A Man and His Airplane

The weather was nice and clear today, although it was rather cold. But it wasn't below freezing so I took the plane up for about an hour and a half this afternoon. There are times when I'm not sure that I really want to go flying. But something I've noticed is that I've never put my plane away after a flight and thought to myself, "I wish I hadn't gone flying today." There are times when I've decided not to go, either because I'm not feeling well or because I'm not sure the weather conditions will remain VFR, but whenever I have  gone, I've always, always, been glad I did it. Before my last flight a couple weeks ago, I put a quart of oil in because it was down to about 6.25 quarts as measured on the dipstick. I flew for two hours that day. Today, when I checked the oil during my preflight, it read 7 quarts. So I lost about a quarter quart of oil in two hours. And based on the oil consumption rate I'd been seeing recently, it's very ...

I've put about ten hours on the plane since I got it back from the shop last December. The weather has been generally poor so flying regularly hasn't been possible. For now, I'm focusing on putting time on the engine to continue breaking it in and get to the first oil change. Oil consumption has already dropped to normal, or near normal levels so it looks like break-in is going well so far. And that's pretty much it for now. I am looking forward to more regular VFR conditions as we move into spring and summer. I'm also looking forward to flying to other places for fly-ins and other get-togethers since I missed most of them last year.