Monday, May 30, 2011

W00t!

I got to go flying today!

It's fairly warm here. It was MVFR until noon, with broken cirrus at 2,300' after that. Flew around for a bit and then shot three landing for the logbook. I did pretty well, even with a seven week layoff from flying.

Feels good, even with gas at $5.80/gal.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Annual

The airplane still isn't back to me.

That's partially my fault, as I have told the mechanic repeatedly that I won't pay for expedited shipping for parts, unless I specifically approve it. The cost differential for large or heavy stuff isn't worth it to me. Besides the muffler, which I wrote about previously, the gyrocompass shit the bed on my pre-annual test flight. Modern DGs don't seem to be worth a crap. I had an old horizontal card WW2 surplus DG in my plane and it worked up until 2004.


They truly don't make them like that anymore. There were four war-surplus instruments in my airplane when I bought it, now 20 years ago (DG, AI, VSI, altimeter). The altimeter was the last to go. The rebuilding shop wouldn't touch it because it had indicator needles with radium paint on them.

Anyway, I fly for fun. That means that if the mechanic has an airplane come in that somebody uses in a business, it gets priority, and I am cool with that.

But the weather is nice, finally, it's been weeks and I want to go flying.