Twins Birthday

We went down to Camas today for Ava and Harper's birthdays. The GPS in the phone took us right to their place, not like our last trip to the Grist Mill where we ended up on the wrong side of the river.

The girls were so much fun to watch today.
They put them on a blanket for a photo session and the fun began. They did a great job of entertaining everyone by laughing, hollering, patty caking and throwing kisses.

Present opening was next on the list and they had lots of help.

Harper kept going back to the ribbon on this package.

Ava just as she was starting on her cake.

Harper had frosting clear to her elbow before she was done. The girls behaved really well all afternoon. I had a good time taking pictures and only took 208 this afternoon.

Thursday Flying

I was up early to go flying at Toledo today. The drizzle put a hold on leaving right away, but we got going about Nine. After a stop at Subway for sandwiches for lunch we took the slow way up. By the time we got there it was not bad, just a little cool. I got two flights on the Eurofighter before I broke the nose gear servo loose. I really like the way it flies and it is fairly fast at full throttle. Now I just have to figure out a landing technique. The longer we stayed the better the weather got. By lunch time it was real pleasant. I flew until about 2 when it was getting pretty warm and the wind started blowing like crazy.

I flew 5 airplanes and 2 helicopters today.

Lots of Thunderheads showed up as the clouds cleared.

View from the field, Mt Rainier on the left and Mt St Helens on the right. Click on it and it gets bigger!

After we got home, I finished up the speaker project and repaired the Eurofighter nose gear.

Another project done!

Well almost! But first a little catching up is in order. Monday I just puttered with the Eurofighters landing gear as I was tired after the busy weekend.
Tuesday James came up to visit and mow. He was pretty tired from his big weekend also. After the sun came out and it warmed up he started mowing. He was about half done when he ran over the yellow jacket nest. They chased him clear to the back door. They got him in the leg 3 times. We put Sting Ez and ice on it and then went out later and sprayed the nest.
Today I put up the outdoor speakers we got for Christmas. They are hooked at the stereo temporarily as I had gotten the wrong type of connectors. We made a run down and exchanged them for the right ones this evening, now I just need to install the wall plate.

While I was working on it I sat down at the table and cranked up the Umbrella that took a trip over the house during a storm. Well it did get damaged during the flight, one bow was broken so we picked up a new one during the trip to get the right parts for the speakers.

When I was done with everything this evening we sat out on the deck and enjoyed the music and the beautiful blue sky.

Flying

I was up early and headed to the flying field shortly after 7. I had planned on getting breakfast on the road. BK and Subway were not open yet so I ended up stopping at a Chevron Food Mart and got donuts and chocolate milk for an All American breakfast. It was beautiful when I got to the field. Light winds and warm, I flew one flight with the red Cub and discovered a problem. The field had not been mowed, there were 6 inch tall dandelions all over the runway. I got the mower out and started mowing, a little over an hour later I had it done. Then I tried the Eurofighter, same problem the nose wheel was turning and tipping the plane over. I found out this evening that the steering arm was cracked.

Right after my last attempt with the Eurofighter people started showing up. There ended up being 8 of us out there flying.

Everyone had a good day except Rob, first his RV-4 Crashed way out in the field. It is pretty much a total loss.

Then the muffler fell off his Space Walker and it made an off field landing but was not hurt! After that he flew his Triplane and it quit in the air. Rob made a nice dead stick landing with it and discovered the fuel line had came off the tank. Next he flew his helicopter and it quit a couple of times. Some days are like that. I remember one year I crashed a plane a week for seven weeks. I had thought I was ready for a summers flying but I was soon down to one plane. It was pretty warm by 2 and I headed home to work on the Eurofighters nose gear. It looks like the aluminum one I am making will cure the problem. Vera made Cocoa Mounds this evening and are they ever good!

Mountain Mania

We started the day again heading for a garage sale off Waters Rd. They advertised Craftsman tools and some welding machines. The tools were pretty old and the prices seemed high to me. One of the features of Mountain Mania this year was city wide garage sales. They printed a map of the locations and there seemed to be quite a few people walking around town going to them.

As we were walking around looking at the cars and going to garage sales, I saw this 37 Ford. The folks had a 39 very similar to it when I was a kid. The ignition on the Flathead V-8's was down low on the front of the engine. Once when we were coming back from Grandma Jarvi's during the 1949 high water the tide had came in and we had to drive through water. The car quit half way through. The Oregon DOT had a truck there and it pushed us out and used a fire extinguisher to dry the distributor.

This is looking West, there was a real variety of cars.

