Showing posts with label Jayson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jayson. Show all posts
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Getting ready for the baby
Michelle and I have made some pretty good progress getting ready for the baby. Michelle has been painting the habitat murals, and I have been installing the diaper sprayer. Tomorrow Michelle will start adding the animals that family has drawn for us to add to the mural and I will start working on the sky. The sky will have glow-in-the-dark paint that will replicate the alignment of the stars of her due date (since we want to have it done BEFORE she's born and won't actually know the real birthdate). Here are some pictures of our progress.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
3D Ultrasound
Michelle and I decided to get a 3D ultrasound done because it seems very interesting. Our friends just had one done for their twins and it was really neat. The other lady in our class also had one done for their first child and shared it with us during the class. Michelle looked into them and there are a few in our area (within 3 hours driving time). She decided on Glendale since they have the best deal. This is not a medically significant ultrasound and it seems more obvious when they offer xmas deals! I don't remember real medical procedures having holiday specials... In fact, our insurance will not cover the exam since it is optional and not medically significant, but the "deal" is for only $100 so we decided to do it and we'll pay out of pocket. Depending on when we get home tomorrow night, I'll either post the video and pictures tomorrow or xmas day.
On the way down there, we also plan on doing to shopping since we don't get many opportunities. We are planning on stopping by Linens N Things to use our gift card before they go out of business. We also will stop by some furniture stores to look for rocker/recliners for Michelle. The trip also gives us an opportunity to eat at a good (normal for those who aren't deprived) restaurant. We've never eaten at a Claim Jumpers and we now have one in Palmdale so we might try that, but they also have Famous Daves and since we won't be in Brookfield this xmas I will be missing my opportunity there. Unfortunately, the weather and recliner will mean we will have to drive instead of fly, and we'll have to leave the dogs outside in the cold all day, but we're excited to see our little girl's face!
On the way down there, we also plan on doing to shopping since we don't get many opportunities. We are planning on stopping by Linens N Things to use our gift card before they go out of business. We also will stop by some furniture stores to look for rocker/recliners for Michelle. The trip also gives us an opportunity to eat at a good (normal for those who aren't deprived) restaurant. We've never eaten at a Claim Jumpers and we now have one in Palmdale so we might try that, but they also have Famous Daves and since we won't be in Brookfield this xmas I will be missing my opportunity there. Unfortunately, the weather and recliner will mean we will have to drive instead of fly, and we'll have to leave the dogs outside in the cold all day, but we're excited to see our little girl's face!
Sunday, December 21, 2008
N951CC flight to Mojave, December 20th 2008
Since we didn't get to fly to Tehachapi last week for the anniversary of our engagement, we decided to try again. This time instead of the winter storm preventing us from getting there, there were some clouds in the valley, but worse there were notices to airmen for ice and 6 inches of snow on the airport. We decided to Rosemond instead, we went there a while ago and they had a great buffet.
Rosemond doesn't have any wind information so I got my wind information from the nearby Mojave airport light out of the east (070@4). Since Rosemond prefers runway 25 in light winds to avoid overflying the nearby houses, I decided to land runway 25 (with the wind). After turning to final I noticed that even though my airspeed was right at my normal approach speed I was significantly faster over the ground than expected. I was able to compensate, but it wasn't the prettiest landing, I should probably intentially practice these. They are not standard landings and are rarely done, but sometimes a downwind landing is safer due to terrain (such as Kernville).
Unfortunately the restaurant wasn't open, they changed their hours to open at 4pm instead of 11am except for Sundays. Great now the last two restaurants we've gone to have been closed, next time I should check! We decided to fly back to Mojave since we've been there more recently and it's a very short flight on the way home. Mojave was open, but they were extremely slow since Scaled composites (Burt Rutan's company) had brought a large party in (we didn't see Burt or Dick). There was only 1 waitress and she was very overworked. The food was excellent as usually and I filled up with cheap gas before we took back off for home.
On the way home, I decided to try to find Kelso valley. Our neighbor lent me a book about flying around here in the olden days. It's a very intersting book to read. A woman wrote the book about her and flying adventures with her husband who flew into all sorts of crazy places; mostly dried lakes and old dirt roads. One of the locations they flew into was Kelso valley and I think I knew where it was. I looked on Google Earth and I think I could see a desert scar from a runway decades ago.
The air was extremely smooth so we flew low over the mountains and I believe I found the right valley. It was easily wide enough to descend down into and land. There were a few homesteads scattered around, but I didn't see the runway. I think it was buried in the snow. After flying over this valley, we cut back over to the Owen's valley and flew back to Inyokern.
Rosemond doesn't have any wind information so I got my wind information from the nearby Mojave airport light out of the east (070@4). Since Rosemond prefers runway 25 in light winds to avoid overflying the nearby houses, I decided to land runway 25 (with the wind). After turning to final I noticed that even though my airspeed was right at my normal approach speed I was significantly faster over the ground than expected. I was able to compensate, but it wasn't the prettiest landing, I should probably intentially practice these. They are not standard landings and are rarely done, but sometimes a downwind landing is safer due to terrain (such as Kernville).
Unfortunately the restaurant wasn't open, they changed their hours to open at 4pm instead of 11am except for Sundays. Great now the last two restaurants we've gone to have been closed, next time I should check! We decided to fly back to Mojave since we've been there more recently and it's a very short flight on the way home. Mojave was open, but they were extremely slow since Scaled composites (Burt Rutan's company) had brought a large party in (we didn't see Burt or Dick). There was only 1 waitress and she was very overworked. The food was excellent as usually and I filled up with cheap gas before we took back off for home.
On the way home, I decided to try to find Kelso valley. Our neighbor lent me a book about flying around here in the olden days. It's a very intersting book to read. A woman wrote the book about her and flying adventures with her husband who flew into all sorts of crazy places; mostly dried lakes and old dirt roads. One of the locations they flew into was Kelso valley and I think I knew where it was. I looked on Google Earth and I think I could see a desert scar from a runway decades ago.
The air was extremely smooth so we flew low over the mountains and I believe I found the right valley. It was easily wide enough to descend down into and land. There were a few homesteads scattered around, but I didn't see the runway. I think it was buried in the snow. After flying over this valley, we cut back over to the Owen's valley and flew back to Inyokern.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Flying to Mammoth, CA
Michelle and I had planned to fly to San Diego on December 13th and to Tehachapi on the 14th, but the weather ruined both of those flights. We were hit with a major winter storm system on the 13th and couldn't fly anywhere and the system lingered in the mountains preventing us from flying to Tehachapi on the 14th. Instead, we decided to fly up the valley to Mammoth where I could get some more high altitude practice taking offs and landings.
Flying to Mammoth also was a good opportunity to test my new configuration for recording the flight. I ordered a ground loop isolator which is just a special cord that was supposed to get rid of the alternator noise in the audio, I modified the camcorder mount, and I bought a digital voice recorder so I could have independent audio of the intercom and the cockpit. I also bought a SPOT messenger to track our flights as safety equipment and this was it's first flight as well.
It was a very scenic flight on the way up with the mountains covered with snow, although there was continuous light turbulence, which just got annoying. I didn't leave the video on the entire flight this time, but instead turned it on once and a while to get different scenery and angles. I really liked how some of the side shots turned out.
Unfortunately, even though I got slightly less dash in the view, there was still more than I had hoped for and the angle was low such that I was usually recording below the horizon. The intercom audio still has alternator noise on it, the cabin noise was worse than expected, and I still have the propeller flying off the screen even though I played with the different frame rates. I still have some work to do when editing it to see if I can improve it at all.
