Knowing when to stay on the ground

This past Friday, the weather was nice enough to go flying. As my company has been giving us Friday afternoons off, I could have gone. However, I was feeling somewhat tired, and I examine what my motivation would have been had I gone.

One of the aspects of owning and maintaining an airplane of that vintage is that you want to run the engine on a fairly regular basis. If you let it sit too long, moisture can make its way into the cylinders and cause some corrosion. Over the long term, it reduces the lifetime of the cylinders, and even the entire engine. So, something I've tried to do is fly the plane every couple of weeks or so.

Friday, I realized that my main motivation was the obligation I felt to run the plane as often as I could. But I determined that it wasn't really enough of a reason to go absent any others. So I decided to stay home. I figured I'd fly it again in the next couple of weeks and that would be plenty soon enough.

Yesterday, my wife became ill. We don't know with what, but I suspect it's a viral infection of some kind. This morning, I started feeling under the weather as well. Unlike her, I'm not running a fever, but I still feel pretty marginal. Of course, the first thing you think of in a situation like this is, "Is this a case of the current human malware?" It's possible, though the symptoms aren't really consistent. Neither of us has experienced any respiratory problems or headache for example. Her fever responds to regular ibuprofen as well. So, while it's possible, it's also very possible that it's something else.

If symptoms persist for another day or so, we'll head into the clinic to get examined and, if warranted, tested for the human malware. We've both had our first vaccination shots, but that won't prevent infection. It will probably attenuate the severity and duration of the symptoms, however, should that be what this is. I'm hoping it's not, of course. If it is, I'll have to wait a longer time before flying again.

Update: I didn't have a fever when I published the original post two hours ago, but I have one now. Naproxen to the rescue.

Comments

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.

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...

Night flying

One of the things I've wanted to do since I got current is to go up at night with an instructor for a refresher flight. While I can't do that in my airplane, I can still do it on one of the flight school's planes so I made a reservation for this evening to spend some time with an instructor in a 172. While the weather looked a bit iffy, it was good enough to go flying. I met my instructor at the appointed time, 7:00pm local time. The first thing we did was go out and perform the preflight inspection on the plane while there was sufficient daylight. After that, we spent about half an hour or so in his office going over the things to be aware of when flying at night. Once that was done, we walked out to the plane, got in, started it up, and headed out. We headed north for a while as we discussed the unique aspects of piloting and navigating at night. For example, using the horizon as an attitude reference, and recognizing the presence of poor weather conditions. The weather i...

A Man and His Airplane

Search This Blog