Two Pilots & an LSW: Mondays

Ring or no ring, my head did *not* like the 30 degree temp drop, big baro pressure drop, and influx of wet, heavy clouds and rain. Fortunately I have things to fix that asap in the middle of the night without any noticeable effects in the morning. :)

Steve and I drove to Frankfort and took the Cirrus out to Washington, Iowa, to pick up a truck driver named Jeff who originally said he'd be there at noon their time. Then before we left he said it would be closer to 1. We decided to go anyway, so we could go get some food while we were there. No problem.

It was IFR here, and it was low, low IFR there. Minimums. So I went ahead and got gas here even though I didn't technically need it, but why not. We take off, pop in the clouds, I'm hand flying like I usually do, get ready to level off and kick on the autopilot, and it's not doing anything and an alert message pops up. It's a communication failure with software, it says. No flight director, no autopilot, no ESP working. So I'm hand flying along while Steve googles, and basically it says a shop is going to be required to fix this. Well, great. My original intent was just to keep hand flying there, pick up the guy, fly home, and then fix it. And then it sort of occurs to me that I'm like 10 minutes from Frankfort, I can just turn around, shoot the approach back into Frankfort, and be late but take the 340 instead. So I tell ATC it's not an emergency but I need to return to Frankfort. Shoot the approach in, land, and Steve says "why don't we try rebooting it and see if that works". Now, neither of us actually thought that would work based on what the error was and what it said it needed done to fix it. I leave the plane running and reboot all the avionics, let it sit off for awhile, and bring it back up.

And it works. So I re-file, take off again, Grissom wasn't even mad, and head over to Iowa. Everything is working fine, and now the weather over there lifted to normal IFR instead of low, which is lovely too.

We are a little later now though, so now we're there at 12:30 and he's supposed to be there at 1. I top off with self-serve gas because their gas is super cheap, and then we take the crew car, run into town, hit a Jimmy Johns type sandwich shop, bring it back to the airport, and finish eating at 12:57 pm. Long story short, he doesn't get there until almost 3 pm their time.

Meanwhile, I had a guy who came from Georgie to do a Citabria checkout with me at Kokomo. We were originally supposed to meet at like 3 pm. It's now 4 pm our time and I'm still in Iowa thanks to this fellow who was supposed to just be a pick up and go home and is not. This agitates me. I dislike it when people don't manage their time and then affect my time and Steve's time and guy from Georgia's time and...

Anyway. I finally get this guy back to Delphi by 5:30 pm, get to Kokomo by 5:50 pm, and then Georgia guy and I go fly his new to him Citabria purchased by the local AOS shop. We were preflighting it and I mentioned that it looked like someone already took it on grass as there was grass in the tailwheel. He said that was his brother. The day Brennan had his gear up in the RG, the airport told us that the Citabria lost control on a takeoff and went off into the grass and did a groundloop. Well, it was the new owner's brother, who has 15 hours of tailwheel time and lost it on a normal day takeoff. Like I said, this fellow has 150 hours of T-6 time so I sort of assumed a Citabria checkout would be a joke. I am going to stop assuming that. We flew for about 1.5, until it was sunset. We pushed the plane back away and then I hopped in the Cirrus and flew it back to Frankfort, put it away, and then drove home, getting home at like 9:30 pm. Steve had come with me to Iowa, Delphi, and then I landed at Kokomo to fly with Citabria guy, and Steve had Kaylee come pick him up there so he didn't have to stay there and wait on me, then go to Frankfort and drive back like I did. At the time I thought it would just save him an hour or so, but in the end it was a good thing he did that, because it saved him a lot more than one hour.

Got home and did the receipts and logbooks and tracking sheets and billing, deposited a couple of checks, and went from there.

Today is a day off. I have spent the morning writing up email updates on all our school airplanes to send out to the club members, just to keep them informed and to let them know we actually do work, constantly in fact, to keep our planes in good shape. After hearing about the maintenance at where Morgan is working...and the environment, and the instructors...I feel even better about our little place. In every regard.

Kaylee got in a consultation yesterday for her tooth, and she's scheduled to go in for the root canal next Monday. In the meantime she is in a lot of pain, couldn't sleep the other night, and I don't know how they can make people wait this long. Are there that many people in critical shape every hour of every day for the next week? This is how I ended up in trouble. I don't need her ending up in trouble too. She's still recovering from being sick, too, has blocked up ears. Today she went back to work, and didn't feel like it, and didn't feel good, and I didn't blame her. I sent her a text as she drove out, trying to encourage her for the day, but I know she is not having a good time right now and I wish I could help.

Steve and I are working on all we can do to finalize deals on the RG, RV7A, and hopefully T-6. Waiting on some paperwork from someone else on the first two, but no reason there should be snags. On the third, a clock on people answering or we move on, this week.

We got new cameras for the house, and we're enjoying them. Cameras that show the front, back, and decks of our and Kaylee's houses. It's smart technology so it can recognize faces, tells us "Steve is walking on the deck" for example. The funny one was when Molly ran across Kaylee's deck to go inside, and it popped up with "A skunk is running across the deck. This is unusual activity". Molly is black and white, but she would be offended if she knew it called her a skunk. Ha. We're fine-tuning the settings so it doesn't go off every time a car goes by out front, for example. So don't pick your nose around the outside of our house anywhere. You can do it inside if you must, no cameras in here. ;)