Back to the flight itself, the pattern at Mammoth is pretty interesting. There are tall mountains to the south and a smaller ridge to the north. The winds were 10 gusting to 15 knots from the south-west so I flew the right hand pattern around the smaller ridge to runway 27. I thought that I would always maintain sight of the airport, but I soon found out that as I started my descent on downwind, I quickly lost sight of the airport. It's not until your turning final until you see the runway appear from behind the ridge. This caused me some trouble, but I didn't have my approach fully stabilized since i didn't know where the runway was and I couldn't use my standard power settings because of the higher altitude. I ended up being high and fast on the first approach and floated a long ways down the runway. The second time around, I ended up being short and needed significant power to get back on the glide slope by the time I saw the runway. Long story short, I wouldn't feel bad about doing a straight in approach to the uncontrolled airport in the future.
After two time around the pattern, we decided we better head back to Bishop for lunch since we were both getting hungry. After my 3rd not so wonderful landing of the day, we walked into the lobby of the Bishop airport to find that the restaurant was out of business! The airport is also too far from town for us to walk. Fortunately they had a snackbar there and I was rummaging through that until a lady came in looking for the fuel attendant (who was out to lunch at the time). She was very nice and offered us a ride into town and back for lunch since she would have to come back to see the fuel guy after his lunch. She dropped us off at a very good Mexican restaurant named something Amigos and we were able to catch the bus back to the airport (she had thought it wasn't running).
After lunch we headed back to Inyokern where I made one of the nicest landings in several months. Once I finish editing the video from this flight, I'll post the link here. The SPOT messenger worked pretty good, but I'm still not sure what to think about it. On the way there, there was a 100 mile gap in the tracking from Owen's Lake all the way up to Mammoth, although it did have very good tracking the whole way back. It's absolutely better than nothing, but I really wish it didn't have those gaps. I guess more time is needed to tell how reliable it really is.
Flying to Mammoth also was a good opportunity to test my new configuration for recording the flight. I ordered a ground loop isolator which is just a special cord that was supposed to get rid of the alternator noise in the audio, I modified the camcorder mount, and I bought a digital voice recorder so I could have independent audio of the intercom and the cockpit. I also bought a SPOT messenger to track our flights as safety equipment and this was it's first flight as well.
It was a very scenic flight on the way up with the mountains covered with snow, although there was continuous light turbulence, which just got annoying. I didn't leave the video on the entire flight this time, but instead turned it on once and a while to get different scenery and angles. I really liked how some of the side shots turned out.
Unfortunately, even though I got slightly less dash in the view, there was still more than I had hoped for and the angle was low such that I was usually recording below the horizon. The intercom audio still has alternator noise on it, the cabin noise was worse than expected, and I still have the propeller flying off the screen even though I played with the different frame rates. I still have some work to do when editing it to see if I can improve it at all.
Back to the flight itself, the pattern at Mammoth is pretty interesting. There are tall mountains to the south and a smaller ridge to the north. The winds were 10 gusting to 15 knots from the south-west so I flew the right hand pattern around the smaller ridge to runway 27. I thought that I would always maintain sight of the airport, but I soon found out that as I started my descent on downwind, I quickly lost sight of the airport. It's not until your turning final until you see the runway appear from behind the ridge. This caused me some trouble, but I didn't have my approach fully stabilized since i didn't know where the runway was and I couldn't use my standard power settings because of the higher altitude. I ended up being high and fast on the first approach and floated a long ways down the runway. The second time around, I ended up being short and needed significant power to get back on the glide slope by the time I saw the runway. Long story short, I wouldn't feel bad about doing a straight in approach to the uncontrolled airport in the future.
After two time around the pattern, we decided we better head back to Bishop for lunch since we were both getting hungry. After my 3rd not so wonderful landing of the day, we walked into the lobby of the Bishop airport to find that the restaurant was out of business! The airport is also too far from town for us to walk. Fortunately they had a snackbar there and I was rummaging through that until a lady came in looking for the fuel attendant (who was out to lunch at the time). She was very nice and offered us a ride into town and back for lunch since she would have to come back to see the fuel guy after his lunch. She dropped us off at a very good Mexican restaurant named something Amigos and we were able to catch the bus back to the airport (she had thought it wasn't running).
After lunch we headed back to Inyokern where I made one of the nicest landings in several months. Once I finish editing the video from this flight, I'll post the link here. The SPOT messenger worked pretty good, but I'm still not sure what to think about it. On the way there, there was a 100 mile gap in the tracking from Owen's Lake all the way up to Mammoth, although it did have very good tracking the whole way back. It's absolutely better than nothing, but I really wish it didn't have those gaps. I guess more time is needed to tell how reliable it really is.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Bad weather and the birthing classes
So for the past few weeks I've wanted to fly down to San Diego. I wanted to wait until this past weekend since I did not have the detailed map of the area until last week. Saturday we drove down to Ojai to take back Lisa's bed to free up room in the kids room, so the plan was to fly down on Sunday. Of course nothing goes as planned. First, Michelle got way behind on her masters project and didn't have the time to go then the weather went to crap and it started raining on us, long story short, we didn't fly. Next weekend I was planning on flying to Tehachapi since it will be a sort of anniversary of our engagement 3 years ago. So now I want to fly down to San Diego this Saturday and to Tehachpi this Sunday.
I guess it is the only way to do the anniversary any justice. I had to drag Michelle on two flights in a row before the engagement. The day before we got engaged, we flew down to California City for a Toys for Tots event with airplanes, cars, motorcycles, and food. She didn't want to go flying again on Sunday so I had to drag her along since I didn't it to ruin my plans. Good thing she went because who knows how long I would have sat on it before replanning the trip all over. So it only makes sense to drag her to San Diego, then back to Tehachapi the next day! I might fly up to Mammoth for some practice takeoff and landings at a higher mountain airport too before we head to UT in a few weeks.
On our way down to Ojai, we stopped in Northridge at REI for a SPOT messenger and Office Depot for a laptop. To give a short background on the SPOT messenger, my airplane is equipped with an ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter). If I were to crash, the ELT would transmit a distress signal. Search and rescue satellites would pick up this signal and emergency crews would come out looking for us. They can fly in a search pattern and home in on the signal until they find us. In the next few months, the satellites will no longer be listening for these emergency signals and they want us to upgrade to new ELTs.
The problem is that the new ones aren't ready yet and the few that are out are way too expensive. Since Michelle and I fly in very desolate areas and are planning our trip to UT in a few weeks, we wanted some extra safety. This is where the SPOT messenger comes in. This little devices is essentially a satellite phone that can only send emails and text messages (can't talk on it) that has GPS capabilities. This means it can send emails with GPS coordinates tracking where you are. We plan on turning this on when we fly around so people know where we are. It also has an emergency button on it that if we crash we can hit the button and emergency crews have our exact GPS location. We used some of our REI gift cards from our wedding to buy this.
The laptop was bought as a method to edit the HD video our new camcorder produces. I was going to have to spend $120 to buy the software, but instead this $400 laptop comes with the software included. The laptop is also nice since our office is so small that we wouldn't be able to fit the kid in their when working on bills and stuff. Now I can do this from the living room while watching the kid.
Tonight we have our 4th Bradley childbirth class. The first class was an intro, the second was nutrition, and I don't remember what the 3rd was, maybe home birth. I haven't had a chance to do my reading assignments for tonight yet, but she said it was ok as long as I do it eventually. We did 'The business of being born' by Ricki Lake that we were supposed to watch a few weeks ago. The movie is available on Netflix so we used one of our rentals to get it.
I guess the movie was ok, but I think it was more graphic than what I need to see. I also believe that it overly blames the hospitals for not supporting natural childbirth. I don't completely believe this, but I'm no expert. I really think the health industry is a scam and they are the worst industry (yes worse than oil) as far as ripping off customers, but I won't get into that now. I think the problem is lawsuits and that is caused by Congress and the laws that are passed. Hospitals need to consider lawsuits as a higher priority than healthcare due to ridiculous malpractice lawsuits, but you can't blame them. Michelle and I are hoping we don't have any of the issues we've been hearing about and so far our doctor has been supportive.
