A Man and His Airplane

At least, it's hard for this region of the country. I like to say that predicting the weather for the Puget Sound region is far more an art than it is a science. Early last week, the weather forecast was for pretty much crappy weather for the foreseeable future. However, because of the chaotic nature of the atmosphere around here, especially at this time of year, the forecast is always subject to change. As it turns out, the weather was actually nice enough last Friday afternoon (December 17) that I was able to go up for about an hour and a half. One of the reasons I went up was because I had filled the tanks after the previous flight, and I wanted to burn off some fuel in case I was able to take my father flying while we visiting from Arizona. As I'm sure I've mentioned, the weight and balance of my plane is such that I'd be over maximum weight if I had a passenger in the front seat, the required ballast in the baggage compartment to stay within the forward CG limit, a...

 The weather here has been pretty crappy for some time. It has occasionally been nice enough to fly, and I have flown a couple times in the last couple of months, but not nearly as often as I would like. It's just the reality of living in the Pacific Northwet with it's particular climate. My father is flying up today from Arizona and heading back in January. He'll be staying elsewhere this time, but the plan, the hope, is that I'll be able to take him flying at least once while he's up here. Either he'll come down and meet me at Harvey Field, or I'll fly to an airport nearer to where he's staying and pick him up (probably either Arlington or Skagit Regional). Fingers crossed that we have some of that lovely cold, crisp, dry weather that makes for good performance.

The weather has truly turned here in the Pacific Northwet. Summer is gone, and autumn is fully upon us. It has been rather rainy and windy the past several days, so no flying, right? Well this afternoon, it was actually relatively nice out. It wasn't what the forecast a day or so back said it would be. It was nice enough to go flying, as long as you didn't fly too high, and I did hear an occasional aircraft in the vicinity. But I'm not retired, and so I was working today. I'm working from home, so I *could* have taken the afternoon off and gone up for an hour or so, but I had tasks to do so I chose to be responsible and keep working. The forecast for the next week or so is rain, rain, rain, at least through next Wednesday. Since this weekend will mark two weeks since I last flew, I will probably go out to the airport and at least run the engine for a while to keep it happy. But there's no telling when the weather will provide the next opportunity to get in the air.....

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...

A couple of days ago, the forecast for today was for very cloudy weather and probably some rain. This morning, the weather was considerably better than that. It was overcast, but at four or five thousand feet, and the METAR and TAF at Paine Field were VFR. So I decided to head out and take Ariel up for at least a quick flight. This is the first time I've gone up since the runway resurfacing project was finished last week. The new runway is very nice. There's nothing like fresh, smooth tarmac under your wheels. The runway is also six feet wider than it was, which doesn't sound like a lot but it makes a difference. Runway 33 was in use at the time, so after I took off I did the normal noise abatement procedure and turned to a heading of 290 when safe to do so. I continued to climb, then turned northward to continue my departure. I quickly realized that I was headed straight into a layer of clouds that were at about 900 feet. I turned away, headed south for a bit while continu...

I went out to the airport today to run the engine. It's been two weeks since the last time I ran it, which is also the last time I went flying, and I wanted to run it again this weekend if possible. With the Camguard in the oil, I could probably get by without running it for three or even four weeks, but it certainly never hurts to run it more frequently. The runway resurfacing project is not yet done, so if I'd wanted to go flying I would still have had to use the grass runway. As it has been raining the past few days, I wasn't sure how soft the grass surface would be, so my plan was simply to run the engine until it was warm, and also to put fuel in the tanks. If the plane is going to sit for any length of time, it is better to have full tanks, as there is less air in the tanks from which water could condense. Since I've owned this plane, I've yet to see any water when I've sumped the tanks, but it's still definitely possible that someday there will be. Wh...

Today I got the results from the latest oil sample I sent in to Blackstone Labs for analysis. The news is good. The technician wrote the following in the results document: It may not seem obvious at face value, but iron has improved significantly. Iron's wear rate (how much iron the engine made per hour) is significantly closer to what universal averages show as typical. If iron is stable from here, or happens to improve a bit more, this engine will be in good shape. Other metals are stable and at low levels to boot, so this engine's wear profile doesn't leave much to be desired at 1,583.36 hours SMOH. No contamination found, and the air and oil filters are working well. This indicates that the metal found in the oil filter during the annual inspection was from a single, short-term event. It could have been a wear event or possibly, as was suggested by the mechanic, a bit of rusted metal that came off a surface somewhere. Either way, this is a very good result and I feel...