Skip to main content

The family that flies together...

The weather wasn't great today, but it was nice enough to go for a local flight, and my wife went with me for the first time since 2004, shortly after I got my private pilot license. It was a bit windy, but there was little crosswind so we had no problem taking off from Harvey's relatively short runway. As we climbed, it became rather bumpy, with the wind changing direction several times. It was a bit better when we got to 3000' MSL, but still not very smooth.

I kept the flight short. I headed southeast for a ways, then turned north, then came around the north side of the airport to the west, and finally headed back in to land on runway 15. Despite it being a bit windy and gusty, I made a landing that I'm very proud of, touching down smoothly and slowing in plenty of time to exit at the taxiway, instead of having to go to the end of the runway. Overall, Ariel performed beautifully. I love that plane more every time I fly it.

The flight was only about 25 minutes, but I was really glad that I was finally able to take my wife with me. She enjoyed it, but she wasn't a fan of the turbulence so I won't take her with me again until the wind is calmer.

On a negative note, it appears my landing light bulb has burned out. So that's another item to add to the list of things to fix. I'll call up the shop and let them know. I'd like to upgrade to an LED bulb, but I'm not sure what that entails. I don't know if I can get a drop-in replacement, or if it requires some additional electrical hardware to be installed.

Comments

  1. GaryMarch 22, 2021 at 5:10 AM

    I replaced my front landing light with a Handexn, PAR36 Aviation Grade LED Aircraft Landing Light. https://www.handxen.com/product-page/par36-landing-light-with-screw-terminal

    Best price and it does a very good job.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thwarted

The plane is done being fixed again. Well, for the most part, but I'll get to that. The vacuum pump had indeed failed, so they replaced it. They also replaced the starboard fuel sump drain valve. Interestingly, I received an email yesterday from the shop with an invoice attached. It was for a credit to my account, which they gave me because they drained the fuel from the right tank. The invoice notes that 16 gallons were removed. The tank's capacity is almost 30 gallons, and I had filled it almost full on Sunday before my flight. So either they didn't credit me for all of the fuel in the tank, or it had continued to leak and had lost about 12 or so gallons over the course of a few days. I don't know which, but I'm not going to worry too much about it. I went out today to put some Camguard in the oil, run the engine, and possibly even go for a flight if the weather was nice enough. The grass runway and temporary taxiway are open so limited flight operations can proce
2 comments
Read more

My engine is so pretty

I went out to the shop today to take a few pictures of my engine and plane before the engine is remounted. The baffling and some other stuff has already been attached to the engine. The engine mount is not back yet. Since the nose gear is attached to the engine mount, the plane is currently sitting on the main gear, and a couple of supports just behind the firewall, and under the tail. Here are a few of the photos I took. The engine looks lovely, to me at any rate, especially since I know those are new cylinders.
2 comments
Read more

Flying when you must

The previous post was titled "Flying when you can." Today the weather was so nice that there was no question about whether or not I'd go up. Today is Saturday, and if you have weather this nice on the weekend, at this time of year, you can't not go flying if it's at all possible. I'll probably go tomorrow, too. I hope so. With the work that was done during and after the annual inspection, my plane is finally fully functional. As far as I know, everything on it works. The intercom is even behaving itself, with a distinct lack of loud static during the last couple of flights. The shop didn't say if they did anything specific to fix it but either they did when I last asked them to take a look at it, or it's somehow sorted itself out. Hopefully it will work just fine, at least until I decide to replace the audio panel with one that has the intercom built in. As noted above, the weather today was absolutely gorgeous. I flew north out of Harvey Field up past
1 comment
Read more