I guess it is the only way to do the anniversary any justice. I had to drag Michelle on two flights in a row before the engagement. The day before we got engaged, we flew down to California City for a Toys for Tots event with airplanes, cars, motorcycles, and food. She didn't want to go flying again on Sunday so I had to drag her along since I didn't it to ruin my plans. Good thing she went because who knows how long I would have sat on it before replanning the trip all over. So it only makes sense to drag her to San Diego, then back to Tehachapi the next day! I might fly up to Mammoth for some practice takeoff and landings at a higher mountain airport too before we head to UT in a few weeks.
On our way down to Ojai, we stopped in Northridge at REI for a SPOT messenger and Office Depot for a laptop. To give a short background on the SPOT messenger, my airplane is equipped with an ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter). If I were to crash, the ELT would transmit a distress signal. Search and rescue satellites would pick up this signal and emergency crews would come out looking for us. They can fly in a search pattern and home in on the signal until they find us. In the next few months, the satellites will no longer be listening for these emergency signals and they want us to upgrade to new ELTs.
The problem is that the new ones aren't ready yet and the few that are out are way too expensive. Since Michelle and I fly in very desolate areas and are planning our trip to UT in a few weeks, we wanted some extra safety. This is where the SPOT messenger comes in. This little devices is essentially a satellite phone that can only send emails and text messages (can't talk on it) that has GPS capabilities. This means it can send emails with GPS coordinates tracking where you are. We plan on turning this on when we fly around so people know where we are. It also has an emergency button on it that if we crash we can hit the button and emergency crews have our exact GPS location. We used some of our REI gift cards from our wedding to buy this.
The laptop was bought as a method to edit the HD video our new camcorder produces. I was going to have to spend $120 to buy the software, but instead this $400 laptop comes with the software included. The laptop is also nice since our office is so small that we wouldn't be able to fit the kid in their when working on bills and stuff. Now I can do this from the living room while watching the kid.
Tonight we have our 4th Bradley childbirth class. The first class was an intro, the second was nutrition, and I don't remember what the 3rd was, maybe home birth. I haven't had a chance to do my reading assignments for tonight yet, but she said it was ok as long as I do it eventually. We did 'The business of being born' by Ricki Lake that we were supposed to watch a few weeks ago. The movie is available on Netflix so we used one of our rentals to get it.
I guess the movie was ok, but I think it was more graphic than what I need to see. I also believe that it overly blames the hospitals for not supporting natural childbirth. I don't completely believe this, but I'm no expert. I really think the health industry is a scam and they are the worst industry (yes worse than oil) as far as ripping off customers, but I won't get into that now. I think the problem is lawsuits and that is caused by Congress and the laws that are passed. Hospitals need to consider lawsuits as a higher priority than healthcare due to ridiculous malpractice lawsuits, but you can't blame them. Michelle and I are hoping we don't have any of the issues we've been hearing about and so far our doctor has been supportive.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Not much to say
I figured I'd put up a new post of what we're up to even though there isn't much to say. We went to Kevin and Sarah Ford's house for Thanksgiving and had a great meal there, but other than that spent most of the holiday weekend working and cleaning around the house.
The attic is now almost finished, I added several additional flooring sections and built up a frame around a recessed light and put a floor over that and the old attic access hole as well. I just need to finish with the putty, paint, and a few other things. I've been putting a bunch of stuff up there cleaning out our closets. I was able to get all of my model airplane, brewing, airplane records, and ski stuff up there. The dogs were very interested in seeing what was up the ladder and kept whining, so I also brought both of the dogs up to take a look; that was not as easy as it sounds.
I took apart the bed we had in the kid's room and that is in our living room now and will go back to Lisa on Saturday. Michelle taped off and started painting the border in the kid room. She also did the artistic sketches of the different walls. Next step is to paint the backdrops and send out the animal drawing requests.
The last thing I was able to finish was cleaning the office. This has been a mess forever since not everything even had a spot to go since we switched rooms after the house makeover. Now everything has a spot and is clean! I forgot that I also repaired the roof to the shed. For some reason, there is a huge hole where the roof cracked apart. Of course, I didn't notice it until after the two days we got rain...
Saturday, we are heading down to drop off the bed at Lisa's and take a look at the pictures of her trip to India. Sunday, I hope to fly down to San Diego for lunch. We've never been west of Cajon pass and I'd like to get some experience flying down in that area. Originally I was thinking about eating at a place called CrazeeBurgers that we saw featured on TV that had all sorts of neat burgers, but instead I think we'll just play it down and eat at the airport. Maybe next time... I'm not sure if Michelle will be able to go since she is frantically trying to finish her masters project.
We also have a trip planned to Tehachapi on the 13th, this is when and where we got engaged back in 2005. After that we have our trip planned out to Utah to see my Uncle Errol and fly over all sorts of scenery, look for a nice post after that trip.
The last thing I was able to finish was cleaning the office. This has been a mess forever since not everything even had a spot to go since we switched rooms after the house makeover. Now everything has a spot and is clean! I forgot that I also repaired the roof to the shed. For some reason, there is a huge hole where the roof cracked apart. Of course, I didn't notice it until after the two days we got rain...
Saturday, we are heading down to drop off the bed at Lisa's and take a look at the pictures of her trip to India. Sunday, I hope to fly down to San Diego for lunch. We've never been west of Cajon pass and I'd like to get some experience flying down in that area. Originally I was thinking about eating at a place called CrazeeBurgers that we saw featured on TV that had all sorts of neat burgers, but instead I think we'll just play it down and eat at the airport. Maybe next time... I'm not sure if Michelle will be able to go since she is frantically trying to finish her masters project.
We also have a trip planned to Tehachapi on the 13th, this is when and where we got engaged back in 2005. After that we have our trip planned out to Utah to see my Uncle Errol and fly over all sorts of scenery, look for a nice post after that trip.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Test flight with our new camcorder
For the past few years I've been watching videos on YouTube of people flying into different areas and capturing their adventures. I've been jealous and wanted to buy a camcorder to tape my own flights, but haven't been willing to spend the money. Michelle and I decided long ago that we would wait until we start our family before we buy a camcorder.
Here is a link to another pilot who posts his flights. This is his flight into Kernville, I figured I'd link this one since this it compares to the flight we just made.
Now that we have a girl on the way, we made the purchase. Granted she's not due until the end of February, but that's just too long to wait. It kind of goes along the lines of getting the new TV in time for the football season and the new camera in time for a long anticipated trip. The anticipated trip is to Panguitch, UT to visit my Uncle Errol and to fly over Lake Powell, the Grand Canyon, Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, and Las Vegas.
We decided that since we have a fancy new HD TV, we wanted to get a nice HD camcorder. We also want it to be digital since we will be posting both flights and videos of our daughter on the web for friends and family to see. The hassle of DV tapes eliminated that category, and since hard drives don't operate at altitude, those versions wouldn't work either. Hard drives rely on airflow between the disks so that the head "flies" between the platters. When the altitude goes up, the pressure goes down, and the head crashes and the disk fails.
This left us looking for a solid state HD camcorder. I also had 2 requirements for flying, an image stabilizer and a microphone input. All the HD camcorders come with image stabilization so that wasn't a problem, but finding one with external audio in was. Canon is really the only manufacturer supporting external audio anymore these days and we ended up with a Canon Vixia HF100.
My airplane just got out of maintenance so I was anxious to get back up and flying so a flight for lunch in Kernville to test the new camcorder setup was perfect. We also decided to take the dogs with us. They've each flown before, but this was the first time they both flew together and Michelle wasn't in back to calm them down.
