A week into March already???

I'm having trouble getting any air time lately!! All last week was either lousy weather or me having too much going on. Still working too many hours and trying to fit life into the remaining available space. Last weekend was spent on an all-day safety seminar in Wisconsin Rapids, sponsored by Wisconsin Ultralight and Light Sport Aircraft Assoc. Or something like that. Lots of good information on safety and lots of other topics as well. While I was at this event, Peg was at Chris and Ashlee's place visiting. She picked me up at 4:30 and we returned to the kid's place and then headed out to eat at Carlson's Rustic Ridge on Castle Rock Lake. It was a nice evening. We stayed overnight at the kids, left mid-morning to drive home. That afternoon Bryn showed up at Ogema and spent the afternoon and evening with 'pa'.

One of the main speakers on Saturday was Frank Beagle, an ultralighter from the late 70's. Someone had made a slide presentation that included some pictures of Frank with his first ultralight, no wheels on it, basically a hang glider with a dinky engine that could run maybe 45 min. on it's quart gas tank. Some other pics of somewhat newer planes, etc. This guy has been through it all, knows everyone in the sport and still flies a light sport plane. I'm always amazed at people that have an extensive history in whatever it is they're interested in. I'm the opposite, always acquiring a new interest, gathering information about it, joining groups and never knowing anyone, always being the 'newbie'. I consider this behavior of mine to be a character flaw and have learned to let loose of these passing interests, as it doesn't seem to work to force myself to continue with things. I consider motorcycles to be free of this syndrome, as I have had bikes from when I was 15 years old until about 1981, skipped a number of years and picked it up again in 1996, I guess. I doubt I'll ever tire of motorcycles..... As to this airplane gig, I'm thinking it will be a lasting thing as well. In about 1982 I first read of people flying these things and have been drooling and plotting over them ever since. I recently realized that if I'm going to do this, I had better get going on it. I mean, I won't live indefinately and I'm thinking that I want to get into the air as soon as I can and live this dream I've been repressing all these years. So, here I am, once again a total 'newbie' again. But I guess it's better than not flying.......

This evening I went to Merrill to do a few maintainence items on the plane. Didn't accomplish near what I wanted to. The trim tab on the elevator had a few cracks in the .020 thick aluminum it's made of. I took the tab off in anticipation of replacing the aluminum body with the new one I got last weekend. I'll have to take it to work to get the old rivits out, transfer the hole pattern to the new piece, drill it and rivit it to the frame tube. Then I looked at the new spring latches for the cabin side panels. The original ones fall out and the panels can blow off. Well, it turns out that the new latches will need either modification to them or to the cabin panel frame. Oh, well, some other time. I tried to mount the new slip indicator to the dash. I finally found the cordless drill and a drill bit but the drill's battery pack must be flat. Oh, well, next week, maybe. Then I thought I might try to put the marking stripes on the gauges to mark operating ranges. Turns out the gauges are shaped a little differently than the striping kit allows for, etc, etc,. I ended up just making little red line segments for max condition on the gauges. I hope that satisfies the inspector.... So the only thing I really accomplished was to remove the trim tab. Hmmmm......

As always, I'm looking for guest posts on this blog. Please feel free to send me an email with your story, rant, whatever, and I'll see that it gets published on here. So far I've had entries by Peg, Rose and Bryn, I guess. Send me something!!

I gotta go, Carlo