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.

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.

Our Airports: A way to show where I've been

I came across this site a few times before and thought it was interesting. I can mark all of the airports I've been to, flown into commercial or private or whatever, but I'll use it to mark airports I landed at as the pilot.

I just started playing with it and only have a few airports listed now that I remember off the top of my head. Some day I'll go back in and complete the list as well as try to keep it up to date. What would really be nice is if I could attach pictures to each icon to show what we did there. Maybe I'll have to re-create this as a Google map with landmarks and photos instead to get there.

http://www.ourairports.com/big-map.html#lat=39.34795,lon=-104.7353,zoom=4,type=Terrain,member=Jayson.Brouchoud

UPDATE:
I started to mess around with creating my own Google Map. This is what I have so far.


View Larger Map

Click here to bring it up in a separate window.

The blue markers are for airports that I have landed at and the red markers will be for pictures that were taken while flying. I don't have even close to all of the airports included and I only have 1 in-flight photo so far. By using the Google map, I'll be able to associate text, photos, and videos with airports as well as include links to photo albums associated with that trip. I am hoping this will develop into a geographically orientated diary (versus chronologically).

Michelle feels like a defective typewriter...

We got the confirmation on Monday July 14th when we went in for the first exam/ultrasound. Michelle is officially spaghetti sauce, I mean prego. We had been expecting this and had to play down while Michelle wasn't drinking during our vacation back for Laura's wedding last month. Some of you weren't too fooled, but now you know officially. Well not really since as I type this we haven't yet told anybody. This will go into draft until we tell family and friends, then I'll post it.

Not being able to think of a better way to tell everybody, I'm going to combine two ideas from Mark (Michelle's brother). First he had Tierney wear a t-shirt to announce Norah, and second he had a shirt that said I love hot moms. We'll see how long it takes my family to figure out from my I love hot moms t-shirt. Michelle's family will have it a little more difficult, but still shouldn't have a problem since they are so movie savvy. Her's says I feel like a defective typewriter. This is a quote from Grease, the rest of the line is I skipped a period.

The due date is February 23, 2009. Now our families might also have a better idea of why we've been saying we won't be home for x-mas this year. We'll be busy getting our crap together and won't have the funds since it'll be going into getting ready for a kid. Here is a link to the 1st ultrasound if you'd like to see it. The next appointment isn't until we get back from the Brouchoud family reunion in Michigan.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jayson.brouchoud/Baby?authkey=RVDuy5S0VIQ

Attic Ladder, July 2008

It was obvious before we bought our house, that we wouldn't have enough storage room. They don't build basements out here unless you have build it yourself. Even at that, the builders are not very familiar with building them so you'll be paying for their learning, and letting them learn on your house. Our house is pretty small, but we bought it since we got such a good price.

In an effort to create more space we've decided to build a carport between our house and the neighbor to the east. His driveway is already paved to our property so we'll just be paving to match him. This will take a car out of the garage and free up the garage for storage. I've been trying to convince Michelle that this will not actually add any space since the garage was intended to become more of a working/workshop area.

Looking for other ways to add space, we decided to put in an attic ladder and put some flooring on the west side of the house. The roof is really low up there, but there is plenty of room to crawl around on the floor to move boxes around. We won't put stuff up there that we use regularly, but all my beer stuff, luggage, ski stuff, x-mas stuff, etc will be able to go up there freeing up our closets. This picture is pretty dark, but it shows you that after I move the satellite cables to another spot and floor this area, that you'll gain a bit of storage space. This is 1 of two spaces I plan on using up there.

Originally I was going to go cheap and get the cheapest stair since we won't use it much, but considering the weight limit was only 10 pounds more than I weigh, I shouldn't be carrying much up there at a time. It was only $40.00 more to buy an aluminum version that was rated at 350 pounds. After measuring the stairs and mapping our the floor in the attic and the it's corresponding ceiling in the the hallway, I mapped out the hole and cut away the dry wall. The idea is that I'm going to mount the ladder a little high such that I'll mount the drywall back up to the bottom of the stairs and that will be flush with the other drywall. This way I won't have to try to texture and paint the door to match the ceiling.

