine outs they would nose dive and hit the ground before the pilot could react/correct it.
 
Today I did some pattern work in an old airplane in a crosswind, and I made a batch of meatballs. Not at the same time. It all turned out pretty good.
 
TIL that the US government operates their own version of Starlink called Starshield.
 
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