Add KVCV to the airport map

Michelle and I flew down to Victorville today to look at new TVs. Currently we have an overhead projector that works ok on movies that aren't real dark and as long as all of the windows are covered with black-out coverings. Now that we'll be having a kid, it probably won't work out to well to have the room pitch black while trying to watch tv. This means we're looking for a new TV. Since we're used to the 99" screen we have right now, it'll be hard to step down in size.

Originally I was thinking about getting a plasma, but I can see them flicker and it drives me crazy. This leaves us with LCD (since we want to hang it on the wall). I've been looking at online reviews and seeing some at peoples houses and narrowed it down between the Samsung LN52A650 and the Sharp Aquos LC-52D64U, which are both 52" LCDs. Michelle's principal had the Sharp at their house and it looked great.

As I was reading reviews, it seemed that the Samsung had an edge in picture quality and features, but was more glossy and susceptible to glares. Since we have our house set up to eliminate all light for the projector, there should be no glare issue. Also, Best Buy and Circuit City both were out of the Sharp model and do not have the new model in stock that apparently became available this past January.

As I was shopping for prices, it was obvious that Amazon.com was by far the cheapest vendor and there was a lot of good reviews for them. Since you can't see what the TVs really look like from the internet, we flew down to Victorville to see them at Best Buy. It was a bit bumpy on the way down, but I was cleared through the Edwards restricted airspace above 6000 ft (I was at 7500 ft anyways). Million Air had a really nice Dodge Minivan courtesy car. It didn't cost anything and they didn't take a tip. They even told me to not put any gas in it! I feel bad since I didn't do any business with them, but used their car; I'll get over it quickly. The way back was much smoother and we made it home with 1.4 hours on the tach.

The final results, we're getting the Samsung LN52A650 with a tilt wall mount. This way if light glare is an issue, we'll be able to angle it down to avoid the lights. So far there has been a little glitch with Amazon, and I don't think this will work out as intended, but will still end up good. They had a deal for 2 years of no interest if you sign up for an Amazon credit card. The problem is, the limit is so low it doesn't even cover the cost of the TV. Amazon doesn't allow you to split an order between two credit cards either. After talking to customer support, they suggested buying a gift card with my personal credit card, then applying that to the purchase so that the balance that needs to get applied to the Amazon credit card is lower than the limit. Now I'm just waiting for the gift card I had emailed to myself to show up...

I'll post again once I have the TV up and running.

P.S. We also found out we'll probably have to update our receiver to handle the new HD cables. The plan for now is to have the S-video from the receiver and the HDMI directly from the satellite box both go to the TV so we can avoid HD on the receiver for the time being; one thing at a time.

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.