There were a lot of wires in the way and I was careful not to cut them. I was able to pull most of them out of the way, but there is one that is pulled tight across the opening. I'll eventually cut that wire and splice it in a junction box and extend it's length to go around the opening. I'll also use that box to splice off a light and switch for the attic.

I framed the rough opening using instructions from another manufacturers instructions and after hanging from the each side of the opening, I was convinced that the opening was supported and more than strong enough.

At this point it was 10:30 pm or so I didn't bother calling friends over to help. I was able to convince Michelle that she could go up in the attic and nail the ladder into place while I held it for her. The ladder came with some temporary mounting straps so all she had to do was bend the straps over and put a nail through the hole. She had no problem doing this and I was able to finish the final positioning and nailing. Here is a picture of the ladder in place with the straps before I shimmed it into place.

Here is a picture of the door with the drywall back on. I ran into some serious issues putting the drywall on. I figured just putting screws into the wood stringers of the ladder would be fine. What I didn't realize is that the screws were longer than the wood stringer and when I drove the screw in, they went through the stringer and hit the metal where the ladder is attached the door. This was forcing the ladder and door to split apart. This made me realize how weak the ladder was attached to the door. It used narrow rivets through the wood! Nervous that the ladder was no longer well attached to the main piano hinge that it pivots down from, I drilled new holes that went through the hinge plate and door and added three more bolts. This really strengthened up the door, but I had to make big cutouts out of drywall. The trim I have will cover most of these holes, but I'll have to do some patch work.

I'm obviously not done yet, I'll post more when it's finished. What I still have planned to do is to put up a protective edge around the drywall border so it doesn't get damaged, add trim to the door and ceiling to clean up the lines, and patch and paint it to match the ceiling.

Ridgecrest Flooding Sunday July 20th, 2008

It didn't seem like it rained that long (only an hour or 2), but it did rain pretty heavy. All the rain that fell in the mountains made it's way into the valley and created a flash flood through the city. Here is a link to a video of the flooding. Most of this video was shot 2 blocks from our house at Gateway and Church.



http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-48192



We decided to walk around and let the dogs play a bit. Here are some pictures that we took. Notice how close our backyard was to being flooded!









We were also watching a co-worker's pool. I didn't think about it, but he called and asked me to check the water level and drain some water if it was too high. After the water level in the streets went down so we could drive again, which was about 10pm, we went over there. Sure enough the water was about 8 inches too high. The worst part was that his flowerbed overflowed and put a bunch of dirt in the pool. It was so murky that you couldn't see the bottom, even in the shallow end.



We put a hose onto the filter output and let the filter run for a few hours. After seeing that it was only half way, we decided to go home and leave it running. Michelle went back over there at 2am to turn the filter off and the water was finally down to the correct level. Filtering the water for those 4 hours also cleared up most of the dirt that was in the pool. The next day I went to check on it again to see how it was doing. The water level was good, but now it was green. You could tell that the algae had started to grow. Good think the owner would be back later in the day to add some chlorine. Too bad I don't have any pics of the pool :(

Camping in June Lake, July 10-13 2008

Michelle and I usually like to get out and do a bunch of camping and back packing each summer. Unfortunately, we've been way too busy this summer. With 2 trips to the Midwest, our trip to Oceano and Santa Paula, a wedding and much more, we just had a hard time to find any free time. We finally managed to get out and go camping in June Lake with Kevin and Sarah Ford the second weekend in July.



We mostly wanted to escape the heat of summer and relax. We've also been having a lot of smoke in our valley and wanted to get up to some clear air. It was cooler up there, but as our luck would have it, the smoke from some other fires was filling that valley and they were just as smokey as we were. We camped on Silver Lake near June Lake just north of Mammoth. We left Thursday night to ensure we'd get a campsite since it is first come first serve. It was a good thing we left early since there were only 2 sites left when we got there.







