On a Wing and a Whim

Signs I Married a Combat Vet, #82

2012-01-19T15:48:00.002-06:00

His entire summary of the truck dumping all its transmission fluid as I was commuting to work: "Hey, it's not like you hit a land mine. I don't care about the truck, as long as you're fine."

...

Signs he married a pilot, #152

The mechanic says I saved the gearbox by stopping as soon as the transmission started malfunctioning. (I didn't; I got the truck out of the intersection first. Close enough.) He complimented Calmer Half by saying "Most people don't have the sense to stop right away, and end up trashing their vehicles. You've got a good wife."

I just blinked at Calmer Half when he told me this, vaguely offended and startled, and replied, "Of course I pulled over! First thing you always do when you get a strange engine noise is nose on the horizon and check your gauges, throttle and mixture, mags and carb heat. And if you can't fix it, you land as soon as practical!"

FAA - Feds Against Avians

2012-01-07T09:12:00.010-06:00

Let me introduce you to a bird few, if any, of you have ever actually seen, despite being five feet tall, with a wingspan of seven and a half feet: the whooping crane. Tallest bird in North America, and one of the most endangered, this ghost-white bird is one of the Things We Are Doing Right. In the winter 1941-1942, when my plane was only a few months old, the population reached its lowest ebb, with only 21 birds surviving and all of its migration lost - cooped inside a small refuge, clinging on like a last remnant before joining faded photographs and a few stuffed trophies in a museum.

They've gotten better, with the help of a lot of people, a lot of effort, and a lot of work - but bringing a population back from that brink is not something that you can click "like" on facebook, repost and feel it's all tidied up now. This is work that has taken decades, and will take decades more. As of 2011, there are 414 whooping cranes living in the wild. Even better, we have established more than one population, and given them migration routes again.

How do you teach a bird to migrate? Same way you teach young men and women to be honest, upright citizens, strong and free: you have to show them by example. They tried to raise whooping cranes with Sandhill Cranes, so they could learn - but the chicks imprinted on the wrong species, and failed to mate and raise families of their own. So, each year, chicks that have been raised by humans in whooping crane costume (so they don't imprint on the wrong species) learn to follow an ultralight as it taxis up and down the grass, then on short hops around their home site, and finally, out on the long journey from Wisconsin to Florida.

This is working. I don't mean that in the "The first run trial seems promising" sort of way, I mean that the birds are, despite predation and accidents, migrating on their own, mating, trying to raise chicks (mostly failing due to parental inexperience), and succeeding - teaching the few chicks that survive to adulthood to fly the migration with them. (There are also other sites where birds have been transported but not taught to migrate, in the hopes that they'll be a genetic reservoir if something (avian flu) should happen to the main population.)

Well, this is working - except that the FAA got its knickers in a twist last year, and decided to investigate Operation Migration, the fine dedicated folks who take the time and effort each year to teach the cranes the migration path, flying in ultralights while herding cranes all the way down. After all, technically their ultralights they use for long-distance flying are now under the Light Sport Aircraft category instead, a category that the FAA wants to forbid flying for hire. (Like ObamaCare, it's a badly written blanket regulation that's being riddled with exemptions instead of just taking it out.) The Wisconsin Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) realized there was nothing to gain from trying to ground Operation Migration, and possibly a species driven extinct to satisfy a badly thought out bureaucratic rule. They promptly decided that they were going to Take No Action, and put that in writing - essentially refusing to modify the rule to fit reality, but refusing to prosecute reality and drive a species back toward extinction through enforcing the rule.

Happy ending in an over-regulated environment? Not so fast. You see, the FSDOs are like little kingdoms, with the US divided between themselves - and they don't believe in playing well with each other, much less the flying public. So the Alabama & Northwest Florida FSDO decided that it is not bound by the Wisconsin FSDO's investigation, and launched one of their own against each and every pilot in Operation Migration. The migration this year has been interrupted, birds penned in Alabama, while bureaucrats make themselves feel important through obstruction and obfuscation. Way to go, assholes.

If you'd like to help, please go to Operation Migration, read their release, and then go to their Guestbook and leave a comment urging the FAA to stop interfering. The comments, both by quotes and by amount, will be bundled and presented as public support for Operation Migration. The only pressure that a bureaucrat may fear is public pressure that might affect funding - and in an election year, the more helpful comments made and publicity of idiocy given, the more public pressure can be brought against the FAA to remember that driving whooping cranes into extinction is not going to win them favors or funding.

Source of numbers: http://whoopingcrane.com/flock-status/flock-status-2011-may/

In the News

I was wrong

2012-01-05T21:58:00.003-06:00

Calmer Half has amazing reserves of grace and calm, running deep through his character. I forget this from time to time - familiarity makes more highlight of the day to day sprinkled with awful puns and truly atrocious limericks.

On the other hand, after petulantly informing him that dinner was not wonderful, and I'm completely burned out on onions, and not finding much positive to say, I sat and glowered at my computer while he thoughtfully took a cuppa downstairs instead of taking the perfect opportunity for a pointless domestic conflict.

Half an hour later, he came back upstairs in search of another cup of tea. I rose, and took the opportunity to sheepishly confess that I'd just tossed all of dinner and the prior lunch back up into the toilet, wasn't feeling too hot (downright shivering cold, as a matter of fact), and it had not a thing to do with his cooking. But I still don't want anything that tastes like onion for a good long while.

Fearing no contagion, he hugged me, informed my stubborn butt how long I had before I will be herded to a doctor, and offered nice bland oatmeal. Taking no offense at the utter revulsion in stomach and face at the thought of more food, he told me he loved me, and left my standoffish I-feel-bad-don't-touch-me self alone at the computer. No gloating, not even a "don't grouch at me when it's all you" or "See, dinner really was fine." Just - gentle understanding. Here I am working on being scrupulously fair and acknowledging when I'm wrong, and he's all the way past that to easy forgiveness.

I understand intellectually just fine that someone who can say in that particularly dry tone "Tracer fire not only tells the enemy where you are, it's also flammable - and bush fires are no respecter of sides" is not a man who's going to be particularly easily perturbed by the little disasters of civilian life. But to casually walk by the thrown gauntlet of grouchy, touchy wife and gently defuse the unexploded bomb of coming-down-sick temper, is still a surprise to me. I *heart* Calmer half - he makes me aspire to be a better person.

I think I'll tell him, as soon as I finish swinging past the bathroom and discussing breakfast with the toilet.

How to jump-start an airplane

2012-01-01T08:39:00.003-06:00

I went out to the airport to go fly with my vacation time a couple days ago, but I got to talking to a gent about how I flew my plane down from Alaska (He's looking at flying his cub up). Then I went, but it was a little too windy for me to feel comfortable with my rusty skills. Then it was far too windy. Finally, a bright sunny day, clear below 12000, light winds. I went to the airport, did a very thorough preflight, gassed the plane, checked the fuel again, pushed her out, and pulled the starter... only to have the prop barely turn over, with all the vigor of my morning wakeup on vacation.

Yet one more reason to fly more often - if you don't, like on a car, the battery runs down.

How do you jump an airplane? Well, you can handprop 'em. This one will even do it, and my neighbor in his 152, fresh back from a flight, offered. I, being relatively unfamiliar and knowing my plane has weak brakes, declined.

If you have a battery up front in the engine compartment, you can easily pull the battery out easily and put it on a charger. But my battery is in the back of my baggage compartment, penalizing me with weight of very heavy starter wire for not having swapped my 13-pound alternator out for a lightweight and expensive plane power one, and not changing my huge, heavy, modified tractor starter (no kidding, these things started life on tractors) for an expensive, lightweight skytec starter. This means it's a pain to get out. I figured that was my best option, but it wasn't.

Instead, the line guys came out with their electric golf cart, the one with a tow bar sized for a 747 that they use to move cessnas around. I tied down and chocked my plane, and they crawled in and attached the jumper cables. Then, one flipped the golf cart seat up to reveal a bank of batteries. Never get into a wreck with an electric golf cart - they make look flimsy, but there's a heck of a lot of ballast under the seat!

One pointed to the other, and said, "Each cell provides six volts. So, find out what their electrical system is - twelve volts, ma'am? Then put that on this post here, for two cells. You can charge or jump start up to a 36-volt system with this."

It worked, too. Of course, then I had a running airplane, and was holding the brakes while they moved the golf cart away (remember that part about tied down and chocked? The cart was tucked behind my wing and in front of my horizontal stabilizer in order to reach the battery), then untied and unchocked my plane. Don't try this with just one person!

I flew for an hour, recharging the batteries of airplane and soul, and came in as the sun was a mere finger-width off the horizon. The line guys refused offers of pizza, beer, or takeout food, and told me with a grin, "Just have a great new year!"

Wind

2011-12-29T19:40:00.002-06:00

Went to the airport today, and walked up to my airplane sitting under the bright blue sky. I checked the fuel and found a little water, checked the oil and found all was well, and did a thorough preflight. On the other hand, I haven't flown in two months, and the windsock was varying between straight out and hanging at twenty degrees away from the pole. It was straight down the runway - but the longer I go between flying, the less wind it takes to be too much.

So I didn't fly today - I'll check tomorrow, if the wind is calmer.

Soundtrack

2011-12-27T18:46:00.002-06:00

Following Tam and Daddybear's lead, in lieu of content, a list of common songs heard coming from my computer. Grabbed from the random playlist, because I don't keep tracking software on music.

1. The Eighth Square - The CruxShadows
2. WinterSouls - Diary of Dreams
3. Lucky One - Allison Krause and Union Station
4. Where Rainbows Never Die - The Steeldrivers
5. Wake of Magellan - Savatage
6. Leather - Tori Amos
7. We're in This Together - NIN
8. Rico - Angry Salad
9. Summer - Bel Canto
10. No Ordinary Morning - Chicane
11. Find You're Gone - Wolfsheim
12. Valkyrie (Rise of the Walcyrge - Dreamside Remix) - The Cruxshadows
13. Forever - Bruderschaft
14. Black Heart - Edge of Dawn
15. Ghosts of Mississippi - The SteelDrivers
16. Solitude - VNV Nation
17. Pray For Love - Edge of Dawn
18. Saltwater - Chicane
19. Thornes & Brambles - Abney Park
20. Vale of Plenty - Hanz Zimmer - Black Hawk Down Soundtrack

Yeah, if you were wondering, Calmer Half and I don't see ear to ear on music. Heck, what I consider folks in awesome clubbing fashion he thinks are a good sign that the gun should already be out and aimed, while looking for an exit. I'm never taking him clubbing on goth night, much less to a rave. Heck, I won't even bother dragging him to another bluegrass festival, not after the last time. (Long story.)

That's okay. He can rock out to Jethro Tull (ugh) that I bought for him for Christmas downstairs, and I can rock out to The Cruxshadows ("your horrid noise") that he bought for me for Christmas upstairs, and we'll both be happy.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T10:59:00.003-06:00

The solstice has come and gone, and each day from here brings not only a little more light, but the promise of warmth and summer to come. So, too, the birth of Christ brought us the hopes and promises of heaven, and a reminder that the world, for all it uncaring cruelty, is a passing thing compared to the love of God. As a Christian, I celebrate both in darkest midwinter, looking not at the darkness that surrounds me, but at the light and love that is, and is to come.

No matter your faith, I wish you the best in love and life, in luck and joy. I hope that with the turning of the wheel of seasons, the next year will be better for you, full of happy memories to be made, of life that is well-lived, and wonderful times with your kith and kin.

Notes for survivalists

2011-12-22T13:34:00.003-06:00

Or, how to avoid irritating your wife.

NFO put up an excellent post a while ago about "they didn't have the green thing back in my day." Read it, and those of you who have been bitten by the survivalist bug, and fervently think about the end of the economic world coming soon, or the unleashing of the zombpocalypse, or what have you, here's some handy tips to avoid irritating your wife or significant other. Take them with humor, or eat them with some crow and your foot later.

1. "Emergency Survival Food Cache" is pronounced "pantry." Chances are, she already knows how much food is on hand, how long it lasts, how to make tasty meals with it even if the power goes out, and regularly rotates the stock. If you want to make her happy, help convert another storage space into a Backup Emergency Survival Cache for Use After Government or other Looters Confiscate Your Main One. This is pronounced "Extra pantry", or "root cellar."

2. Spices make bland food far more interesting. However, before rushing out to buy Costco-sized amounts of spices to use as trade goods, realize that it doesn't take much spice to flavor a dish, and that spices will get stale or rancid after a while. Instead of buying Bubba's All-Purpose Seasoning, or Trendy Cook's Favorite Spice Weasel Mix, pay attention to what spices actually are going into your everyday meals. Demanding a list of 10 spices, and then returning with far too much to fit into the spice cupboard - bad idea.

3. Do NOT go rooting through her chocolate cache. Rather, buy some chocolate. If she likes it, buy more. Trust me - she'll keep adequate quantities on hand to cope with trying times, like husbands going on a survivalist tear through her kitchen. Don't forget to buy more of her favorite alcohol, too.

4. If she doesn't can, do not buy canning jars and lids and hand them to her. Canning is hard work, hot, wet physical labor with boiling water and high potential for steam burns. If you think the problem is solved by simply buying the jars, prepare to have those jars shoved where the sun don't shine.

5. If you insist that she start packing heat, she won't. Every human walking the face of the earth today is a survivor - they have all survived so far by doing whatever they have done until this moment. To declare that they cannot survive unless they change their ways to what you want is contrary to their entire experience, demeaning, and insulting. Charm, cajole, invite - but do not insist or threaten.

6. Even if you are convinced that the signs of economic collapse / end of the world / black helicopters / rapture / zombpocalypse are everywhere, pointing each one out calmly is pronounced "nagging", and pointing them out with passion is pronounced "stark raving nuts." Even if she believes you, it is no more welcome than her mother's constant comments on how cute babies are followed with disapproving looks at your wife's flat stomach.

7. Very like canning, planting a garden is not a matter of throwing some seeds in the ground and waiting for the plants to produce bountiful harvests. It takes a lot of constant hard work spread over months. Do you have the time now? Will you have the time later? Money is no substitute for work, here, and you can spend more money putting in a raised-bed garden than you can remodeling a bathroom - with far less to show if you don't keep it up.

8. No matter how urgent The End appears to be, you have a budget. Realize that if you label them "survival goods", any money spent is indistinguishable to the uninterested spouse from money spent on any other hobby. Consider your budget, and the wrath of your spouse, accordingly.

9. No matter how much you want to start with the bug-out bag, start with something that actually has tangible impact on the likeliest emergencies. A pair of jumper cables, a blanket, a tire iron, a checklist of what to do if you get in an accident and one on how to change a tire, a can of fix-a-flat, a small first aid kit, a tow rope, a couple flares, and similar items in the trunk will make far more impact on your wife's belief that you are preparing for emergencies than bug-out-bags or sectioning the yard into fire zones with fallbacks.

10. Clean the bathroom. No, really. Nobody likes cleaning the bathroom, and you're asking your wife to put up with an expensive new hobby, lots of extra stuff, a lot of negative muttering, her soulmate and partner being pessimistic and ranty, and general disturbance in the domestic tranquility. If you want her to help you, start by helping her.

11. If the zompocalypse really is coming, then you need to actually fix your house and car now. Yes, I know it's easier to shove fifty boxes of lightbulbs in the closet, but really, now is the time to fix the toilet. If you're hoping the Even Greater Depression means you won't have to deal with that leaking toilet - no, it means your life savings aren't going very far with the water leak draining them away. So fix it now, before money becomes worthless. Besides, you know you'll never find a good replacement stove fan after the looters have been through HomeDepot, and if you think the black helicopters are bad, trying to clean the grease off every surface of an unvented kitchen after cooking bacon is worse.

The Best Laid Plans

2011-12-08T16:18:00.003-06:00

After Calmer Half had his heart attack, I researched extensively and changed how I cooked to help him. I put a lot of effort into finding tasty, heart-healthy, stomach-filling, good food. As he's battled to lose weight, I've tried to change the food to stay varied and tasty, and to accommodate whatever isn't supposed to be eaten now.

Once I started working 55 hours a week, he started grocery shopping, making dinner and packing the leftovers for lunch. We've had a few points to straighten out, but generally he's been working at making tasty meals and I've been enjoying them when wolfing down food on a short, usually late, lunch break, and before falling asleep on my feet in the evening.

Today, off work with a mere 43 hours worked this week and a good night's rest behind me, I stuck my head in the fridge to find the makings for food. Beyond an entire shelf's worth of fridge purely dedicated to condiments, I found:

4 packs of bacon, 2 opened.
9 packs/bricks of cheese, 4 opened.
1 package of sausage
1 package of lettuce, unopened for at least a week.
1 package of spinach, only used for my sandwiches
1 bunch of asparagus, unused for at least a week
The yogurts for my lunch
The remains of a case of beer (Clearly the housemate, not Calmer Half - wrong brand)

...You can teach all you want, but people from husbands to hoplophobes to angry young liberal arts majors are only going to learn if they want to.

Well, actually...

2011-11-26T15:24:00.005-06:00

Two days ago, Calmer Half made a comment about my new sneakers being in need of a washing. And then went and washed them. This was a new concept to me; I've never washed shoes before. I just get them out of the box and wear them until they fall apart. While they were drying yesterday, I wore my older pair to work - sneakers that have survived several years, an aircraft restoration, cross-country trips, camping, shooting, work on other aircraft, civil war shoot, and all the other parts of life that I wasn't wearing boots for. They're halfway to falling apart, and I only keep them as a backup pair now.

I grinned at him and made a facetious comment about him washing the old sneakers, too. Note to self: don't bluff with Calmer Half. He doesn't bluff. This may explain... a lot of things, actually, including the way he gets dogs and dogs in human form to back off.

He came upstairs not that long later, and with a look somewhere between baffled and amazed, informed me that the water in the washing machine had turned black, and that the first wash had "left a tide-ring! What did you get on those shoes? Crude from the Exxon Valdez?"

I tipped back in my chair, frowning thoughtfully. "Well, actually... you know, if you go to any of the beaches where the spill happened, and dig down, you'll still find the crude. And I did go down to the shore and get a fair bit of mud on them when..." I was thinking in the parts-per-billion technicality, but I don't think that's how he took it, as he turned and went back downstairs with something that was either a huff or a sigh.

I so need to write a parody of "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under" for him. Hmm. "Whose plane have your shoes been under? Whose lathe have your shoes been under? And in which state I wonder? Did the cannon sound like thunder, baby?...." Gotta work on that.

Useful and beautiful

2011-11-18T18:50:00.002-06:00

When I lived in Alaska, I had the great fortune to have a friend and former roommate who was not more talented mechanically as me, but also a genius at working in textiles. I can rib-stitch an airplane's wing together, but Jeannie - Jeannie can raise both eyebrows, make awesome Irish coffee for three, ponder, grin mischievously, check with a measuring tape, and turn some leftover fabric from making a beanbag chair into an awesome urban fantasy fairy outfit that will hold up to years of clubbing and parties... in time to go from "Hey, I guess I actually do have tomorrow off work, but I don't have anything to wear" to rocking the Halloween party.

She made the bridesmaid dresses for her own wedding, and it's one of the few dresses I keep as standby for future formal occasions. While I express my dreams in AN hardware fittings, she can turn a pair of jeans with a hole ripped in an unfortunate place into my prettiest pair of jeans I've ever owned with a butterfly embroidered on my behind (and a heavy-duty cloth patch inside, to protect against further countersunk screws.)

Now, you too can see what random projects come from her creative mind and hands - ok, the fabric ones at least, not the moose-proof garden fencing with the beautiful minimalist wooden frame, the shipboard-inspired doghouse, or the awesomely painted Warhammer miniatures, but you never know what she'll come up with or show you next.

So check it out! bonifacethreads.blogspot.com

Brainpower isn't scalable

2011-11-18T16:29:00.006-06:00

This pretty well describes my job, although, I don't work for EDS.

However, I'm always running up against three limits: I lack the ability to forecast everything, the ability to know everything currently going on, and the ability to fix everything that has gone wrong. I use a lot of data tracking tools, some given by HQ, some inherited from others built for their needs, and some built from scratch for myself. I share a lot of data with my coworkers, and am working constantly to refine what data is useful to them immediately, and what data is useful for them to forecast their needs. I track a lot of data to try to build prediction models based on past history.

Here's the hardest part, the source of all my problems: math is merely a language we use to precisely describe the universe around us. It represents many precise things, some accurately - but it is not reality, merely the language we use to describe reality. For each number I deal with, there is a customer somewhere who wants something. And customers are people. For each number in the system, there are employees working to move product to that customer. Employees are people, too. I speak the language of math all day, in every tool, but the moment I forget that the entire systems is built by people, run by other people, for the benefit of yet more people, all the mathematical genius in the world will not save me. Every number I change represents people being told to do something - and there is no formula in the system that can turn an equation red to warn me I'm going to frustrate people, and frustrated people work more slowly. There is no tickybox I can check to improve morale, but improved morale will definitely show in more things happening faster. Mentoring shows as a slowdown in efficiency - a highly efficient person is doing less of their own work - but that slowdown pays off by greatly reducing error rates forever after down the line with the person mentored.

Now, I'm out with my people. I'm running - literally - around trying to account for all sources of critical or urgent (or critical and urgent) errors, and make sure that as the work scales, the errors will not scale correspondingly (or logarithmically). I'm answering questions from the newest employee trying to figure out his break time to the project manager wanting to know status on major department goals, while trying to actually do my job description. The more people we hire, though, the harder it gets to know all my people, and know all the problems, and anticipate what people will do.

But sooner or later, I'm going to hit the limits of my brainpower. You see, I'm human. I can only hold so many things in my mind at one time. I won't get smarter as the problems get bigger. I can delegate parts of problems, but delegation means training and trusting that a subordinate will know how to handle everything they're meant to, and when they're not meant to, and how to deal with the things they're not supposed to handle or fix themselves, and the consequences of taking initiative. That only works so well... I mean, Jesus chose twelve disciples, and one of them was a saboteur, one denied any affiliation, and ten ran from the pressure. If God incarnate in flesh couldn't find and train 12 people to do what he wanted, there's no hope I'll ever have a perfect team. The Catholic church claims direct apostolic inheritance, and we see how badly they've screwed up over the years. No matter how hard I try, sooner or later, I can't control it all, and if I try, I won't be able to respond fast enough... and no matter how hard I try, the customers are going to do whatever the customers want to do when they want to do it, and no plan can simultaneously keep us at top efficiency for lots of customer demand and little customer demand.

There's only one solution - and it's the long-term, time-intensive one. Train people to do the best job they can, educate them on the common errors and how to fix them, and then give them incentives to work as hard as they can, while getting out of the way and letting them thrive. No matter how seductive the statistics, no matter how simple the mathematical solutions seem to be, it's not numbers or turtles all the way down, it's people... and that's why we have to put our money on Adam Smith's invisible hand(1), on free-market and free will, not command and control.

(1)"But it is only for the sake of profit that any man employs a capital in the support of industry.... As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can... to employ his capital... that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... By directing... industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intentions. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it."

A Separate Peace

2011-11-11T22:33:00.003-06:00

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, Calmer Half and I had declared an armistice on our few domestic battles, and were on the road together. Does taking a vet to lunch count when it's my own dearest man?

Every few weeks, I get a desire to be up and gone - not running away from my home, my life, my work, my marriage, or my friends, but just a desire to be up and out on the road, in the air, flying free. Calmer Half knows the symptoms well, from the first time he woke up from a nap to find I'd wandered out the door and ended up in Vicksburg. (Alaskan Geek and Call To Wings could have warned him about that, from times we've headed out on a random drive that ended up climbing a mountain on the way to get coffee, or driving to Girdwood for ice cream, or Seward for dinner...)

Usually he just smiles and wishes me to be careful as I head out the door with headset and plane keys in hand - but today, I didn't want to fly away so much as to tackle a new direction together with him. So we were on the road, talking of novels and pointing out the fall color, and went to a different city just to see their zoo, which was small and didn't take long. After he had a healthy turkey sandwich and I had a grilled cheese sandwich, we satisfied the vague curiosity I'd had since first learning to read billboards out the car window, and finally saw Ruby Falls. Well, I went down and saw the underground waterfall (which is impressive, and the lightshow is beautiful, but I wanted to short out the mood-music speakers). Calmer Half decided he didn't want to walk a mile underground on uneven and slippery rocks and concrete patches, and instead climbed the tower to truly see the view of Lookout Mountain. We reunited for coffee and chocolate muffins on the porch, and then drove home.

It was a wonderful date, and a lovely little road trip, with few spectacular sights and lots of peace, love and contentment - and completely boring as that is to you, dear reader, by the scars and the shrapnel still embedded in my love, these are the precious moments. After all the guns are silent, the recoverable dead are buried, the burned ruins and overlooked mines a continent away... one of my goals in life is to make a marriage that is everything he hoped and dreamed of living for in the quiet moments between the firefights.

Fall Color

2011-11-05T22:25:00.002-05:00

random thoughts

2011-10-29T22:38:00.001-05:00

I know, I owe several posts and plenty of pictures. Calmer Half already chased me off to bed, so they'll come another day. Not tomorrow, if I don't get to sleep soon.

The 10 year old boy in photo above has a new life goal, announced to his dad as he scarfed a burger: he wants this growth spurt to get him tall enough to reach the rudder pedals. If ever someone could grow by determination alone...

I need to teach him how to safety wire. Otherwise, he's pretty much set for changing the oil in a plane.

After trying to give rides to at least half the people I wanted to in Alaska, flying with spare parts and worldly goods to Tennessee, and giving rides to at least half the people I want to here, I finally took myself up tonight with no passenger, no baggage, and half tanks (two people were busy, and one didn't answer his phone.) It was like my first solo all over again. She climbs like a homesick angel when lightly loaded, and runs fast and far. I missed time alone with her.

The laptop has anti-cat protection. When a loose bunny hopped onto the keyboard with legs splayed, it locked itself down. That rocks, although Gremlin will find a way to defeat it.

The first rabbit has arrived. It is, strangely enough, not a meat rabbit, but a young classroom pet that needed a new home. We may not name it Snack. The meat rabbits will arrive soon "to keep it company." Does anyone else hear Beethoven's Fifth in the background?

Ok, bed for real, or I'll spend all of tomorrow running on caffeine and forward momentum, for fear of falling asleep should I sit down.

Gateway Rabbits

2011-10-27T14:38:00.002-05:00

County fairs suck people in with the promise of funnel cakes and ferris wheels, giant stuffed animals to be won in rigged games, parades, tractor pulls, and demolition derbies. But there's a powerful lobby at work, too - if it weren't so open and blatant, it'd be a great conspiracy. Head into those huge buildings - no, not the ones where people are hawking candles and or stainless steel cookingware, but the one that's full of displays attended by people who love to tell you about their passion. You'll learn a lot - but every time you take a risk and talk to a person, you run perilously close to being infected with their enthusiasm.

I've seen perfectly healthy and sane people come back from county fairs with drop-spindles and unspun wool. I've seen people come back and immediately start reorganizing the basement or garage with wood blanks, or go hiking into the bush looking for diamond willows to cut into staves and canes. Worse are the blacksmiths - once you start down that road, only being forcibly moved from your tools and forge, or life-threatening illness, can change your course.

But worse than all of those are the barns. Yes, the barns, full of proud 4H and FFA kids, who are absolutely bursting with information and persuasion about how incredibly awesome their pig or their cow is, and you should come see why this one is clearly the best ever... What snobbish defensive delight in hip urban cool could ever hold up to an ecstatic kid showing off their goat?

My housemate likes chickens even less than me (he won't eat them at all, where I eat them out of a pleasant sense of vengeance. By the scars on my hand and the memories of a chicken named Bloody Mary, I swear revenge is a dish best served steaming hot with a side of garlic bread.) Between that and the way Calmer Half is not inclined to have animals beyond dogs or cats, I figured that my attempt to grow a garden this year was about as far into suburban homesteading as we would go.

My housemate went into the barns at the county fair, and came back talking about meat rabbits. They're quiet. They're relatively easy to care for. The rinds and cores of vegetables now going into the compost pile could make a side-trip through the rabbits and come out more compost-ready, having grown meat on the way. Processing is feather-free and relatively easy. What do we think?

Months went by, and this was not forgotten. The Housemate's girl is in FFA. She needs a project. So... meat rabbits. I am not convinced a teenager will come by to care for them often enough. I am not convinced that rabbits, being hard to sex and easy to breed, won't become a lot more rabbits than planned. I am not convinced that they aren't a cute, furry gateway drug - and if we start tearing out the useless shrubbery and replacing it with edible and useful plants, or you find Calmer Half and Housemate in the back yard knocking together boxes for square foot gardening, then you'll know we're well past saving and don't want to be rescued anyway.

Living Free

2011-10-14T16:37:00.005-05:00

Kevin at The Smallest Minority often posts multi-thousand word posts, with heavy linking and footnoting where appropriate, to intelligently consider and debate the present, the past, and the future. This one he simply linked to, without words - and though it includes a video of a plane crash, it does so in the context of thoughtful, rational debate, and in respect and honor. I recommend watching it.

Bacon - not just for vegetarians

2011-10-13T19:08:00.002-05:00

Bacon is a gateway drug with a power that reaches far beyond converting vegetarians to meat eaters. It's also the downfall of heart-healthy households...

Balsamic-Herb Marinated Strawberries with Peppered Mascarpone and Crisp Bacon

1/2 pound bacon for the recipe, plus more for lossage while cooking due to... quality testing.
8 oz mascarpone cheese
2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper (freshly ground!)
15 fresh strawberries (see above note about increasing for lossage), chilled in fridge.
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp fresh basil, chopped fine
1 tsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped fine (optional)

Cut the bacon into 1/4-in wide strips. Saute until crispy, drain well.
In a bowl, mix the mascarpone and pepper until evenly distributed, transfer to a ziplock bag. (Or a pastry bag, if you have one of those fancy things.) Stick in fridge.
Trim the green end off the strawberries and slice 'em in half, gently toss with vinegar, basil, and (optional) parsley. (Another large ziplock bag makes this pretty easy and low-mess.) Lay strawberries out on serving tray. Cut a corner off the ziplock with the cheese (or use the pastry bag as directed), and pipe the cheese on the strawberry halves. Garnish with bacon.

Makes 30 appetizers, which is never enough until you're too full for dinner, because, well, strawberries. and sweet cheese. and Bacon!

Do NOT ask for a calorie or cholesterol count after eating.

Home Again, with a good book!

2011-10-02T09:52:00.002-05:00

The last couple weeks, I haven't had time or energy to think after work - so I saved a book I've been wanting to read until the time to kill between the layovers and flights on the way home.

If you haven't gotten Mike Williamson's Rogue yet, I highly recommend you pick it up. It's a book with more layers than a fabulous mixed drink - in plot, it's a chase and an action novel across four planets, with tensions and explosions, hair-raising and stand-up-and-cheer moments. It's also a very thoughtful, emotionally wrenching look into the minds and hearts of people who've been there, done that, don't want to talk about it, and don't know how to find their way back. Woven into this is a satire on the strengths and weaknesses of different cultures, and plenty of humor. If nothing else, you've got to see how he finally settles the game of Clue!

The only bad part? I finished it before I ran out of layovers and flights!

Off to do shopping, because a couple weeks away is enough time for men to reduce the well-stocked fridge to a few inedible leftovers and condiments...

Old Books!

2011-09-25T19:35:00.003-05:00

The British Library is releasing some of their old, rare artifacts as scanned ebooks!

One of William Blake's journals, one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks... Squee! They don't have much up yet, and they're not yet supporting kindle - but it's things like this that sometimes make me love the internet!

http://www.ebooktreasures.org/view-all-books/

Say that again?

2011-09-24T17:19:00.002-05:00

When searching for a phrase to accurately and quickly apply to a situation, I don't always censor for origin. Fortunately, neither my new management nor my coworkers recognized the following phrases that I used when being interviewed or training /motivating them.

1. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.
2. Two is one, and one is none.
3. "Hey, it's all in how you look at life! You look out there and see a horde of undead brain-eating zombies. I see a target-rich environment."

New job

2011-09-20T17:21:00.003-05:00

I am very grateful for a new job.

I am also out of state at training, and verra verra tired after work. Expect posting to resume when I get a handle on the job, and it either ceases to be like trying to herd ferrets... or until I get back in the ferret-herding groove.

Legumes and Heresy Chili

2011-09-14T22:02:00.003-05:00

Look, I know the Chili Has No Beans(tm) debate, and it has its good points - but when you're stretching a tight budget, beans are a whole lot cheaper than meat, and provide their own tastiness in the meal. When I feel flush in the cash reserves and optimistic about the economy, I'll make a no-bean chili (see me after November 2012, and I'll still put you off for a few months until we can judge someone by the content of their character, and their actions.)

Until then, Cheerfully Heresy Chili

1 pound ground beef
2 medium onions, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 Tablespoon olive oil (optional if your ground beef is fatty)

1 Tablespoon chili powder
1 Tablespoon chipotle chile powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 can tomato paste
1 can diced tomatoes with jalepenos
1 can diced tomatoes (plain)
2 cups red wine
1/2 teaspoon white sugar, if the wine is dry

1 can kidney beans, drained & rinsed - or 1 cup dry beans, soaked and cooked
1 can black beans, drained & rinsed - or one cup dry beans, soaked and cooked

The night or day before, soak the kidney and black beans in about 6 cups water. (Soak at least 6-8 hours). Drain, rinse, put in a pot with at least 6 cups water, NO SALT. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer for roughly an hour - may take an hour and a half for kidney beans. Or drain and rinse a can each. More expensive by far, but far less time-consuming.

Saute the onions and burger. When the burger is browned, add the garlic and cumin seeds, and saute until the garlic's browned, too - doesn't take long. Add the spice mix and stir for a few seconds, until everything is coated. (If you don't have cumin seeds, add a teaspoon of ground cumin here).

Add the can of tomato paste, and stir it in. Stuff should be sticking to the bottom of the pan - dump in the undrained cans of diced tomatoes, and deglaze (scrape the tasty browned bits off the pan bottom) with the juices. Add in the wine, stirring well. If cooking with something sweet, you'll have enough sugar to cut the tomato acidity - if dry, add the sugar.

Stir some more, add beans, stir a little more. When it starts to simmer, turn the heat to low, and put a lid on so it keeps cooking but doesn't splatter. Stir every now and then, but mostly let it simmer to itself for at least twenty minutes. Which, coincidentally, is the amount of time it takes for rice to cook, and allows for time to make the salad and set the table, too!

Like a good tomato sauce, it'll get better and better as you let it simmer and blend - if you want to let it reach proportions of awesomeness, make this before work (beware tomato sauce splatters!), stick it in a crockpot on low, and let it create food alchemy all day.

Serves 6, when served with rice/pasta/potato, and salad - garnishes might include, but are not limited to, a little shredded cheddar, sour cream (or Greek yogurt, for a healthier substitute), or salsa.

September 11

2011-09-11T19:47:00.003-05:00

You can hurt us. You can get a sucker punch in. You can try to trample us down. You can try to control us, in the name of safety, security, Allah, Climate Change, or whatever rationale you choose...

To hell with you. We're still flying free, celebrating our freedom however we feel like.

Challenging Hunger (Sausage Stroganoff)

2011-09-08T14:57:00.005-05:00

The 2011 Hunger Challenge is going to kick off at some point, with all the breast-beating and moaning about "raising awareness" of the plight of those who mooch food stamps off hard-working taxpayers and bitch about wanting more of their "rights" from "the guvmint." During the challenge, a bunch of disorganized people, especially bloggers, will try to feed themselves for $4.72/day, possibly even for a week, while setting up a bunch of arbitrary rules like "no free samples or food bought by friends!"

Which only proves that they're idiots. If you're truly hungry, you take food anywhere you can get it. If you're going to be short on cash for a long time, you get smart about acquiring and preparing food for the least amount of cash for the most amount of tasty calories. If you're whining about how you'll have to starve an entire day while the office holds a buffet, and can't have any coffee because a mocha costs too much, you're not hungry enough.

By the way, that $4.72/day represents the amount you get for food stamps alone, which are supposed to supplement your food budget, not replace it. Whining idiots.

As for the inanity and insanity that feeding yourself is impossible for less than five dollars a day, let's look at the true cost of breakfast.

1 Box Aldi's store brand bran flakes: $2.50
Sevings per box: 18
Cost per serving: $0.14

1 Gallon store brand Vit D milk: $2.89
Cups per gallon: 16
Cost per cup: $0.19

Cost for a bowl of cereal: $0.33

Let's try this again with a heartier breakfast like two eggs and a bowl of grits - a better breakfast if you're going to be on the run, and want the calories.

Eggs: $1.28/dozen = $0.22 for 2 eggs
Grits: $3.40/box with 14 servings = $0.25/serving

Cost for two eggs and about half a cup of cooked grits = $0.47

Either way, breakfast costs less than fifty cents. You could have that for all three meals and not break $1.50 - but we're moving on to lunch.

My Housemate goes through a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a 3-lb bag of apples a week. ($1.82, $1.79, and $3.49 respectively, as we buy a name-brand bread)
This means over 5 days, his lunches cost $1.42 a working day.

Last night, I felt lazy, and cooked from prepared ingredients, making dinner a little more costly than usual. Balancing this, I was testing out some bratwurst found on sale. And no, I'm not going to be idiot enough to make stupid rules like "Use the full price if you bought it on sale." You know what? If it had cost full price, I wouldn't have bought it. I'd be using a different meat bought on sale, a meatless dish, hunted meat, or really darned good cow that I personally eyed before its death and feel is worth every penny I paid to farmer and processor.

So, Bratwurst Stroganoff
1. Start water boiling for rice - one cup water per person, to which you'll add a little salt and 1/2 cup rice when it boils, cover and turn down to simmer for 15-20 minutes. Remove from heat when done, even if the rest of dinner isn't finished yet.(3 servings = $0.57 cents)
2. Dump bratwurst in pan. Set to medium-high. (0.89 cents)
3. Roughly chop an onion. Add to pan. ($0.25)
4. Stir to ensure sausage browns, and onions saute in bratwurst grease.
5. