Hopping

Steve, me, Nathan and AE met up at Kokomo around 8:30 am.  Steve and Nathan took off in the Aerostar, and me & AE waited for the Cheyenne to get gassed up, then took off about a half hour later, and we all went to Washington County, Pennsylvania, which is by Pittsburgh.  I went up to 25,000', and beat the Aerostar by about ten minutes.  When I called in for landing, Nathan got on the radio and muttered "Show Off".  Lol  The weather was nice, the plane had a couple of maintenance issues and that's why I was taking it over there.  For one thing, the engines would randomly lose torque (power).  Flying along and your right or left engine would drop off.  Not super comforting, every time I twitch like I'm getting ready to do something, but then it comes back and is fine.  You wait for the one where it's not fine, so you never really relax, although once we figured out what it is, that helped.  It's something to do with fuel flow, EGT and the computer.  So I shut off part of the engine computer, meaning I now had to monitor and control the temps and such manually, but it quit doing that losing power thing.  There was also an acrid smell in the cockpit on the last flight, which we found to be a fan that popped a circuit breaker.  Anyway, so taking that over for maintenance with Nathan and Steve chasing us in the Aerostar.

On the way home, we were all hungry, so the natural plan is to stop at Muncie for breakfast at lunchtime. Bacon, eggs, toast, a little mini chocolate chip pancake...good stuff.  Came back to Kokomo, got a few things ready, and then went up to work on the Angle of Attack Indicator in the Aerostar, flying around to set/reset that.  Unfortunately we couldn't get it to work, so after a half hour we landed.  I then pulled out the Champ, and D wanted to go up and do his first tailwheel lesson, and do some spins, so that's what we did.  Everyone's reaction to the first spin is usually some version of "WHOA" or "HOLY CRAP". It's always a little shocking, and for some people it's a fun shocking and for other people it's a scary shocking.  For him it was fun.  We did several, and then came in and did some takeoffs and landings.  He's good with machinery and his feet, so he picked it up quickly.  It was a nice end to the day.

I came home, where Kaylee was visiting, doing some homework here, petting her cat.  Did Ann's last medicine and bedtime stuff, and then me, Steve and Kaylee went out to a late dinner at Olive Garden before going over to IWU to look at her dorm room. They'd decorated it up with lights and Christmas stuff and she wanted us to see it, so at 9 pm we went over there to do that.  Got home late again, tired, and fell asleep pretty early.  Busy but good day.  I did take a few other photos, nothing stunning, but this is the only one I have downloaded at the moment...