The dogs did ok, but they both ended up being nervous at some point. Emmett was much worse off, but I think he'll get used to it. He's always not been a fan of bouncing around. When we drive up to trailheads to go hiking, he always lays down in the back of the Jeep, but he's never gotten sick.
The video turned out pretty good, but there are a few things I found that I want to change. I made a little stand the camcorder attaches to that has a sponge between as a shock absorber. I noticed that the sponge allowed the camera to shake more than if it was just attached firmly. The angle also didn't turn out too good, it was looking down too much and the dash takes almost 1/2 of the screen. This also causes issues since it tries to focus on the dash instead of outside. I also want to work on the audio a little. I have it tied into the co-pilot audio jack, but there seems to be a lot of noise in the audio.
I used a trial version of CyberLink PowerDirector to edit the video, but I think in the future, I'm going to try to use Microsoft Movie Maker so I don't have to pay for the software. I decided to shoot the trip in HD since I had more space on the card than the battery would last. The video was incredible when it was focusing on the terrain. After editing and down converting to HQ, the file was about 10 minutes and 652 Mb. Good thing YouTube just started allowing up to 1Gb uploads... It took about 1 hour to render the video on my PC and the clip is still trying to upload after almost an hour.
Tomorrow I'll be working on the attic since I spent all day playing...
Here is a link to another pilot who posts his flights. This is his flight into Kernville, I figured I'd link this one since this it compares to the flight we just made.
Now that we have a girl on the way, we made the purchase. Granted she's not due until the end of February, but that's just too long to wait. It kind of goes along the lines of getting the new TV in time for the football season and the new camera in time for a long anticipated trip. The anticipated trip is to Panguitch, UT to visit my Uncle Errol and to fly over Lake Powell, the Grand Canyon, Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, and Las Vegas.
We decided that since we have a fancy new HD TV, we wanted to get a nice HD camcorder. We also want it to be digital since we will be posting both flights and videos of our daughter on the web for friends and family to see. The hassle of DV tapes eliminated that category, and since hard drives don't operate at altitude, those versions wouldn't work either. Hard drives rely on airflow between the disks so that the head "flies" between the platters. When the altitude goes up, the pressure goes down, and the head crashes and the disk fails.
This left us looking for a solid state HD camcorder. I also had 2 requirements for flying, an image stabilizer and a microphone input. All the HD camcorders come with image stabilization so that wasn't a problem, but finding one with external audio in was. Canon is really the only manufacturer supporting external audio anymore these days and we ended up with a Canon Vixia HF100.
My airplane just got out of maintenance so I was anxious to get back up and flying so a flight for lunch in Kernville to test the new camcorder setup was perfect. We also decided to take the dogs with us. They've each flown before, but this was the first time they both flew together and Michelle wasn't in back to calm them down.
The dogs did ok, but they both ended up being nervous at some point. Emmett was much worse off, but I think he'll get used to it. He's always not been a fan of bouncing around. When we drive up to trailheads to go hiking, he always lays down in the back of the Jeep, but he's never gotten sick.
The video turned out pretty good, but there are a few things I found that I want to change. I made a little stand the camcorder attaches to that has a sponge between as a shock absorber. I noticed that the sponge allowed the camera to shake more than if it was just attached firmly. The angle also didn't turn out too good, it was looking down too much and the dash takes almost 1/2 of the screen. This also causes issues since it tries to focus on the dash instead of outside. I also want to work on the audio a little. I have it tied into the co-pilot audio jack, but there seems to be a lot of noise in the audio.
I used a trial version of CyberLink PowerDirector to edit the video, but I think in the future, I'm going to try to use Microsoft Movie Maker so I don't have to pay for the software. I decided to shoot the trip in HD since I had more space on the card than the battery would last. The video was incredible when it was focusing on the terrain. After editing and down converting to HQ, the file was about 10 minutes and 652 Mb. Good thing YouTube just started allowing up to 1Gb uploads... It took about 1 hour to render the video on my PC and the clip is still trying to upload after almost an hour.
Tomorrow I'll be working on the attic since I spent all day playing...
Monday, September 15, 2008
Mt. Whitney September 13-14, 2008
In case you aren't interested in reading this whole thing, here is the link to the pictures, and if you don't like the hat then too bad. It keeps the sun from burning my face and ears and is worth looking like an idiot.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jayson.brouchoud/MtWhitney?authkey=yow7wtoEiJA#
So I finally got my chance to hike/climb Mt. Whitney. A few of us have wanted to climb it for the last few years, but we've never been successful getting permits through their lottery system. This year I just decided we should go anyways and try to obtain no-show permits. I've been told by a few people that have gone, that there are no-show permits available almost everyday. Rob was going to be around this weekend and Kevin was free as well. The next free weekend would be too cold for us since we don't have crampons or ice axes. Unfortunately, Rob wasn't able to make the trip since he had to be on a flight back to DC.
I decided to call the Whitney Ranger's office every day (their suggestion) to see if anybody had cancelled their reservation so that I'd be able to reserve those permits. The ranger said that most people don't show up instead of cancelling ahead of time so that I probably wouldn't get a reserved permit, but I might as well try. Last Thursday, they had some cancellations so I was able to reserve 2 overnight permits onto Whitney. If I wasn't able to get the permits, we would have had to show up at 11am on Saturday and hope people didn't show up.
The ranger told me on the phone that the deadline for picking up your permits for an overnight trip is 11am and the phone message system of the permit office said the same thing as well. However, when we showed up at the permit office at 10:15am, they said we were lucky that nobody picked up our permits as a no-show yet since they start giving them away at 10am. I tried to tell the lady that I was misinformed and that they should check their phone message, but she really didn't care. I would have been extremely upset if they would have given our permits away since they told me wrong. Anyways, everything worked out OK with the permits.
From the permit office we drove north into Lone Pine and took a left at the first (and only) light in town and headed through the Alabama Hills up towards the Mt. Whitney Portals. There is a campground and store up there along with parking for the trailhead. All of the parking spaces were full so we had to park off the road a few hundred feet down and hike our stuff to the trailhead. We spent just a little time reading the boards at the trailhead and weighing our packs before heading up the trail. My pack was 44 and Kevin's was 42 pounds so we were pretty equal. We started hiking at 11:30am, Saturday September 13th.
The beginning of the trail was nice with a slow, but steady climb across very long switchbacks. The trail was in good shape and was mostly compacted dirt and small rock. After passing a small waterfall we entered the John Muir Wilderness area. There was plenty of opportunity to look back at Lone Pine to see our progress as we hiked up. We took our first break about 2 miles in according the GPS and ate lunch around the 4 mile mark. The GPS measured the trail as being significantly longer than what is posted and my belief is the difference between the USGS survey and the GPS track. I believe the USGS survey doesn't account for the distance traveled in the switchback, but instead measures direct line from point to point. I don't have anything to back this up, but I'll look into it.
As we continued, we saw 2 parachutes overhead, I'm not sure if they were powered parachutes or just para-gliders, but they weren't regular parachutes. That would have been by far the best way down! After passing a really cool water fall that flowed over a big rock and balancing over some logs across more water we reached Lone Pine Lake. It was a short trip down to the lake so we took the side track to check it out. It was a very cool lake and we found someone to take a picture of Kevin and me.
After leaving Lone Pine Lake and continuing up, the terrain became more rocky and we passed a rock that indicated the 3 mile mark. Remember I said we ate lunch at the 4 mile mark... The terrain was becoming much more arid with very few trees and mostly rocky terrain. Eventually we came to a meadow with a stream; the water was very reddish perhaps from high iron content. At the far side of the meadow was the lower of the two campgrounds for backpackers, Outpost Camp, which is at 3.5 miles.
