Lancair Vibration

This is our pet butterfly!

Even though the flowers are fading a little, the leaves are starting to make up for it with lots of color.  Vera had bible study this morning, I worked on my Lancair trying to get a vibration out of it.  I finally determined the spinner was causing it.  I didn't have one to replace it with, so I made up an order to Tower for it and some other stuff I needed.

A beautiful day for flying!

This picture was taken about 10:30 this morning before I made my first flight at Toledo.  It was one of the best days all summer, warm with very light or no wind.  I made 17 flights today on six different airplanes and three helicopters.

James' Birthday

Saturday Vera was taking pictures of the leaves and flowers when she spotted this hummingbird.

I worked on making a shelf behind the showcase Saturday and Sunday.  It looks much better with the stuff behind it covered up.

Today was James' 18th birthday!  He had a baseball game in Portland this morning, so they came up afterwards for pizza and cake with the family.

Vera had Ava and Harper put the candles on the cake, James had them help him blow them out.

It was a good time, pizza, cake, ice cream and a Seahawks win.

We went out later and drove up the road until we found a place where I could get some pictures of the eclipse.

MM Homecoming

It is starting to look like fall around here, the vine maples have started turning and Vera has been taking pictures of them.

I spent most of the afternoon rearranging in the front room of the shop and getting the showcase so it can be seen.  I also added LED strip lights to replace the fluorescent bulb that was in there.

 This evening we went to the Mark Morris homecoming game, James was one of the nominees for homecoming king.

Here he is during half time helping one of the senior girls who was nominated out of one of the Corvettes the girls rode in.  The local Corvette club provided the Corvettes and they were all nice looking.

This is them waiting to see who was voted King and Queen, the girl ended up being Queen.  Although James didn't win, he sure looked handsome and was at ease out there.

Since some of the boys nominated were on the football team, their dads filled in for them.

After the game the players were able to get in a picture of the homecoming court.  We had left early, so I borrowed this picture from Holly.  The football game was pretty ugly, Mark Morris lost 48 to 0.

Sad News and a pleasant surprise!

I got a call this morning from my friend Dick that our friend Bob Stedham had passed away yesterday.  This picture of Bob and James was taken in June when we went up for a visit.  I am really glad that Vera and I stopped by last Thursday and visited Bob.

I was cleaning the pond when I heard a voice, it turned out to be my cousin Rob Piercy, what a pleasant surprise!  I had not seen him for many years even though he lives in Rainier.  He had ridden his bike over from Rainier.  I had a good time showing him my planes and talking about our full sized flying experiences.  I didn't know his sister Gayenell had passed away, another sad thing today.

This afternoon, I finished up cleaning both ponds and their filters.

A weekend of flying!

We spent Friday morning getting groceries to stock up the motor home for a weekend stay at the Toledo field.  While Vera was baking, I loaded the last planes and swap meet items.  The clouds and sky looked really pretty when we arrived Saturday morning and Vera had me take the picture above.

This is some of the stuff I brought to sell, Jim is giving it the once over.

This is how it looked at Noon, there wasn't a big turn out because it did not get advertised much.  I had a good time and the food was great.

The skydivers were jumping out of a helicopter today, three per trip, it was the first time I had seen that.  They were also taking up eight at a time in a turbine powered plane.  Vera had made me an apple ice cream treat that I had this evening that was really good.

I got to do night flying with the two planes I brought.  This is a test flight before it was completely dark to trim out the Alienator.

It was much darker for the next flight, I am just getting ready to launch the Alienator, the picture was taken by our friend Dick and I borrowed it to use here.  I was surprised by how much the LEDs lit up the ground, I could fly by at 15 or 20 feet and a large area underneath it was visible.

I flew the Katana next, and I was right, the landing light was so bright that it was blinding me when I came in to land.  I forgot to put the shields around it.  I slept good Saturday night, it had been a big day.  I think it has been a couple of years since we spent a night in the motor home.

This is Sunday morning, it was a cooler day with a few very light sprinkles.  The turn out today was even smaller, but we had a good time and we sold some kits.  I think we were all packed up and headed home about four.  After hooking up the power and unloading the food from the motor home, we settled in for a nice quiet evening.

