Previous: Sun N Fun

04/14/2006 - Maintenance, flying

Good Friday seemed to be a good day for flying, so I went out to the airport. I did a little maintenance, finished up the oil change I started a few days earlier, and checked the air pressure on the mains. I had bought an oil filter torque wrench from Avery because the cheap oil filter wrench I got from Wal Mart was not working. This one worked great the first time.

I also installed the terrain feature in my Grand Rapids EFIS. All I really had to do was install some flash memory to hold the terrain database. I went ahead and installed a 256mb Compact Flash card in anticipation of any future upgrades.

Not that terrain is going to be all that useful in the Dallas area, but someday I may fly someplace with some hills, so I went ahead and did it. Besides, it was a free upgrade. All I had to do was supply the memory card.

Next I went flying with Todd as he finished off his 40 flight test hours. We went to eat lunch at Sulphur springs.

4/15/06 - EAA 1246 Fish Fry

Today was our annual fish fry. For the first time I was able to have a plane on display at the event. It was great fun and I spoke to several readers of the website whom I had either emailed or had just shown up.

Thanks to Smitty for taking this picture.

Afterwards Todd and I flew up to Sherman for some avgas.

4/19/06 - Paint Touchup

Today I had to take the plane over to Northwest Regional so Grady could do some final touch-up on the paint. I was in a hurry to get to Sun N Fun and didn't have time to let him properly finish the plane, so today was the day that I needed to drop the plane off.

Jonny was my copilot on this mission and he had fun flying and taking pictures.

4/21/06 - 4/30/06 - Rides

It's funny to see the pictures that you get when you give an 11 year old a camera during a flight. It's an interesting perspective. Here are a few of these.

Below is a picture of my CH Products stick grip. I don't think I've taken a picture of it, but here it is.

Here's my 17-year-old getting ready for his first flight. We did the usual thing of flying over our house and over his school. He took pictures as well.

I also took my wife for a ride. She was a bit apprehensive and didn't enjoy the turbulence. One thing I didn't realize but now I can understand is how the warning lights affected her. Usually on short final I am used to the GPS and the EFIS giving me terrain and obstacle alerts. These were unnerving to my wife, who took notice of the flashing lights but didn't know what they meant. I guess I better add that to my preflight briefing.

5/3/06 - Night Flight

One of the last things I needed to do to proclaim the plane fully operational was to test the lights at night. I had tested these on the ground, but had not yet flown at night. Tonight was a nice evening and I decided to go out and test things out.

My position, strobe, and landing lights are all located in the wingtips (and the tip of the rudder.) See the lights page here. I had questions about how visible these things would be, and how well the landing lights would light the runway.

I did a few adjustments to the landing lights before flying, and then I spent a little while making sure the brightness of the displays were low enough for flying.

Long story short, the lights are great. I was able to see the runway on landing and the position lights can be seen, at least from the tower. The strobes are bright as well. Overall, I'm really happy with the system.

One thing I'm going to change is the switch for the landing lights. I had initially installed a wig-wag circuit, and the switch is a three position deal with the center being off. The wig-wag circuit is disconnected because the relay has never worked, so I am planning to change the switch to a simple on/off switch. I'll do this sometime when I'm bored.

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