I get there, and he'd parked it willy nilly and crooked on the ramp, just diagonal against the parking Ts. Kind of funny. I get in and fire it up and it sounds like it's only running on 3 cylinders. The normal run up is rough and with a good drop, so I leaned it out and ran it up to burn off any carbon on the plugs. It came back from that and did an almost normal mag drop, nice and smooth-ish, except it still didn't sound like it was running on all 4. Then I went to full power, and that's where the truth kicked in. It started stumbling and losing power, and I could only sustain 1900 RPM. Mag drop there it lost over 400 RPM. I sat there and debated for about 2 minutes. 1900 RPM is not a great amount of power to have on a hot summer day with high density altitude on a 4000' runway, and it definitely sounded like it was missing, and it was a 45 mile flight home in marginal visibility. Now it was over fields, so I wasn't going to die if it quit, but it would sure be a lot more effort to get picked up in some random field between here and there by the one guy still left in town, and no way for me to move the airplane out of the field, and it was just safer and better off being left where it was. So I moved it into a proper parking spot and then left it there to sit on a ramp during the one week of the year that most small airports turn into ghost towns, probably until we get back from Oshkosh to deal with it.
Kaylee came over for awhile to hang out with Molly and me. Her old high school friend Zach C who played Sax with her and was in Encore with her too, is gaining traction as a jazz musician, and he was here in town (normally lives in Washington State) with a sold-out facility for a jazz concert. He came over to her house last night with a couple of her other high school friends, and they all hung out and had a good evening. It's good to be able to do things with friends. :)
Tomorrow is very early, up at 5 am since I have to get gas in the plane before I can head out to Illinois to drop off Stephen and then over to Kansas City with Logan. Weather is hazy but okay, at least.
Morgan is off on her first "adventure" flight weekend. She's down in Nashville now with John, the chief pilot. She talked about the things he didn't do that well or professionally, and every time she or I fly with other pilots, even or especially 'professional' pilots, it's always a little amazing to me at the things they do or don't do sometimes. You always know what you don't do perfectly, you always know what you mess up, and you feel like other people are probably better than you. Spoiler alert--they're usually not, and a lot of times they have more things they need to work on or stop doing or start doing. This fellow is a corporate guy whose time management skills are bad and he keeps showing up late, and not planning for things like time slots or fuel or weather deviations. Among other things. I feel good about how I've taught her and about how she has come up on her own.
Steve is enjoying Oshkosh up there. Cameron's up there with him. Holly was originally going to have me pick up her aunt in Knoxville, but texted that that wasn't happening after all, so that'll save me a trip I wasn't sure how I was going to fit in over the next couple of days. Two trips and then I'll try to head up. Still need to pack. Still not all into it yet. Still feeling weird and off and down and unprepared and that makes it hard to say "hey, let's go have a fun little vacation now!"
5 am wake-up call will come soon, so I guess I'll start winding down.
No comments:
Post a Comment