Looking towards the drug store, looks like the Chevy area.

I expected a V-8 in the this 29 Ford, but it had a 3.8 liter V-6.

Our last stop was for Ice Cream for me and a Smoothie for Vera at the new place where Laury is working. It was getting pretty warm by then so we headed home to the air conditioning. Vera read and I worked on planes and my prop box the rest of the day.

Garage Sales

That is how we started our day, going to garage sales. The first one was up on Si Town Rd. as soon as we pulled in I knew we had been there last year. It looked like some of the same stuff also. We had better luck at the others we went to, no weird people today. I found some doors that might work in the shop cupboards so we headed home to check the measurements. As we came through town there was Parker with a Volleyball Car Wash sign. We pulled in and Emmy and Macee were there also. They did a good job on the Blazer.

After a quick trip home to measure the door openings, we headed back and got enough doors to finish my cupboards. No way I could make anything for 50 cents each.

I spent the afternoon making a box for my propellers and fixing the landing gears we tore out Tuesday.

I bought this box at a model swap meet this spring thinking I would put my transmitters in it. So far it looks like it will work great for props. I plan on putting some bigger ones on the lid.

Slept in Today

I slept until 9 this morning. My knee was a little tired feeling after all the activity this weekend so I decided to take it easy today. Then I worked on a plane that lost a landing gear Tuesday, there were some tractor tire ruts we did not notice. A model sized tire dropped right in and the abrupt halt meant the landing gear stayed there while the plane continued on. Good thing it happened, the wing had a serious crack in the main spar that the repair exposed. A little carbon fiber and CA and it is stronger than ever. I knew Dianne had the twins today so I wandered over there this afternoon. They are going all the time, the picture is one of the few time Ava gave up having both balls. Later they were outside, so I got a double dose of them today. Vera was helping with the Girls Camp sewing class at church again today. Not much else when on here, I walked the trails once and did a hundred steps on the back deck. The knee feels fine this evening.

Tuesday's Flying

I met James at the 30th Ave. Burger King this morning. A bunch of the area modelers meet there every morning for coffee at 9. Today there was only one modeler there so James and I talked with him and had breakfast. Then we headed down to the Goble Flying Field. James finally flew the Alienator and liked it. It was cold and windy so we only stayed for a couple of flights before heading home.

James landing the Alienator.

James making a low pass with the Katana.

When you have been flying for 9 years you are pretty relaxed.

After we got home we watched the latest episode of Wipe Out and then James mowed the lawns. He was singing along with the music on the headphones while he mowed.

While James was mowing I cleaned the pond filters and got some pictures of the swallow in the bird house and this bird coming down for a bath. After mowing James was off to play with Parker, they ended up going to the creek on Parkers 4 wheeler. I ordered pizza and Mik and Michelle came up and ate with us. Just as we finished eating Parker came running over for some help, the 4 wheeler had rolled down the rock wall into Dianne's car. I had James get the lawn mower and we used it to pull it back far enough to move the car. It left a dent in the right rear fender just above the tire. Not a good way to end the day!

Vapor

It was a nice quiet Monday at home. I slowly unloaded the motor home, charged the batteries I used Sunday and took the garbage out. James and I are going flying tomorrow morning, so I loaded his favorite plane. I noticed it was calm this evening so I got out the Vapor and flew it until the battery ran down and it ended up in a bush. I had to get my extension pole out to get it. The Vapor only weighs about an ounce and flies at a walk so I can fly it anywhere.

Since this is kind of short I added some more pictures from Sunday's Picnic sent to me by the club president Dick Anderson.

Me spraying the No Fly Line on the runway. For safety reasons we try to not fly closer than 25 feet from the pit area.

The raffle prizes.

Rob had twin bomb bays built into his Cargo that he loaded with candy and dropped.

And last but not least, our only accident of the day. The yellow plane was taking off the wrong way and hit a plane that was landing. Landing aircraft have the right of way.

Picnic

We got sprinkled on a few times during the morning, I had to change from shorts to jeans, but we had a great time at the picnic. We ended up with 20 flyers signed in. Lots of flying took place with some unusual planes being flown. The food was great at lunch time with lots of side dishes to choose from.

This is the view from the North end of the parking area. More people and planes showed up after this.


Here are 5 of the 21 planes I brought. I did not end up flying all 21, just half of them. It was a big day and we were both tired when we got home. I tried editing the pictures and doing this last night, but I was just too sleepy.

Ready to Go!

As soon as we were done with breakfast this morning, we headed to town for the rest of the supplies for tomorrows picnic.