Road Trip

We were on the road early today to pick up some supplies for Marie and deliver them.  Our first stop didn't have everything on the list, so we had to hit a second store.  Of course when we came out of the first store, it was raining like crazy!  The weather and traffic on the way to Centralia wasn't too bad.  We had a nice visit with Marie until it was time for her lunch.  Then we stopped by our friend Bob's, he is sure getting around a lot better since his surgery, we had a good time talking with Bob about airplanes.  After we left Bob's I took some pictures of the house being built on the property Marie donated to the Habitat for Humanity so I can put them on her digital picture frame.

On the way home we stopped at The Shire Bar & Bistro for lunch.  The bar and bar back look like they have been there for a long time.  When we got home, I did some more work on the motor home, adding strip LED lights over the table.

Lunch by the river!

Today was the second day we have gone down to Lions Pride Park and had lunch while watching the fishermen.  Yesterday we got to watch them catch one.  It is a nice place to relax and enjoy the view.

Wow! That is bright!

Barry and Mona headed out about nine this morning, we really enjoyed their visit!

I did some organizing in the shop today and then decided to work on adding LEDs to my Funtana so I could fly it at night this weekend.  It turned out pretty good, the landing light turned out so bright that I will have to add shields so it doesn't get in my eyes when landing.

Birthday Pizza

Barry and Mona stopped for the night on their way to Arizona.  We went to Papa Pete's this evening for Barry's birthday pizza.  We let the rest of the family know about it and ended up with 21 family members there.  Everyone was in a great mood and I think everyone had a good time.

New Battery tray

My plan today was to install the slide out battery tray I had gotten for the motor home.  As I was watering, Michelle and James showed up to do some yard work down below.  They had forgotten their tools, so I loaned them what they needed.  When I finished watering, I went down and helped out for a little while.  After they left, I started taking everything out of the battery compartment and did some measuring.  I had to make a run to town for some 1 inch square steel and then I started cutting.  I had to make the opening where it slides out 1 inch bigger.  I also discovered that the old floor had come loose on one end so I added some additional braces.  That old pad is sure a blessing when I have to roll around on the ground.

I got all the welding done and did a test fitting of the new tray before calling it a day.

Organizing

Since all the planes were out of the motor home, there were a few changes I wanted to make.  I have been charging batteries at the dinette and that did not leave any room to sit down.  I made a new charging area over the cab that is going to work much better.  The charger will be at eye level and much easier to read.  I left out some of the planes I never fly and I am just putting back my favorites, nine so far in that area.  Today, I put in a new outlet over the cab so I can charge the deep cycle battery up there.  I noticed that some of the flowers were looking kind of wilted, I got out of the habit of watering them when we had a couple of days of rain.  I did them all about noon and they were looking much better this evening.  It looks like I will be watering every morning again.

Help!

I got a call from Bev Monday night, a chunk of the left inside dual had come off.  After talking about it, we decided that if she took it slow she could probably make her place OK.  She did and Tuesday afternoon we met her at a Les Schwab where they were changing the tire.  It turned out that the tire they had was the wrong size, so they buttoned it back up.  We headed slowly home but on the 205 bridge, the tire really came apart, it was pretty noisy for a few seconds!  I slowed way down and we managed to get off the bridge and into the Mill Plain Fred Meyer parking lot.  I put in a call to AAA and they started looking for service, but had no luck.

While we were waiting the sunset was really nice and Vera wanted a picture of it.  Then they couldn't find a tow either, I have 200 mile towing!  After a couple of hours I checked and it was OK to leave it at Fred Meyer for the night, so I told AAA I was leaving it and would come back tomorrow.  I had been texting with Michelle about that time and she volunteered to come pick us up.  James came along also and we had a great visit on the way home.  I did some checking online after we got home and found a tire place that listed 16.5 inch tires.  We pulled up just as they opened the door Wednesday morning and got the last one they had in stock.  I had also located a Les Schwab a block from where we were parked.  I drove the motor home over there, they mounted and balanced the tire and we were on our way home by 9:30 AM!

A new record!

We went flying today, the club had a meeting scheduled at the Goble field.  It turns out that the day was a new record for the lowest high temperature, 60 degrees!  When we first got to the field, no one was there so we continued on to St Helens.  We parked on the water front and watched the river for a few minutes.  The picture is the museum which was right behind us.  On the way back to the field, we drove by an old friends house to see how it looks now.   Cliff passed away a few years back and I surprised myself by driving right to it.  The house looked the same, but the yard had lots of stuff in it.

