Church

Vera did a reading at church today about one of the songs the choir sung.  We spent the rest of the day at home, I watched football and played on the computer.

Cora and Indoor flying

On the way home Friday Jackie, Chris and Cora stopped by for a visit and I took this family picture for them.

Vera and Cora got along great.

I had to coax Cora over to me with M&M's and we had a good time sharing.

Later, I saw Parker out pulling stumps and stopped to watch for a while.

When we went to Debbie and Josh's Thursday for Thanksgiving I thought it looked like the excavator was stuck.  When I talked to Parker today I found out it was stuck in the spot that looks like a pond now.

This afternoon we went to Centralia, delivered a couple of things to Marie, had dinner at Applebee's and then went to indoor flying at the Centralia Middle School.  It had been a year since the last time we flew there and I had a great time.  More people showed up after this picture and we ended up with seven people flying.

Thanksgiving

 

Debbie and Josh volunteered to host Thanksgiving for everyone this year.  We had a great time with lots of good food.

Jordon looked so cute in his bib.

Cora is walking great now and was having a good time motoring around and handled the step down into the living room with no problem.

She was in the kitchen trying to help out but got ran off most of the time.

Our group picture for Thanksgiving, the rest of the guys were watching football.

My grandson James holding my great grandson Jordon.  I just realized all my grandson's first names start with J.

James and I, we have had lots of pictures like this taken through the years.

Michelle taking a picture of Mik holding Jordon.

This is my favorite girl holding Jordon.

Trying to catch up!

On November 20th my new vest showed up.  I am looking forward to the next flying session since it is electrically heated.  It has two panels in the front, one in the middle of the back and the collar has one that goes around the neck.

When I quit Monday night I had the bottom sheeting on the Skylane fuselage.

On Tuesday November 21 I got the wing hold down blocks and servo mounts installed.

Football and Fuselage

My goal for the Skylane today was to get the fuselage halves joined while watching some football.  This picture was taken as I tested the fit of the formers but before any glue was applied.  I ended up watching three games today, one while I caught up on my blog, one while I worked on the fuselage and Sunday Night Football.

This is how it looked when I quit tonight, all the joints are glued, the tail is still clamped because I used carpenters glue for it and I will let it dry overnight before removing the clamp.  We had a couple of cute visits from Ava and Harper today, they are so much fun to talk to!

A dry day for flying

Vera took this picture of Mt Rainier shortly after we got to the field this morning.  There is a lot more snow in the foothills today.

Vera is all bundled up enjoying her Kindle while I fly.  I had a great day and ended up flying six different planes.  Seven other members showed up to fly also.  One guy took off with the ailerons reversed which made for a pretty wild flight until the crash.  After we got home I made a trip over to Dianne's to see how she was getting along babysitting Jordon.  I got to give him a bottle while I was there.

Skylane Cabin

The cabin area in kits with windows is usually the weak spot so I added some carbon fiber strips to strengthen it.

This is after coating everything with epoxy, I pinned the doublers in place and then weighted them while the epoxy cured.  I also have finished sheeting the wing and making new ailerons because I didn't like the way the ones in the kit turned out.

The wing is joined

Monday I worked on the Skylane until James stopped by, we had been talking for just a couple of minutes when the power blinked and then went out.  We went to the house to see how Vera was doing and then messed around on our phones until the power came back on.  It was off for forty minutes, after it came back on we made dinner and watched the pregame show before Monday Night Football.  James left about an hour into the game and I went back to the Skylane for a while before watching the rest of the game on the DVR so I could skip the commercials.

I had a job on the motor home I wanted to get done today, one set of wires for the battery indicator ran through the floor and I wanted to put strain reliefs in.  After measuring to see what I needed I headed to town.  It turned into quite a trip, first I got gas, then a haircut, a hot chocolate at the Vault, the mail, the parts I needed at Bredfields and finally a couple of things at Sentry.  Putting the strain relief in went great and I was done quicker than I had figured.  Vera took this picture of the blueberry bush, not many leaves left but it looks nice and colorful.

The wind has spread maple leaves and cedar boughs everywhere.  We should have taken a picture of the back deck since it was really covered.

I made new ailerons for the Skylane today, I wasn't happy with the way the built up ones were turning out so I made up solid balsa ones.  I also got the wing halves joined, tomorrow I can finish sheeting the left wing.

Veterans Program

We went to church today  and they had a nice Veterans display set up.  Church members could bring pictures of their family members who have served or are serving and put them on the tables in front of the pews.  The choir sang a medley of the different United States services songs that was really nice.

I worked on the Skylane and watched football most of the day.  James stopped by this evening and visited, always fun having him around.

A couple of quick test flights.