Of course we noticed some yard sale signs on the way. So we took the long way home following signs. Vera found several items and some books to read. I found a light at the next to the last one we stopped at. The last one had lots of stuff, but there was a couple of weird people so we decided to call it a day. My new batteries were at the post office so I had something to do this afternoon besides load the motor home. I put plugs on them and charged them for tomorrow.

The motor home is loaded and all we have to do in the morning is get in and go!

These are the planes I put over the cab area.

This is what the back bedroom looks like, a couple of the planes don't show. I just counted and there are 20 planes loaded for tomorrow. If I fly each one once, it will have been a great day.

Garage Sales, Birds, Bunny and Planes

We started our day going to garage sales after picking up the mail. There were more today to choose from. Several were multi family sales that had lots of stuff. This is one up on the South Silver Lake Rd that had lots of tools, the only one today that I got anything at.

After we got home and had lunch, I went out and took some pictures of the birds. I took some this morning but it was not bright enough to get good pictures. We have two baby Swallows in this bird house. You don't see too much of then until they spot Mom coming in with food and then both heads are out with mouths open.

It took several tries to catch the mother bird as she is only there for an instant.

I noticed movement in the grass and there was this bunny feeding.

While I was out on the back porch I noticed Vera's roses were backlighted so I took a picture of them. That bush grows so fast the deer can't keep up with it, well neither can I.

I spent the afternoon doing some things for the club picnic Sunday. I inventoried the food, paper plates and utensils and made a list of what we have to pick up tomorrow. I swapped planes around in the motor home so I have some different ones to fly Sunday. Now I have several batteries being charged and cycled and I have to make one more trip to the shop tonight. Then it will be time to settle in and relax.

Parade and Fair

After breakfast, email and the news this morning we ran down to get the mail. We found a couple of garage sales signs, so we were off to check them out. Vera found a couple of books and a bag at the first one. We both struck out at the second one, but had a nice ride finding it.

I worked on my P-51 this afternoon and got completely done with the landing gear mods. Now I can fly it this weekend at the club picnic. The Castle Rock Fair Parade was this evening along with the official opening of the fair. We picked up BK, then got a good parking spot close to the parade route and ate while we waited. The parade started at 6:30 and we enjoyed it, the best parts for us is the kids with their decorated vehicles.

The battery must have been ran down as Dad had to start pushing it as they went by us. Afterwards we went over to the fair and looked at all the animals and exhibits. We had a good

time hunting up the nieces and nephews entries.

Hope you got to do something fun on the nice day!

Wednesday July 14th

I did a bunch of little things today. When I filled the bird feeders there is one that never hung straight, so I took it to the shop and fixed it. When Vera got home from bible study she had picked up the mail and my parts for the F-4 were there. I went out and started working on planes. I finished up the SU-29 landing gear repair and added some decals to it. If I do say so myself, it looks much better and the landing gear is much stronger. I put a new nose gear retract in the F-4 along with a brace to reinforce it. Hopefully it will hold up to me messing up another landing. I brought the Stearman in and made a minor repair to it. I charged all the batteries from my last flying session. Finally I got the P-51 down to start on the repairs to it's landing gear. When I was at Dianne's yesterday taking pictures of the kids I snapped one of the baby swallows waiting for Mom to come feed them.

When I headed into the house last night the sky looked so nice I had to go back and get the camera for a picture.

MTV

I sure slept good last night after all the activity Monday. James had called last night and we made arrangements for him to come up for the day. I picked him up at 9 this morning and got him breakfast on the way home. It was pretty cool this morning so we settled in and watched some TV. Parker came over and watched TV with James until it was time for James to mow. James said he set a record today and was done in one hour. When I got back to the house they were watching Nitro Circus on MTV. This bunch tries all kinds of crazy stunts. I chased them out to play and before long they wanted some help making their ramp higher and stronger for jumping scooters (Nitro Circus influence). The first design they had broke in a couple of spots. I did a little modifying and added another board over their particle board. I have to say they did one good thing, that was aim the ramp at the grass in case they fell.

I almost let the day go by without taking any pictures but remembered just before time to take James home.

They are fighting over sunflower seeds.
After we got James home, he had to mow their lawn. I helped him get the mower up the hill and watched him mow while Michelle visited with Vera. When he was done he wanted to show me the new games and headset he got, so we used the rest of the time before baseball practice playing Xbox. On the way home Vera and I stopped by Micheal's and wandered around a little. We had Arby's Market Fresh Roast beef sandwiches for dinner and headed home. I worked on the planes for a little while before coming in here. The day seemed to fly by for both of us.