Not too far past Outpost Camp we came across Mirror Lake. This was a very calm lake that seemed pretty shallow and about 200 ft across. There was a group of people here eating their lunch and I wish we would have stopped to eat here instead of a mile earlier, but this was my first trip up so I didn’t know what to expect. The next little bit of trail was a series of switchbacks that climbed up from Mirror Lake so we got a better view as we continued up. Eventually the view opened up and we could also see the meadow and Outpost Camp and Lone Pine Lake down below.
Soon we were above the tree line and the terrain was extremely arid. The trail was getting more difficult with more and more rock stairs instead of the regular trail. I saw a large bird as along the trail that seemed to care less about hikers. With ~150 people hiking the trail a day, I guess it was used to people. It actually started running right towards us and I got a picture of it. I think it was some kind of Partridge.
Soon we were above the snow line, but I was still comfortable in a short sleeve shirt. The temperature was probably still in the low 60s, but I was generating more than enough heat. Up a little higher and we came across another lake, I think this was Consolation Lake. I'm pretty sure camping is now allowed there although we did see a tent there. As we kept going, Kevin ran out of water. I was trying to give him some water, but my pack wasn't working that well. We decided to keep going since the campground was supposed to be really close.
After another quarter mile, we came across Trail Camp. This is a large area that is very rocky with large boulders, but plenty of sandy flat spots between the boulders to set up tents. There was a lake right there as well for us to get out the water filter and fill our water packs. Instead of filling right at the lake, we walked to the steam inlet and got fresh water instead of the lake water right by all the campsites. It was obvious that this area was very heavily camped because many of the flat spots for tents smelt like urine. You're supposed to hike away from the lake, but you could tell that plenty of people had been too lazy. Being exhausted ourselves, we found one that wasn't terrible and started to set up camp.
It didn't take us too long to get our tents set up and we started dinner. I had a chicken and rice dinner for 2 that I had no problem finishing, Kevin finished his oriental chicken and rice for 2 as well. The meals are pretty easy to make. You just boil some water, then pour water into the food pouch and 9 minutes later you have a hot dinner. With some time before dark, we boiled some extra water and had some hot chocolate before heading to bed.
We stayed up as the moon rose over the mountains to illuminate the campground. I tried taking a few pictures, but they didn't turn out well of course. Once it was dark I headed to bed, it was only 7 or 7:30, but I was exhausted. I laid in bed for awhile before I was able to fall asleep. Last time I camped when it was cold out, I ended up freezing all night long. This time I remembered to bring my sleeping bag cocoon with me; which worked incredibly. At about 2am I woke up pretty cold. I thought the sun was starting to come out so we should get started, but it was just the moon being so bright. I put on an extra layer of clothes and I slept fine until morning.
I got up around 7am and packed my water pack for the trip to the summit and ate a PB&J sandwich for breakfast. We went back down to the stream and refilled out water for the trip up to the summit. This is the last source of water on the way up so we won't have another chance to fill up until we get back down to camp. We started the 98 switchbacks up to Trail Crest around 7:30am.
Most of the complaints I've heard about hiking Mt. Whitney are about how grueling the 98 switchbacks are. I think that camping at Trail Camp was a great idea since my legs were fresh in the morning and we had no problem getting up the switchbacks. We decided to stop and take a 15 second break every other switchback. The breaks are so short that they don't add any time to the trip, but it's enough to catch your breath and to prevent from becoming exhausted. There were a few places that were icy and exposed. One area in particular was very exposed and had a railing to prevent people from falling.
Once we got to got to Trail Crest at 13,600 ft, we could look down and see several other lakes that we couldn't before. Trail Crest is at a saddle to the south of Mt. Whitney where you cross over to the west side of the mountain. Here you start hiking down a little bit before you start a mostly flat trek across a very exposed rocky trail. A few places opened up where you would be standing on the crest of the mountain and be able to see both to the east and the west of the mountains.
After about a half a mile, you reach Mt. Whitney, but not the summit yet. There is a long hike up around the backside of the mountain where you start a few more easy switchbacks before a building comes into sight and you have reached the summit! There were two USGS markers on top and I made sure to find them and get pictures. I was also sure to get my name in the book to make it official that I had reached the top.
I had read that cell service is available at the peak due to the clear view of everywhere, but even though I had 2 to 3 bars, I couldn't get any calls to go through, so much for calling Rob and rubbing it in!
While we were sitting there enjoying the view, I pulled out two cold Miller Lites. That beer was one of the best I ever had, and yes I did carry it more than 11 miles and over a mile vertically to drink it on top of the US (at least the lower 48). To get a perspective of how high Mt. Whitney is, we were almost 3 times higher than Denver at almost 3 miles up from sea level. This is equal to the service ceiling of my airplane and higher than I've ever flown before. I would need to be on oxygen to legally fly this high.
Wow, I remember this picture; I was standing on the edge of a 2,500 foot cliff. That drop-off went down essentially to where we had camped for the night, down at only 12,000 feet!
The way back down to Trail Camp was pretty much the same as the way up except for much faster and easier. It took us 4 hours to hike from Trail Camp to the summit and only 2 to hike back down. Once we got to trail camp, Kevin laid down to rest his feet for awhile and I started to tear down my tent. Kevin didn't rest long; I think he felt rushed since I was tearing down my tent. I told him he could keep resting, but he got up anyways and soon we were packed and ready for the hike back down to the portals. Just before we left, we checked our water and we were both still fine so we didn't spend the time to top off our water packs.
I don't remember the hike up having so many steep steps, but I sure did notice them on the way down. By far the hardest part of this hike was carrying the backpacks down the last 6 miles. I was very happy once Lone Pine Lake came back into sight because that meant we were making progress downwards. Not soon enough we were back down below the tree line and we could see Mirror Lake. With about 4 miles left to go, my legs started to shake as I walked and my knees were killing me. I just started to zone everything out and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. We stopped a few times, but it seemed harder and harder to get back to keep going so we just tried to keep the pace headed downhill.
Before we reached Lone Pine Lake, I ran out of water. I'm not sure how I ran out since I had a lot up at Trail Camp. I was drinking more going downhill than I did going uphill. We stopped at the place where we had to walk across the logs and I filtered some more water. There were gnats everywhere, but at least they didn't bite. Soon we were able to see the highway that comes up to the trailhead, it was still a long ways off, but at least it was something positive. After another 2 or 3 terrible miles, we reached the bottom. My body was done a few hours back, but I pushed it hard enough to make it down. We re-weighed our packs and I went to drive the Jeep back to pick up our packs; I wasn't able to carry the pack the rest of the way down to the Jeep. We finished the hike at 6:00pm on Sunday September 14th.
It took about 10 minutes for us to drive back to Lone Pine and we stopped at the Pizza Factory since I needed some real nutrition. Kevin offered to pay for my meal for setting the trip up, but I declined since I was hungry and didn't want to feast on him. I ended up eating the whole pizza and a salad.
I'm finishing this on Wednesday and I still can barely walk. My knees and calves are so sore that I drove into work instead of taking the motorcycle. I've been sore from hiking before, but never this bad and it never lasted this long. I'm extremely glad I went on the hike and that Kevin made it as well, but now that I've been to the top, I doubt I'll ever go again. I didn't do the hike in one day so I'll never be able to carry that badge, but I've been there and that's good enough for me.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jayson.brouchoud/MtWhitney?authkey=yow7wtoEiJA#
So I finally got my chance to hike/climb Mt. Whitney. A few of us have wanted to climb it for the last few years, but we've never been successful getting permits through their lottery system. This year I just decided we should go anyways and try to obtain no-show permits. I've been told by a few people that have gone, that there are no-show permits available almost everyday. Rob was going to be around this weekend and Kevin was free as well. The next free weekend would be too cold for us since we don't have crampons or ice axes. Unfortunately, Rob wasn't able to make the trip since he had to be on a flight back to DC.