The weather forecast for the next week had rain every day with today being the only day with any dry periods.  I wanted to try the Mustang after finding out the balance was OK.  I also had made some changes to the little glider from the swap meet.  They both flew great!  We got there at just the right time to help one of the new flyers, he was test flying a new plane, it was way out of trim and about to crash.  I took over and was able to land it safely, it needed a bunch of down trim.  Later after he had made adjustments I test flew it for him and got it pretty well trimmed.

Our friends Leonard and Audrey came down, they said it was raining hard from Olympia to Chehalis. We were all ready to leave after a couple of flights because it was cold with the 20 MPH wind blowing.  We kept hearing this funny noise then it would go away.  It turned out the be the wind spinning the prop on the Mustang when the wind blew hard.

We stopped at Betty's, got a couple of deluxe burgers and went down to the South Lewis County Park to eat.  The lake was higher than I have ever seen it and there was very little wildlife.  Finally these two ducks swam up where I could get a picture of them.

I got the Skylane's wing sheeted today, now I need to clean off the bench so I can start on the left wing.

I have been going to count my planes for a long time.  This is part of the front room of my shop. I got a start on a list but it is not done yet.  I used to have a data base on the computer but I let it get out of date.

Friday Coffee and the Skylane build

I went down to Coffee with the Pastor this morning but because the Vault was closed today while they installed new LED lighting we met at Lacey Rae's for breakfast.  Only four of us showed up which made the visiting nice.

I did quite a bit of work on the Skylane wing today.  Instead of the aileron linkage arrangement I decided to put servos out in the wing to operate the ailerons directly.  I made up a frame to mount the servo tray on out of spruce.

This is what I had done when I quit tonight.  I had to make up new dihedral braces, the plans said if you were an experienced flyer the dihedral could be lowered from six inches to two inches.  I made them up, glued them, put clamps on and left it to dry overnight.

Ride, Cora and Deer

I worked on the Skylane for a while this morning and then we went for a ride.  Vera suggested going down Ocean Beach Hwy so we went over Delameter Rd and headed down the river.  We were almost to County Line Park before we found this tug and barge to take a picture of.

It was so overcast that the pictures turned out almost black and white.  From there we went to Freddy's just for the Halibut and had lunch.  Vera had a smoked salmon BLT and it was delicious.

Jackie has shared some pictures with us while texting on the phone.  In the first one she is playing with a tablet.  She is trying to put on a another pair of pants in the second picture and she had just figured out how to turn the light on by her bed in the third picture.  She is getting so darn cute!

I brought the game camera in yesterday since there were no more apples left on the tree.  The camera was out there for about a month and it had taken 851 pictures.  I got the editing done today and this doe and two fawns were in lots of pictures.

In this infrared picture the doe is up on the deck by the pond eating leaves off that apple tree.

This is one of the few pictures of a buck in the day light I got.

Most of the pictures of the bucks were at night.  I think there was a total of ten different deer that ate apples during the month.

Of course I ended up in some of the pictures spraying or mowing.

I made pretty good headway on the Skylane wing today before James came up and we watched the Seahawks on Thursday Night Football.

Starting on the Winter Build Challange

I got the Skylane 62 kit out today and inventoried the parts.  I found one wing rib missing, there are two of each rib so I used the one that was there as a pattern and made a new one.  Before I quit for the evening I had the wing spars made up and left them to dry overnight.

Cool weather Flying

Saturday we went to the swap meet at the Olympic Flight Museum in Olympia.  I was only looking for some Spring Air retracts when I ran across a glider for thirty dollars.  I took it up to the table Vera was sitting at and had her watch it while I shopped some more.  I finally found the retracts for ten dollars and let her guard them also.  By the time we left I found an Electra Streak kit that was in good shape, an Eagle Tree flight stabilizer and a watt meter.   We stopped at Costco for a few ($404) things and then made a stop at Walmart for Marie's supplies.   Our timing was good at Marie's as she was just coming down the hall to her room.  We had a short visit after packing in her supplies and headed to Applebee's for a late lunch or early dinner.

It was 28 degrees this morning when I got up, we dressed warm and went flying at Toledo.  I stopped to check on Mrs. Herren's lawn and to let her know what we had been doing.  I had a nice little visit with her and changed the filter on her heat pump before I left.  The picture is the three planes I planned on test flying today.  The jet was one of the club member's planes that he couldn't figure out.  I got everything installed and set up then gave it a test flight this morning.  It flew great, he stopped by later and took it home with him in his log truck.  I didn't fly the Mustang because it needed some weight in the nose and I didn't feel like pulling the prop off.  The little glider I got at the swap meet flies great, straight up during the climb as far as I wanted to go.  Vera really enjoyed the new furnace in the motor home today, it was nice to have a reliable one again.