I almost forgot to write about the trip up. As usual we carpooled in the jeep to ride together and save gas. We've done this a few times before, but this time we also had Gracie, or better known as Gracilicous, who then became The Lish which quickly became Da Lish which is Kevin and Sarah's new golden retriever. We packed the car top carrier, loaded the gear, and had dogs on laps on the way up since we were WAY over packed. I don't think we'll be able to carpool anymore :(



Friday morning we got up and went to check out the lake. It was very nice, but there were people fishing everywhere. We didn't want to bother them with our dogs so we kept looking for a free spot. We were told by the camp manager before we came here that they were dog friendly and you could swim in the lake. They didn't tell us that there were people fishing every 5 feet so you'd have to be a big jerk and go swimming right were everybody is fishing if you wanted to swim. Eventually we went to where the stream enters the lake, we found a nice quiet spot just up the stream. We put the long leashes on the dog close enough so they could play in the water and we set up day camp.



We pretty much hung out and did nothing all day. Once and a while we'd let the dogs off leash to go play fetch with the tennis balls in the water. Emmett can't get enough of the water and Maverick seems to enjoy swimming, but is afraid of it. Once he's swimming he's fine and will keep going, but he hates that first step. Gracie did great for her first time in the water.



I wonder if Emmett likes the water?





We had to let them off the leash for a bit so they could play.



We pretty much did the same on Saturday - nothing.



Sunday we got an early start to come home so we could do something with the day. As it turned out, leaving at 9am, wasn't early enough. On the way home, there was a detour around Independence because of a mudslide. By the time we got there, traffic was backed up for miles. The backup didn't start too much earlier and we would probably have made it through if we had left at 8, but now we were stuck with everybody else. The wait was about 3 hours before they were able to clear the road and divert the flood waters away from the highway.

4th of July 2008 trip to Oceano and Santa Paula in N951CC

Since this last year when we knew that Michelle would not be teaching during summer school, we had planned on taking a bunch of trips this summer. Once I bought our airplane in December, those trips became a bunch of flying trips. Unfortunately, we've been so busy that it's been hard for us to get out and have some fun. With the 4th of July holiday and the extra day off from work, Michelle and I decided to try to fly to Oceano for the weekend, again.

We've tried to get there before, but the fog has prevented us from ever getting there. This time there was fog in the morning, but it was forcasted to burn off so we waited for that and checked the visibilities due to the 2 fires burning near us. The flight briefing came back with Oceano fog lifting and visibilities poor, but plenty good to make the trip.

The air was nice and smooth out of Inyokern and we flew south to California City before turning west over Tehachapi, to avoid the temporary flight restriction (TFR) area due to the Piute fire. The smoke was blowing north-east and was the main source for the smoke in our valley. Once we were south of that fire, the air cleared up and the visibility was great. The flight was incredibly smooth and right on time with 1.5 hours enroute to Oceano(L52). With no fog in sight, I flew an upwind leg over the airport and entered into the landing pattern after flying over the beach. The runway looks short since I've been spoiled with very long runways, but we had no problem getting in.

It was a nice sight to see $5.08 for avgas so we filled the tanks before tying down the airplane for the weekend. The airport provides a nice little camping area for pilots and we pitched our tent. We had to be sure to close the windows when we left though because they watered the campground daily from noon-2pm. With cheap gas come expensive tie-downs. The price was $10/day for tie-down and $10/day for camping with no mention of the tie-down being waived for campers as is the norm.

Once we were settled in, we walked to a nearby diner for lunch. The Rock-and-Roll Diner is two train cars attached together for the dining area. They had excellent food and their BBQ was over a Oak (or Hickory I forgot) wood fire. After lunch we walked down to the beach and watched some kite surfers, it's amazing to watch how high they can jump into the air with those kites. I'd definitely buy one of those if I lived in the area. This is the only beach in California where they allow cars on the beach. There are cars, trucks, and RVs as far as you can see on the beach and you can get a permit to camp on the beach with your RV as well. Off road vehicles are also allowed on the sand dunes just south of oceano. They are pretty hard core sand dunes so SUVs won't make it, but 4 wheelers and dune buggies are everywhere.