I decided to call the Whitney Ranger's office every day (their suggestion) to see if anybody had cancelled their reservation so that I'd be able to reserve those permits. The ranger said that most people don't show up instead of cancelling ahead of time so that I probably wouldn't get a reserved permit, but I might as well try. Last Thursday, they had some cancellations so I was able to reserve 2 overnight permits onto Whitney. If I wasn't able to get the permits, we would have had to show up at 11am on Saturday and hope people didn't show up.
The ranger told me on the phone that the deadline for picking up your permits for an overnight trip is 11am and the phone message system of the permit office said the same thing as well. However, when we showed up at the permit office at 10:15am, they said we were lucky that nobody picked up our permits as a no-show yet since they start giving them away at 10am. I tried to tell the lady that I was misinformed and that they should check their phone message, but she really didn't care. I would have been extremely upset if they would have given our permits away since they told me wrong. Anyways, everything worked out OK with the permits.
From the permit office we drove north into Lone Pine and took a left at the first (and only) light in town and headed through the Alabama Hills up towards the Mt. Whitney Portals. There is a campground and store up there along with parking for the trailhead. All of the parking spaces were full so we had to park off the road a few hundred feet down and hike our stuff to the trailhead. We spent just a little time reading the boards at the trailhead and weighing our packs before heading up the trail. My pack was 44 and Kevin's was 42 pounds so we were pretty equal. We started hiking at 11:30am, Saturday September 13th.
The beginning of the trail was nice with a slow, but steady climb across very long switchbacks. The trail was in good shape and was mostly compacted dirt and small rock. After passing a small waterfall we entered the John Muir Wilderness area. There was plenty of opportunity to look back at Lone Pine to see our progress as we hiked up. We took our first break about 2 miles in according the GPS and ate lunch around the 4 mile mark. The GPS measured the trail as being significantly longer than what is posted and my belief is the difference between the USGS survey and the GPS track. I believe the USGS survey doesn't account for the distance traveled in the switchback, but instead measures direct line from point to point. I don't have anything to back this up, but I'll look into it.
As we continued, we saw 2 parachutes overhead, I'm not sure if they were powered parachutes or just para-gliders, but they weren't regular parachutes. That would have been by far the best way down! After passing a really cool water fall that flowed over a big rock and balancing over some logs across more water we reached Lone Pine Lake. It was a short trip down to the lake so we took the side track to check it out. It was a very cool lake and we found someone to take a picture of Kevin and me.
After leaving Lone Pine Lake and continuing up, the terrain became more rocky and we passed a rock that indicated the 3 mile mark. Remember I said we ate lunch at the 4 mile mark... The terrain was becoming much more arid with very few trees and mostly rocky terrain. Eventually we came to a meadow with a stream; the water was very reddish perhaps from high iron content. At the far side of the meadow was the lower of the two campgrounds for backpackers, Outpost Camp, which is at 3.5 miles.
Not too far past Outpost Camp we came across Mirror Lake. This was a very calm lake that seemed pretty shallow and about 200 ft across. There was a group of people here eating their lunch and I wish we would have stopped to eat here instead of a mile earlier, but this was my first trip up so I didn’t know what to expect. The next little bit of trail was a series of switchbacks that climbed up from Mirror Lake so we got a better view as we continued up. Eventually the view opened up and we could also see the meadow and Outpost Camp and Lone Pine Lake down below.
Soon we were above the tree line and the terrain was extremely arid. The trail was getting more difficult with more and more rock stairs instead of the regular trail. I saw a large bird as along the trail that seemed to care less about hikers. With ~150 people hiking the trail a day, I guess it was used to people. It actually started running right towards us and I got a picture of it. I think it was some kind of Partridge.
Soon we were above the snow line, but I was still comfortable in a short sleeve shirt. The temperature was probably still in the low 60s, but I was generating more than enough heat. Up a little higher and we came across another lake, I think this was Consolation Lake. I'm pretty sure camping is now allowed there although we did see a tent there. As we kept going, Kevin ran out of water. I was trying to give him some water, but my pack wasn't working that well. We decided to keep going since the campground was supposed to be really close.
After another quarter mile, we came across Trail Camp. This is a large area that is very rocky with large boulders, but plenty of sandy flat spots between the boulders to set up tents. There was a lake right there as well for us to get out the water filter and fill our water packs. Instead of filling right at the lake, we walked to the steam inlet and got fresh water instead of the lake water right by all the campsites. It was obvious that this area was very heavily camped because many of the flat spots for tents smelt like urine. You're supposed to hike away from the lake, but you could tell that plenty of people had been too lazy. Being exhausted ourselves, we found one that wasn't terrible and started to set up camp.
It didn't take us too long to get our tents set up and we started dinner. I had a chicken and rice dinner for 2 that I had no problem finishing, Kevin finished his oriental chicken and rice for 2 as well. The meals are pretty easy to make. You just boil some water, then pour water into the food pouch and 9 minutes later you have a hot dinner. With some time before dark, we boiled some extra water and had some hot chocolate before heading to bed.
We stayed up as the moon rose over the mountains to illuminate the campground. I tried taking a few pictures, but they didn't turn out well of course. Once it was dark I headed to bed, it was only 7 or 7:30, but I was exhausted. I laid in bed for awhile before I was able to fall asleep. Last time I camped when it was cold out, I ended up freezing all night long. This time I remembered to bring my sleeping bag cocoon with me; which worked incredibly. At about 2am I woke up pretty cold. I thought the sun was starting to come out so we should get started, but it was just the moon being so bright. I put on an extra layer of clothes and I slept fine until morning.
I got up around 7am and packed my water pack for the trip to the summit and ate a PB&J sandwich for breakfast. We went back down to the stream and refilled out water for the trip up to the summit. This is the last source of water on the way up so we won't have another chance to fill up until we get back down to camp. We started the 98 switchbacks up to Trail Crest around 7:30am.
Once we got to got to Trail Crest at 13,600 ft, we could look down and see several other lakes that we couldn't before. Trail Crest is at a saddle to the south of Mt. Whitney where you cross over to the west side of the mountain. Here you start hiking down a little bit before you start a mostly flat trek across a very exposed rocky trail. A few places opened up where you would be standing on the crest of the mountain and be able to see both to the east and the west of the mountains.
After about a half a mile, you reach Mt. Whitney, but not the summit yet. There is a long hike up around the backside of the mountain where you start a few more easy switchbacks before a building comes into sight and you have reached the summit! There were two USGS markers on top and I made sure to find them and get pictures. I was also sure to get my name in the book to make it official that I had reached the top.
I had read that cell service is available at the peak due to the clear view of everywhere, but even though I had 2 to 3 bars, I couldn't get any calls to go through, so much for calling Rob and rubbing it in!
While we were sitting there enjoying the view, I pulled out two cold Miller Lites. That beer was one of the best I ever had, and yes I did carry it more than 11 miles and over a mile vertically to drink it on top of the US (at least the lower 48). To get a perspective of how high Mt. Whitney is, we were almost 3 times higher than Denver at almost 3 miles up from sea level. This is equal to the service ceiling of my airplane and higher than I've ever flown before. I would need to be on oxygen to legally fly this high.
Wow, I remember this picture; I was standing on the edge of a 2,500 foot cliff. That drop-off went down essentially to where we had camped for the night, down at only 12,000 feet!
This picture almost seems fake, but that's what it looked like from up so high.
