Mowing and Flying

Boy did I sleep good last night!  Friday we fell and cut up a cottonwood tree and hauled away a couple of trailer loads of debris.  I got the top of the right wing sheeted Friday evening also.  Today we went up to Toledo to mow and fly.  I went over and did Mrs. Herren's lawn first thing.  I got back to the flying field just in time for a crash.  I was looking the other way and missed it, but I got to see the results, it was a total wipe out!  I got my planes and equipment out and took the picture above before I started flying.  It never did warm up to what I saw predicted at several places and there was a pretty strong cross wind all day so the lighter planes did not get flown.  Except for one flight on the V-Hawk I flew the white with red trim Super Cub and the yellow and blue MXS-R in the background all day.  It was cool enough that we quit early and were back home about three.

Still good building weather!

Tuesday we made a run to town, Vera needed veggies for the salad she was taking to bible study.  They were celebrating Linda B's birthday with a lunch after bible study.  I needed some cereal from Fred Meyer and paint for the P-39 from Micheal's.  We picked up a little present for Cora's birthday while we were there, can you believe she will be one year old this weekend.  After a stop at Safeway, lunch at Jack in the Box we headed home and just barely got unloaded before it started raining.

Making up this link for the flap took most of the rest of the day.  I had the flap and flap servo on and off the wing numerous times.  I had to bring the transmitter in from the motor home, bind it to the receiver and use it to do all the programming for the servos in the wing.  I did some painting on the flap later.

Wednesday I went to coffee at the Vault, just six today but we had a really nice visit.  I gave the flap a coat of paint and started fitting the retract units into the P-39's wing.  I had to grind down into the mounting block quite a ways so I only got one done.  I did locate the airlines and quick disconnect for the retracts, I had forgotten I had them.  They were with a bunch of retracts I bought at a swap meet.

The first thing we wanted to get done today was send off Cora's present.  I went to the shop and located a box as soon as I walked in the door.  After giving the second flap a quick coat of paint I took the box in and we got it ready to send.  We headed down to mail it and I forgot about the flaggers at the North end of town by the railroad bridge, we were only held up a couple of minutes.  We were in luck, priority mail will get the present there Saturday, just right for Cora's birthday on Sunday.  I wanted to pick up some wood pellets so we headed for 4 Corners.  Wouldn't you know it, flaggers at the Ph-10 bridge also, again only for a few minutes and we were on our way.  Vera wanted to get some pansies for the tub Michelle got us and we ended up getting some nasturtium seeds also.  After we got home Vera planted the pansies and some of the nasturtiums in the tub.  She also planted some nasturtiums outside our bedroom window.

Grinding the mounting block for the second retract went much faster since I had a pattern to refer to.  I decided there was no more construction on the P-39 that I needed the building board for.  I cleaned it off, put it away, put all the tools back in the tool chest and even found a machinist's square I have been looking for.  After vacuuming everything I made up one piece of sheeting for the top of the wing and called it a night.  I had a call from Jackie today and during it Cora said "Hi" to us very plainly.

Good Building Weather!

Here is a picture of the reinforcements I did on the ribs last night.  The one on the far end is the one I broke twice.  Where that notch for the flap is was a weak spot.  Now the wings have carbon fiber on both sides of these ribs.  It was so rainy out that we decided to stay home all day.

I went out to work on the P-39 and remembered to take a camera with me.  I got started on the flap servo mounts and then decided to take pictures of some planes I want to sell.  I went in, edited the pictures and put them on the club website.

I got both flap's servos installed this afternoon.  It will be a little crowded in this area, the retract unit mounts in the slot, it's air line will run through there and there will also be the flap linkage going out the hole you can just barely see at the bottom of the picture.

After a delicious dinner of steak, hash browns and blueberry cobbler I went out and got one aileron servo mounted.  Then it was back to the house to edit pictures, do my blog and polish off the rest of the cobbler.  That made for a nice end to the day.

Here is a link to the Club website Classified section. Classified Electric Airplanes

Saturday and Sunday

Saturday:
I had noticed the motor home's refrigerator needed cleaning on Friday so I tackled that job first thing today.  Once I figured out how the shelves came out it was a pretty easy job.  I took everything into the shop since the sink is much bigger in there.  Vera came in and mentioned the sun was out if I wanted to fall the trees I was thinking about.  I finished up the refrigerator and then got the first tree ready to fall by hooking a rope about twenty feet up it and running it to a stump over by the woodshed with a cable winch hooked in to pull some tension.  The tree leaned the wrong way so it needed a little help to go the direction I wanted.  After another rain shower, I went out and fell it.  It ended up right where I wanted it.  I did some clean up of the limbs until the battery in the saw ran down, it lasted way longer than I wanted it to!  I also got the left flap on the P-39 hinged today.

Sunday:

I was a little tired today so we skipped church.  I had broken a rib on the P-39 yesterday so I went out and reinforced all of them in the area above the flaps with carbon fiber strips.  The picture is the right flap servo on the piece it will be mounted to.  It took quite a while to get the hatch opening cleaned up and figure out a mounting system for the hatch.  The left one should go a little quicker since I cut out an extra set of parts when I made this one.

The warmest day so far this year!

