More videos from this summer

We flew down to Long Beach to attend an AOPA meeting. This was my first time this deep into LA and to Long Beach. I flew IFR and had no issues on the way in. After the meeting, we took a bus to the coast and watched Red Bull's Flugtag, where people push crazy parade style floats off a ledge and into the water. Most are just crazy, but the intent is to see who can fly the farthest. A friend was involved in the world record flight in St. Paul and although I saw the test flights of the glider, I didn't get to see it at the event; so we went to the one in Long Beach instead. You can see a video of the record breaking flight here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Im8VtLQgh4). After the flugtag, we took the bus back to the airport and flew out to Catalina and had their tri-tip buffet. It was pretty good, but it was very expensive and the line was long (and they charge a $25 landing fee). We made it past the mountains south of Palmdale just as it started getting dark and flew up the Owen's valley in the dark. I haven't done much night flying out here due the mountains, but it was a nice flight.

Katie learned her first magic trick!

Katie enjoying her first EAA Airventure. She was a real trooper for the entire time.

As we were waiting out bad weather at Jon and Kandy's house, Katie got some music lessons. I was a little late with the camera though because she was doing a lot better earlier.

Crazy college friends.

With the airplane, we were able to visit some Saia family down in Belleville, IL. I also got very lucky that there's a aircraft mechanic in the family who very conveniently was able to clean up a fouled spark plug for me - thanks Jim.

Looks like I never posted this video on the blog. Here was our camping trip in Payson. Payson has excellent campsites right at the airport, but there isn't much to do there. There is a supposedly a lake not too far that you can walk to. Not a problem, we were there to relax anyways. We also took the dogs and flew over Meteor Crater on the flight home.

Flying movies from our trip this summer

Since we were planning on flying through Colorado on our trip home, we decided to leave Thursday and fly to Grand Junction so that we'd be able to fly through CO on Friday morning and avoid density altitude and turbulence issues through the Rockies. It looked like some weather was rolling into the area so I left work a little early and we got out before it started to rain. It was hot and turbulent, but that was expected. We bumped around for 4.6 hours and made it to Grand Junction. We had an issue at the airport because the FBO didn't want to let us exit through their building, which was the only way out due to TSA policy, because we didn't buy fuel from them. I didn't realize the FBO didn't own the self serve fuel pumps. Luckily the manager came out and was really nice and not only let us through, but gave us a ride into town and let us in the next morning.

After some breakfast, we took off for the "long day". The flight through the Rockies was smooth and easy and the scenery was excellent. We flew past the Great Sand Dunes National Park and landed at La Junta, CO to pick up some fuel. The scenery in La Junta was amazing flat, especially since we just flew the Rockies. From La Junta, we flew to Butler, MO then on to Belleville, IL. We had to dodge some cloud build-up on the last 2 legs, but the weather was pretty good overall.

After visiting family in Belleville, we flew up to Flying Cloud, MN to visit some college friends. We stopped at Rochester along the way for fuel.

I don't have a movie of our flight from Flying Cloud to South St. Paul to visit some more college friends, but it was a very short flight.

After our MN visits, we flew down to Madison, WI to visit my brother Jon and his family.

Due to thunderstorms, we were not able to fly to Kiel, WI to visit Joe, but we were able to spend some time with them later in our trip. We were planning on flying into Airventure again this year, but we were going to fly in formation this time with the Cessnas2Oshkosh group. The staging airport was Juneau, WI so that was our next stop. After eyeing a gap in the weather and seeing it get bigger and bigger, I decided to call flight service one more time (I had been calling them throughout the day) while we were out getting some lunch. The flight to Juneau is very short so I didn't need a big window, but I'm pretty conservative when it comes to flying. The next wave looked like it was all the way back over Dubuque, IA almost 100 miles away. Although the weather looked as if it were improving, the briefer said several things were aligning to produce a large storm including tornadoes. That was the first forecast of tornadoes, but that forecast was enough for us to head back home for the day. I decided to call Madison and see if they were able to put my airplane into a hanger. Just as the FBO returned my call saying they got it in the hanger, the tornado sirens started going off. There was something like 7 or 9 touchdowns within the county. The next day, we made our flight uneventfully into Juneau on an IFR flight plan through some minor clouds.

I don't have a video of my flight from Juneau to Waukesha, WI, but that was also in light IMC.

Mark and Carley wanted to go flying and take the kids, so I took them up in turns and we were able to find their house as well as a corn maze.

This was my first real flight in IMC. We entered the clouds around 1200 feet and I was IMC the until about 800 feet on approach.

I was able to take Joe and Amber up for a flight, we lucked out with some really smooth flying. We flew around Woodland Dunes for a bit, then headed over to Kiel and found their house.

All trips have to come to an end at some point, so we were on our way back home. We had to dodge some pretty big storms on the way and 1 of the legs ended up being 4.6 hours. I've got over 6 hours of fuel capacity so that wasn't an issue, but that's a long time flying without stopping. We had planned at stopping near Salt Lake City for the night, but stopped short and landed at Evanston, WY due to thunderstorms. We lucked out coming into Evanston because thunderstorms were popping up in the area, but there none between us and the airport, although one wasn't very far to the north. You can see some lightening in the movie if you watch closely.

After 42.7 hours of flying over 22 days, we finally made it home.

N951CC goes down for annual and upgrade

There's been no updates with flights for awhile since my airplane has been down for maintenance for almost 2 and a half months with no near end in sight. The engine is still holding up and passed annual although it still has signs that an overhaul is coming in the next few years. That is OK since the engine is quite a bit past its expected life and I have anticipated an overhaul since I bought the airplane almost 3 years ago. We found 2 items that needed to be addressed during the annual, a fuel leak and an exhaust leak. The fuel leak has been addressed, but the exhaust has been more challenging. Hopefully we can have that all fixed up soon.

In addition the the typical annual, I'm doing some upgrades which has caused it to be down for so long. I've replaced all the switches, removed the ADF including the top and bottom antennas, receiver, indicator, and associated wiring. I also removed a lot of dead wires along the way. I've installed wiring harnesses for a UBG-16 engine monitor that I won this year at the EAA and a FP-5L fuel flow gauge. I also installed a mux box to download the monitor information as well as RPM, fuel flow, maniforld pressure, and outside air sensor accessories. I'm also going to hard wire my garmin 296 into the system so it won't use the cigarette lighter anymore and will provide GPS data to the mux for download and to the FP-5L for fuel economy calculations. To install all of this stuff, I had to add a new fuse panel where the ADF receiver used to be. I also disconnected some old headphone jacks that weren't connected to the radios anymore although the intercom was connected through them so the intercom was reconnected to the proper jacks. I installed a comm antenna splitter where the old headphone jacks were so I can use my aircraft comm antenna with my handheld radio for better signal. I also replaced the primer o-rings and replaced the co-pilot vent. I also found a used electric backup vacuum system online. I'm installing that between the back of my luggage compartment and my air conditioning system and running a hose up to tee into my existing vac system. Separately I bought a low vacuum warning light that tees into the vac gauge line and turns a light on when the suction drops below 3.5 psi.

That's all I can think of for now, I'm sure I missed some things. It's been slow going because my A&P has been allowing me to help with the work, but I can't get out to the airport during the week so I'm only out there working on the weekends. I'm really lucky to have a mechanic that works 7 days a week.

I wish I had taken some "progress" pictures, but I didn't; I even have a camera out at the airport...

You can tell your airplane has been down for too long when it's 100+ when you start and you need a swamp cooler and now it's in the mid 30s and I need a heater...