After wandering around for awhile, we headed back to the airport and ate dinner (beef stew back packing meal). Trying to start a fire was a terrific effort since the wood was incredibly green. Even using the grill to start logs proved useless. Eventually we found some cut branches that were pretty thick near the bathroom and I chopped them up with our little hatchet and soon we had a fire.

On Friday we wandered around for awhile and ate lunch at a little BBQ stand, we eventually decided to take the bus to Pismo Beach. After realizing we missed the bus at the stop right outside the airport, we decided to walk to the next bus stop. The next stop is where we needed to connect to a different bus to get to Pismo so maybe it was on a different schedule. After over a mile of walking, we finally got to the bus stop. The sign didn't label the 4th as a day the bus wasn't running, but after calling the hotline for a schedule, they said it was not running. So we walked another mile plus to Pismo Beach.

It was another very nice beach, but without the cars on the this one. We walked around for awhile and decided we were still hungry so Michelle got a brownie strawberry shortcake and we walked back to the Lion's club so I could try their tri-tip. Very good again and this time they had a sax quartet playing. We listened to them for awhile, then headed back to Oceano taking the beach instead of the roads this time. We found a little salt water taffy shop next to the beach so we decided to stop in and get some taffy for Kevin and Sarah. I know they love taffy and they're back in Inyokern watching our dogs so they definitely deserve some taffy.

After resting for awhile at the campground, we walked to a fine Italian restaurant and ate some pizza, which was very good; the thinnest pizza I ever ate. We took our folding chairs to the sand dunes and set up a spot to watch the fireworks. Once it got dark people started shooting fireworks. Pismo Beach was firing their fireworks off the pier, but unfortunately, we were far away and even though we could see them fine, they were as spectacular from that far away. There were plenty of other fireworks to watch though since there were 40 billion people on the beach and half of them were launching pretty cool fireworks. At about 10, most of the fireworks died down and we headed for bed.

Saturday morning the fog had rolled in so our flight to Santa Paula was delayed be a few hours, but we eventually got out just fine. We flew down to Santa Barbara and south over the coast and around to Ojai to avoid another fire TFR just north of Santa Barbara. The Santa Paula airport is right next to a mountain ridge so you have to fly a tight pattern. This ended up being one of my worst landings, which I won't bore you with more than to say something is screwy with that airport on final and over the runway itself and it wasn't just me. It seemed that almost everybody that came in had a hard time as well. Of course this wonderful landing was made in front of Michelle's sister Lisa who is already not to fond of flying in smaller airplanes.

We had a great visit with Lisa and Matt and were able to even get out and see the June Brides in concert. Concert is used pretty liberally here since it was in a carport in the back of someone's house. It was still entertaining and worth seeing. I love Lisa's new place since it has so many extra hidden spaces and rooms. There is a soon to be pottery room in the garage, lots of storage, a room for her therapy business and a loft over the garage for the perfect office / guest bedroom. The front yard was huge with all sorts of flowers and birds.

Like all vacations, we had to leave Sunday morning. We were planning to rush out bright and early to beat the desert heat, thermals, and winds, but the fog at Santa Paula forced us to take our leisurely time before heading to the airport. After eating a muffin at the terminal, we took off for Inyokern. I'm convinced there is something out of whack with the airport since the takeoff was a lot of fun as well. Air traffic control was definitely out numbered today since it took me almost 15 minutes before Hawthorne radio got back to me and I was able to activate my flight plan. I was never able to get flight following on our hour flight back to Inyokern over 4 different approach and center sectors since they were swamped.

The flight was incredibly smooth until Lancaster where there was only a few very light bumps to about the California City area. From there we started our descent and had just a little bit more chop. In general, it was very nice flight considering we were coming in just after noon in July in the desert. By 1:30 we were home and the dogs could stop whining with excitement to see us. Another thanks to Kevin and Sarah for watching them.

See the complete album of pictures here.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jayson.brouchoud/4thOfJuly2008/photo#s5220064572343079874