This is Nice!

I saw this body for my Trex 500 on sale for $59.95 during the year end sales and it showed up today.  I am impressed, it is really nice and very little needs to be done to mount it to the helicopter.  We walked this morning and I did a little work on the Dirty Birdy before heading to Longview for the model club meeting this evening.  I stopped by Debbie's with the guarantee for Josh's Christmas present and had a nice visit with her.  Then I stopped by Mik, Michelle and James' to drop off a check.  I got to spend about  20 minutes and had a great time getting caught up with them.  I went early to the meeting and had their Swiss steak dinner, not bad, but Vera's cooking is better.  The meeting was only about 30 minutes, so I was home by eight and settled into my chair for the rest of the evening.

Late Presents

We had gotten Ava and Harper Barbie dolls for Christmas, but decided to wait until they were back up here after Christmas vacation to give them to the girls.  It sure did not take long to unwrap them.  Not knowing anything about Barbies, I had just looked for clothes in their favorite colors.  It turned out I got the high end ones with articulated joints and real eye lashes, the eye lashes really impressed them!

They played with the dolls a long time, then changed into their fancy outfits and put on a show for us.  It was really funny when they were getting set up, they wanted their Boom Box moved into the living room, when Steve brought it in, Ava told him "there is a plugger there" and pointed behind the entertainment center where there was an outlet.  They each danced for us, then it was lunch time, it was all great fun to watch.

A laid back day!

Vera went to church this morning and I went to the shop, turned on the game and sanded on the Dirty Birdy wing while watching it.  I got the fairing on the leading edge/fuselage joint glued in this afternoon, sanded it to shape and filled the cracks.  After the second game was over, I went out, sanded the filler down and took this picture.  The center section will be ready for fiberglass with a little more filler and sanding.  There is not much planned for tomorrow, so maybe I will get that done.

A visit from great grandson John Patrik

John Patrik's grandma Tami brought him down for a weekend visit, they came up today and we got to play with him.

He is really a friendly little guy, it was just a few minutes until he was relaxed and playing with us.  He loves the little airplane car Dianne sent up for his birthday and rode it all over the living room.

Here he is playing with Grandma Bev.

He is really good about sharing and putting things back.  I saw him pick up several things, play with them and then put them back where they were.  After almost 75 years, I can not do that!

He is a button pusher, I unplugged the phone cord so he couldn't call out, but he had a great time watching things change on the screen.  Once when he was playing with the digital picture frame, his grandma Tami unplugged it, right away, he reached over and handed the cord to her so she could plug it back in.

Vera had showed him how to slide the numbers on that red and white puzzle when he first picked it up.  Every time he played with it after that, he would make her come over to help.

JP discovered he could see his hand move through the glass table top, then he was looking down and wiggling his feet underneath while looking from above.

Finally after four hours, he started to fade and snuggled on Grandma Tami's lap.  Since it was way past his nap time, they left a little later.

Planting Time

Boy did I sleep good last night!  I unloaded a few things out of the motor home, worked on the Sikorsky a little and then planted a bunch of trees Vera had removed from the flower beds.  We put a couple where a tree had blown over last winter and wandered around planting the others where ever we could find room.

Mik brought up the old instrument panel off the Maxima that James will be driving.  The speedometer had quit working, he got a replacement and it does not work either.  I took this picture of the back so I could get everything back in the right spot as I reassembled it.

I took it all a part, re-soldered some connections, cleaned the circuit board, coated it with CorrosionX, cleaned all the connections and put it back together.  Mik will have to try it in the car to see if I did any good.

We found out from Bev that John Patrik was coming to visit tomorrow, so Vera made a batch of peanut butter cookies to serve.  There was a couple that got broken that I got and they are tasty!

First Walk of 2014

Our new year is off to a good start, we got up this morning and did our first walk of 2014.  The group is a little larger, Joanne is back, and Pam's husband Don joined us.  It was a nice morning, not too cold and no wind, in fact, I had unzipped my coat before we finished.  Our project for today was taking down the Christmas lights and decorations.  It went great and we were all done in a couple of hours.  I made one minor repair on the Corsair, two set screws were not tightened all the way, so I snugged them up.  I got the printed copy of last year's blogs ordered, it is always fun to look back at them, this is the fifth year I have had printed.  This evening, I settled into my chair and finished off the apple dessert Vera had made for Christmas, then I got caught up on some of my magazines that came this month.

New Years Flying

 

We headed to the LCRC field at 8 this morning, when we got there, Dick, the club president was already there and had a couple of flights in.  I did my first flight of 2014 with the little Spitfire, Dick took this picture of me flying and several of the Corsair, Thank You Dick!

Here I am packing the Corsair out for it's first flight, it flew great and lands very nicely.  We had 19 people out today and lots of flying went on.  I decided there was no way I could fly all the planes I had brought (24), so I ended up flying eleven of them and flew a couple twice, so I got in 13 flights on my planes.  I test flew a couple of planes, so my total for the day was 16.  Ken and May brought warm cinnamon rolls that were really a hit.  It was a nice day, the sun came out about 9 and it got up to 55, before the clouds rolled in at 3, the temperature dropped 6 degrees in about 30 minutes and we all left.

The views were great today!