Luckily, I had grabbed a fairly warm jacket before we left, I just wish I had put on my insulated boots!

I had put a new receiver in the Lancair, got it test flown and trimmed out, I will have to adjust the right thrust as it was yawing left on take off.  I really had to concentrate to see it against the overcast.  I ended up putting two flights on it and two on my Sukhoi before we left.  The scheduled meeting didn't happen because the president and I were the only ones to show up.

Five!

I worked on the F-4 today, putting the nose gear doors back on.  Then taking them back off and starting over when I got the back one on crooked.  We cleaned out the Blazer this afternoon, it has been accumulating things in the back that we don't use, plus there were five umbrellas in it.  Now there is only one!  This evening I got a quad out and did a little flying around the house.  The picture is of the monitor that I use to see where the camera is aimed.  The camera on this quad has a really clear picture.

Fog!

I was surprised to see fog Thursday morning, it has been quite a while since I last noticed it.  It was also 42 degrees out, or as Vera said "Only 10 degrees above freezing!".  We went to one garage sale this morning and I found some storage bins for the shop.  I was due for my blood test and I was about out of cereal, so we went to Longview from there.  Later, I did some work on the new nose gear retract and then went in to watch the Seahawks game this evening.

Friday, it was almost noon before I got away from the computer.  I did a little more work on the nose gear, then UPS delivered the belt for the mower so I went out to install it.  It went pretty good until I dropped the belt retainer.  I tried to find it with the magnet, but didn't have any luck, so we cleaned out all the grass clippings around the transmission and there it was in plain sight.  After I got it back together, I used the mower to pick up leaves.  While I was mowing, Vera stopped me and pointed out the traffic on the road was stopped.  I ran down to Eddie's to take a look and there was a school bus vs car accident right by Bob and Cathy's driveway!  Lots of police cars and traffic only getting by in one lane.  I talked to Cathy later and she said they put one person from the car in handcuffs and took him away.  She said two others were transported by ambulance.  It was three hours before they got things cleared out.  We picked a few apples later and Vera made a great tasting apple dessert.

The first day of school

After three busy days, I took it pretty easy today.  Mik sent me some pictures of James and Michelle ready to start their first day of school.  This picture is a tradition at their house.  I did some work on the new nose gear for the F-4 Phantom and it looks like it will work fine.

When I finished working on the F-4, I put the new prop I had been balancing onto the quad and decided to test fly it.  When I got outside, the sky looked so nice I parked the quad up in the opening and took some pictures of it with my phone.  Then I heard the kids playing basketball over at Gabe's and started flying that way.  As I went by the fort, our new neighbor said "that looks like fun" so I stopped and met him.  I wouldn't have any trouble remembering his name as it is James!

Clutch Repair

We were sure glad we went flying Friday because Saturday was not a pleasant day!  I spent most of it and Sunday taking planes out of the motor home so Bev could borrow it next week.  Boy did I have lots of stuff in there.  I was doing some cleaning on the motor home Monday when I got a call from James that his clutch was acting up and he couldn't get it into gear at times.  After I gave him some hints on driving without using the clutch, he headed our way.  He called once on the way here when it wouldn't go into gear and I told him to put it in gear and start it.  After checking a few things, we decided it was the clutch master cylinder or slave cylinder so we ran down to NAPA and ordered both.  They said it would be in at 7:30 Tuesday morning.   While we were working, Vera made a batch of Cocoa Mounds and James got to lick the bowl.

James came up Tuesday morning, we picked up the parts and started in.  It went pretty good, I let James do most of the work, so he got his hands a little greasy.  We would have been done sooner except a pin that was in the wrong place disappeared into the body panel never to be seen again when I tried to take it out.  I ended up making a new one and we buttoned things up.  We took the tools back to the shop and it started to rain, James asked me to roll the windows up, but only the driver's door window would work.  Back to the carport we went!  We were just starting to tear things open again when Steve showed up and mentioned it might be the master door lock!  It was and everything worked again, Thank You Steve!  It was a lot of fun working with James and teaching him a few things.  Bev and her friend Diane came up Tuesday evening and picked up the motor home.  We had a nice visit with them before they had to head home as they had a couple of stops to make on the way.