I had to rest for awhile after that. The winds were howling today, which helped because my two students canceled. That gave me time to take my time, rest, get to the store, rest, do laundry, rest, rest, do dishes, rest. Finally around 7 pm the winds were supposed to calm down, so I went out to the airport to test fly the T-6.
I did the world's slowest pre-flight. The airplane had been torn apart totally and deeply, engine and all, so I went over everything very carefully. The first flight post-annual on anything is always a little riskier because of that. So I took my time. The winds were finally calming down below 30 knots, below 20 knots, to something I felt was worth messing with. After I pulled the prop through 9 times, I had to rest again. Cleaned the windshield, put the weight back in the back of the airplane, pulled it out of the hangar, enjoyed the 70 degree day and breeze. She fired up nice and smooth, ran great.
I took off, and flew around for about 40 minutes. I did repeated takeoffs and landings to test out the CHTs (which were fine), everything ran great, and I left the canopy wide open and just soaked up the late evening sun and the warm breeze. I found myself not coughing, interestingly enough, relaxed and happy. Even made some sweet 3-point landings out of it. ;)
Got home and wrote up a maintenance report for the guys on everything in the plane, and A HUGE SPIDER WALKED PAST. HUGE. Not kidding huge. Steve says "Yeah yeah" on his way over and then gets over there and says "Oh. That IS huge. You have anything bigger to get it with?" I'd TOLD him to get more than a napkin. It was gross and huge and he squished it and I have to go do something else now. I can face potential mechanical issues on a newly annualed plane. I cannot face a spider big enough that I could identify it in a line-up from across the room.
Gah.
So back to happier things.
BOB with his pretty prop hubs back installed
A girl and her wing. ;)
Like I said on FB. We're baaaaaack. ;)
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