The way back down to Trail Camp was pretty much the same as the way up except for much faster and easier. It took us 4 hours to hike from Trail Camp to the summit and only 2 to hike back down. Once we got to trail camp, Kevin laid down to rest his feet for awhile and I started to tear down my tent. Kevin didn't rest long; I think he felt rushed since I was tearing down my tent. I told him he could keep resting, but he got up anyways and soon we were packed and ready for the hike back down to the portals. Just before we left, we checked our water and we were both still fine so we didn't spend the time to top off our water packs.
I don't remember the hike up having so many steep steps, but I sure did notice them on the way down. By far the hardest part of this hike was carrying the backpacks down the last 6 miles. I was very happy once Lone Pine Lake came back into sight because that meant we were making progress downwards. Not soon enough we were back down below the tree line and we could see Mirror Lake. With about 4 miles left to go, my legs started to shake as I walked and my knees were killing me. I just started to zone everything out and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. We stopped a few times, but it seemed harder and harder to get back to keep going so we just tried to keep the pace headed downhill.
Before we reached Lone Pine Lake, I ran out of water. I'm not sure how I ran out since I had a lot up at Trail Camp. I was drinking more going downhill than I did going uphill. We stopped at the place where we had to walk across the logs and I filtered some more water. There were gnats everywhere, but at least they didn't bite. Soon we were able to see the highway that comes up to the trailhead, it was still a long ways off, but at least it was something positive. After another 2 or 3 terrible miles, we reached the bottom. My body was done a few hours back, but I pushed it hard enough to make it down. We re-weighed our packs and I went to drive the Jeep back to pick up our packs; I wasn't able to carry the pack the rest of the way down to the Jeep. We finished the hike at 6:00pm on Sunday September 14th.
I'm finishing this on Wednesday and I still can barely walk. My knees and calves are so sore that I drove into work instead of taking the motorcycle. I've been sore from hiking before, but never this bad and it never lasted this long. I'm extremely glad I went on the hike and that Kevin made it as well, but now that I've been to the top, I doubt I'll ever go again. I didn't do the hike in one day so I'll never be able to carry that badge, but I've been there and that's good enough for me.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Kevin and Shelvey Tajii's Wedding September 6th, 2008
This weekend Michelle and I flew up to San Jose for our friends Kevin and Shelvey's wedding. Kevin and Sarah Ford also flew up with us so we were able to planepool and save some money.
I needed to burn just a little gas so that we'd be under the maximum weight of the airplane so I flew for 15-20 minutes or so doing practice takeoffs and landings before we loaded the airplane for the trip. After burning the gas and checking what the Ford's brought for baggage, we were good to go. The trip was extremely smooth the whole way up there and I logged 1.9 hours on the tach including the practice takeoffs and landings.
After pier 39, we went at drove past the famous Lombard street then headed back to the hotel. After a little swimming we were in bed for the night.
Saturday morning we went to tour the Winchester house. This is a crazy house that the widow of the second president of the Winchester gun company built since a psychic told her to keep building to appease the spirits of those killed by Winchester guns. Since she had to keep building the house at all times of day for decades, there were several unique features. A few interesting things were a staircase that went to all the way to a dead-end at the ceiling, a door out the second floor to nowhere, pillars mounted upside down, etc.
After the house it was time to get ready for the wedding. Unfortunately, we don't have many good pictures of the ceremony itself, but it was a good ceremony. I'll have to talk to Kevin when he comes back from their honeymoon about it. I thought they were going to do a traditional Buddhist wedding, but even though there were some unique parts, it seemed very traditional.
The wedding was fun and I didn't make a fool out of myself since I was the designated driver (only I was on the rental agreement).
Sunday we took off in the morning for the trip back. This trip was a little more interesting with much busier traffic coming out of the Bay and being swapped a lot by ATC while I was getting flight following updates. Then there was a jet that wasn't talking to anybody that was flying right at me. The controllers were finally able to reach him although he still seemed oblivious. While they were trying to figure out what he was doing, I climbed to 12,500 to get out of the way.
I was hoping to stop at Kernville for lunch, but there was a NOTAM that 100LL fuel was currently unavailable and I didn't have all the much fuel. I was worried if I descended all the way down there, I'd be too worried about our fuel level climbing back out to head home so we decided to skip Kernville and head home with 2.0 on the tach. This was Sarah's second trip that we weren't able to get lunch at Kernville, maybe we'll have to dedicate a trip some time...
I needed to burn just a little gas so that we'd be under the maximum weight of the airplane so I flew for 15-20 minutes or so doing practice takeoffs and landings before we loaded the airplane for the trip. After burning the gas and checking what the Ford's brought for baggage, we were good to go. The trip was extremely smooth the whole way up there and I logged 1.9 hours on the tach including the practice takeoffs and landings.
I decided to fly into Reid-Hillview airport (add another to the map) since it would be cheaper and more convenient to fly into the San Jose International. After we got the rental car (which ended up being a huge extended cab truck since they were out of cars) we went and checked into the hotel early. Normally it would take 6+ hours to get up here not counting stopping for lunch, but were checked in to the hotel in less than 3.
After pier 39, we went at drove past the famous Lombard street then headed back to the hotel. After a little swimming we were in bed for the night.
Saturday morning we went to tour the Winchester house. This is a crazy house that the widow of the second president of the Winchester gun company built since a psychic told her to keep building to appease the spirits of those killed by Winchester guns. Since she had to keep building the house at all times of day for decades, there were several unique features. A few interesting things were a staircase that went to all the way to a dead-end at the ceiling, a door out the second floor to nowhere, pillars mounted upside down, etc.
After the house it was time to get ready for the wedding. Unfortunately, we don't have many good pictures of the ceremony itself, but it was a good ceremony. I'll have to talk to Kevin when he comes back from their honeymoon about it. I thought they were going to do a traditional Buddhist wedding, but even though there were some unique parts, it seemed very traditional.
The wedding was fun and I didn't make a fool out of myself since I was the designated driver (only I was on the rental agreement).
Sunday we took off in the morning for the trip back. This trip was a little more interesting with much busier traffic coming out of the Bay and being swapped a lot by ATC while I was getting flight following updates. Then there was a jet that wasn't talking to anybody that was flying right at me. The controllers were finally able to reach him although he still seemed oblivious. While they were trying to figure out what he was doing, I climbed to 12,500 to get out of the way.
I was hoping to stop at Kernville for lunch, but there was a NOTAM that 100LL fuel was currently unavailable and I didn't have all the much fuel. I was worried if I descended all the way down there, I'd be too worried about our fuel level climbing back out to head home so we decided to skip Kernville and head home with 2.0 on the tach. This was Sarah's second trip that we weren't able to get lunch at Kernville, maybe we'll have to dedicate a trip some time...
Baby announcement party
Sorry if this post sucks, but I had it all written and then explorer crashed. I though Google saved drafts regularly???
I thought I posted earlier about the party we had to announce that Michelle is pregnant, but I don't see it so I'll post something now. For a little background, we're supposed to host a party when we get a promotion at work. I never hosted my last party and was joking that I wasn't getting paid enough, but a senior engineer forwarded it to the bosses questioning why I hadn't been promoted.
After I explaining to him that I already was promoted and was only joking and whining for another, he claimed he didn't know I was already promoted since I never hosted my party. Long story short, we finally hosted my promotion party on August 23, 2008.
We figured this would be a good time to announce to the world that Michelle was pregnant. We had just told family so we might as well tell everybody else now. Since I didn't want to make a formal announcement and big deal out of it, I decided to wear my t-shirt at the promotion party.
Since the shirt didn't get the best response out the announcement to the Brouchoud family in WI, I decided to modify it for clarification. The shirt originally said "I love hot moms", but I added a carrot with an a between love and hot and crossed out the s on moms so it now reads "I love a hot mom". After awhile people figured it out and word spread quickly. I know the shirt is pretty bad, but if you know me, then you're not surprised.
