Now the wait really begins

About a week ago I opened the website for the overhaul shop that has my engine and... there was no website. I was presented with a simple dialog asking for a username and password. Normally, when I see something like this, it's usually caused by something getting messed up in the website configuration. Maybe they're using software such as Wordpress, attempted to install an update, and it got screwed up somehow.

A few days later, I checked again and the same thing occurred. I became a bit concerned; another possibility is that they suddenly went out of business, in which case I needed to find out quick so I could get my engine back and make other arrangements. So I called them up to see what was going on.

It turns out all is well. From what I could gather, after over thirty years in business, they've decided to transition the business to a parts supply shop. They'll finish up the work they already have scheduled, of course. As part of this, they decided to rebrand, and took down the website. They do have my engine and, at the time I called, it was in disassembly. After that, it was scheduled for non-destructive testing after which they'll figure out what all it needs. Unfortunately, the time estimate was six to eight weeks, mainly due to parts availability. Fortunately, the person I spoke to noted that my new cylinders were already there so at least we don't have to wait on those.

The person I spoke to suggested I give it about four weeks or so, then call back for a status up date. Hopefully all will go smoothly and they'll be able to finish it sooner rather than later. It would be nice if I could get back in the air before the summer is completely over.

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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

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