The mountains were beautiful today!  We got to the field a little before nine and I headed right over to mow at Mrs. Herren's.  By the time I finished Steve and Ken were just about all done mowing the flying field.

We had a pretty good turn out today, lots of flying and visiting in the sunshine.  The weather station across the road had a high of 69.6 today.  I got in thirteen flights today, one with the white glider was twenty two minutes and I only had to run the motor for a minute and thirty three seconds as there were some good thermals.

This is just before we started loading up to head home.  My planes all flew great, one guy who was there sounded like he was going home to order a V-Hawk after seeing mine fly.

On the way home Vera and I stopped at the South Lewis County Park and watched the ducks and geese while eating dinner.

There was a little charge left in the string trimmer so I made a pass in front of the shop and on the other side of the parking area.

Vera was taking flower pictures and found these strawberry blossoms.

I have been working on the P-39 since the last post and I am hinging the flaps now.  I have to have all of the linkage installed before I can sheet the top of the wing.  In last Friday's post I had a picture of the wiring harness that was going to work great.  I suddenly realized that a three servo harness wasn't needed because I was using pneumatic retracts.  I ordered a four servo harness and now I will only have the one plug to connect when putting the plane together.

James and Flowers

I forgot to put this picture in the Easter blog, James came up after the celebration and did some mowing down below.  Vera went down to keep him company and took some pictures.

As Vera was coming back up the driveway she spotted these Johnny-Jump Ups, one of  her favorites.

James came up this morning, I took the chainsaw down and we cleaned up the fallen trees and a bunch of shrubs the snow had knocked down.  Then he mowed and the lawn is looking really nice now, he did a great job.

After James headed back to school I got the camera and took pictures of some of the plants that were blooming.  We have a lot of Bleeding Hearts in several different areas.

The Andromeda really caught my eye and I took several pictures of it.  I think it has more blossoms this year than ever, it must like rain.

Dianne gave us this Flowering Currant years ago, I cut it back last year and it has lots of flowers this year.

I continued my walk around the trails taking pictures of just about every Trillium I saw looking for the perfect one.  This was my favorite of the ones that have not turned color.

This group that are turning color was my other favorite of the 71 pictures we took of flowers today.

Easter

We went to the Easter service at church this morning and it was very nice.  I had taken this picture of the choir for my blog during their first song.  A little later Pastor Pam said someone should take a picture because they looked so nice up there.  Since I already had, I posted it to Facebook right then and Pam had shared it before we got home.

At 2:00 we went down to Cathy's for the annual family Easter celebration.  There was lots of good food.

Lots of visiting went on between cousins who had not seen each other for a while.

There was a group watching the Blazer's play off game.

I thought it was pretty neat that Rielee sat down with Tor and ate.

First they lined the young cousins up for a photo session.

Then the older ones were added for a shot of all the cousins.

Then the young cousins Easter egg hunt started.  They didn't make it easy for them to find some of them.

That is a pretty big basket Harper has.

Ava was having a great time with her new bubble wand.

In this picture Cathy is organizing the adult egg hunt.

The adults are ready to go after the eggs.  They watched the kids hiding them so it was over pretty fast, in fact I think Cathy put a ten minute limit on the hunt.

Inside the eggs were Lego pieces, the teams had to make something out of them and then the kids would judge and determine a winner.

I didn't realize there were three teams so I only got pictures of two.

Here is the winning project, a runway with a plane on it, a control tower, a terminal building and some construction going on.

The egg roll was next, this is the ladies making their first roll.

This is the first roll by the guys.

When we went down to Dan and Robin's driveway for the raw egg toss, I got a picture of three special ladies in my life, Dianne, Michelle and Vera.

Here are the teams lined up for the start of the raw egg toss.

James is trying to make a catch, it hit one finger and ended up on the ground.

Tierney has a lot of egg coming out between her fingers.

It looks to me like Des has her eyes closed and Cale looks pretty intense catching a low throw.

Rielee did great, and was in it to the end.

The winners of the raw egg toss were Erika and Cale!

It was a great day, but being with family is always great!

Finally some Flying weather

We had a field maintenance work party scheduled today, six people showed up so we were done and flying by 10:00.  I went over and mowed Mrs. Herren's lawn while the others worked on the field.  Steve brought donuts for the crew and delivered them to me at Mrs. Herren's, I picked out a maple bar that tasted great!   Friday was Mrs. Herren's birthday and she turned 98, she used to be a teacher and is really interesting to talk to.  She was very happy to get it mowed as she had company coming in the afternoon to stay over the Easter weekend.  We ended up having thirteen club members out there today counting the two new members who joined and flew.  I had a great day getting in fifteen flights before calling it a day.

P-39 and Internet

I finally remembered to take the wiring harness out and try it.  It looks like it will work great.  We had a visit scheduled with the CenturyLink repairman today.  Our internet would dropout at odd times even though the DSL light was still on.  He installed a new modem, so we will see what happens from here.  After he was finished we ran to Kelso on a little errand, it only took about five minutes so we went to lunch at the Grounds for Opportunity and the food was great again.  Boy did it hail and rain while we were there we got a little wet going in but it would have been a long wait in the Blazer before it finished.  From there we stopped at Kaiser for my INR blood test.  I got an email later that it was right in the middle of the range they want.