Here is a front and back picture of the shirt.
Blog going global
So I've been trying to track this blog a little using Google's Analytics to see who's been coming to my blog. It went global a few months ago and started spreading across the US before that. Even though I don't have much traffic, it's spreading wide. It is mostly due to my airplane and Cessna Skylane posts.
Today I noticed I had a viewer from Verbier Switzerland! This is exciting since this is where my paternal family immigrated from. I also visited Verbier several years ago when my parents took us back for a family reunion. If only I new who stopped by to visit...
Today I noticed I had a viewer from Verbier Switzerland! This is exciting since this is where my paternal family immigrated from. I also visited Verbier several years ago when my parents took us back for a family reunion. If only I new who stopped by to visit...
Monday, September 1, 2008
Camping at Lake Isabella Labor Day weekend 2008
We usually head out camping/backpacking with our friends the Fords a few times a year. This year we have been both so busy that we haven't gotten out camping much. We got to June Lake earlier this year and now we got out to Lake Isabella. I had hoped to go on a 3 day 2 night backpacking trip from the Cottonwood Lakes to the Kern River, but decided to switch since Michelle is now pregnant. Maybe Kevin and I will be able to make the backpacking trip later this year before it gets too cold.
This was a really nice relaxing trip to the lake. We got their Friday afternoon in time to get a site, set up the tents and make dinner. Kevin had an 'Ice Cream Ball' that makes ice cream by adding ingredients and ice and shaking it for 45 minutes. This turned out pretty good considering we didn't have anything long enough to scrape the bottom of the container to mix it. It was good enough that we got more ice and did it again Saturday night.
We pretty much hung out by the lake all day Saturday reading and swimming. The water is very stirred up so the visibility is about 2 inches, but it doesn't seem very gross. There is no algae and it doesn't really smell at all. Emmett and the Ford's dog Gracie were having a blast swimming all day. Maverick didn't want to go in the water. After a few hours, I eventually decided to bring Maverick in since I know he can swim and likes fetching balls. He remembered that he likes swimming and started having fun.
Emmett kept swimming up to me while I was on the raft so I decided to pull him up to see how he liked it. I put him on his back so he wouldn't pop the raft with his nails. He seemed to like it and laid down to relax. Michelle was upset that she didn't have the camera so we had to pose for the picture once she got back with the camera.
Even though Kernville is one of my favorite flights, it just wasn't worth it to fly there for camping for the weekend. Someone would still have to drive the Jeep there with supplies and we'd have to carpool around to accommodate the airplane. Next weekend we're flying to San Jose for our friends Kevin and Shelvey's wedding so I'll get my flying in then.
Oh, and here is a picture that Michelle took of a bug that was hanging around our picnic table that looks like a leaf.
This was a really nice relaxing trip to the lake. We got their Friday afternoon in time to get a site, set up the tents and make dinner. Kevin had an 'Ice Cream Ball' that makes ice cream by adding ingredients and ice and shaking it for 45 minutes. This turned out pretty good considering we didn't have anything long enough to scrape the bottom of the container to mix it. It was good enough that we got more ice and did it again Saturday night.
We pretty much hung out by the lake all day Saturday reading and swimming. The water is very stirred up so the visibility is about 2 inches, but it doesn't seem very gross. There is no algae and it doesn't really smell at all. Emmett and the Ford's dog Gracie were having a blast swimming all day. Maverick didn't want to go in the water. After a few hours, I eventually decided to bring Maverick in since I know he can swim and likes fetching balls. He remembered that he likes swimming and started having fun.
Emmett kept swimming up to me while I was on the raft so I decided to pull him up to see how he liked it. I put him on his back so he wouldn't pop the raft with his nails. He seemed to like it and laid down to relax. Michelle was upset that she didn't have the camera so we had to pose for the picture once she got back with the camera.
Even though Kernville is one of my favorite flights, it just wasn't worth it to fly there for camping for the weekend. Someone would still have to drive the Jeep there with supplies and we'd have to carpool around to accommodate the airplane. Next weekend we're flying to San Jose for our friends Kevin and Shelvey's wedding so I'll get my flying in then.
Oh, and here is a picture that Michelle took of a bug that was hanging around our picnic table that looks like a leaf.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
My first annual with N951CC
I just got through my first annual with N951CC and my first annual as an airplane owner. I think I was lucky compared to most new owners, but I still have some squawks to take care of. I was nervous of this annual because I know the engine is starting to develop some issues (leaking from the exhaust valve on #1), and because of financial concerns due to the post I'll publish tomorrow after our party tonight. All of the other cylinders passed inspection with ok compressions, but you can tell the engine is showing its age (2300 hours with 2000 normal Time Between Overhaul TBO). The borescope inspection of the #1 exhaust valve showed no burning so it was allowed to continue in service until the next inspection.
My mechanic found the ailerons were not hitting the stops simultaneously and had to adjust the rigging so that the right aileron hit the up stop as the left hit the bottom stop and vice versa. He also found the elevator cable tension to be too high and had to reduce it a little. All of these things were fairly minor and no major issues were found. I had squawked a bad gyro bearing earlier, but was unsure of which one it was. As we were troubleshooting a burnt out strobe light, it sounded like the turn-coordinator (which was spun up since it is electric and we had the battery turned on) was making the same sound so I sent for an overhaul exchange from Pacific Southwest Instruments. As it turns out, I did my post-maintenance flight today and the gyro noise is still there so it's a different instrument. There are only 2 other gyros in the airplane, the directional gyro (DG) and the attitude indicator (AI).
My mechanic washed the engine once he finished with the rest of the airplane and pulled it out of the hanger and I was able to wash the exterior this morning after my flight. I cleaned the airplane while the interior was removed and I cleaned the carpeting as I installed it. Next time I go out there, I'll clean the plastic interior, the panel, and the seats and it will be just like new.
Below are some pics I took during the annual.
I spent last weekend (including Friday) out at the airport helping my mechanic with the mundane work of removing and replacing inspection panels, seats, and the interior floor carpeting. I also came in and tried to clean out the airplane inside the inspection panes. This was a pretty tough job, but I used 2 accordion type oil fillers from Wal-Mart and duct taped them to my shop vac so I was able to get into to some of the tough areas. I also had the plastic right elevator cap replaced with a new fiberglass one since it was crushed and bent. I was also able to help by removing the wheel pants, cleaning the grease from the rims, replacing a burnt out landing light, and removing the gear and strut fairings.
My mechanic found the ailerons were not hitting the stops simultaneously and had to adjust the rigging so that the right aileron hit the up stop as the left hit the bottom stop and vice versa. He also found the elevator cable tension to be too high and had to reduce it a little. All of these things were fairly minor and no major issues were found. I had squawked a bad gyro bearing earlier, but was unsure of which one it was. As we were troubleshooting a burnt out strobe light, it sounded like the turn-coordinator (which was spun up since it is electric and we had the battery turned on) was making the same sound so I sent for an overhaul exchange from Pacific Southwest Instruments. As it turns out, I did my post-maintenance flight today and the gyro noise is still there so it's a different instrument. There are only 2 other gyros in the airplane, the directional gyro (DG) and the attitude indicator (AI).
My mechanic washed the engine once he finished with the rest of the airplane and pulled it out of the hanger and I was able to wash the exterior this morning after my flight. I cleaned the airplane while the interior was removed and I cleaned the carpeting as I installed it. Next time I go out there, I'll clean the plastic interior, the panel, and the seats and it will be just like new.
Below are some pics I took during the annual.
Just going in starting to get disassembled.
Wings with the inspection plates removed.
Interior removed, inspection plates not removed yet.
Interior with the inspection plates removed.
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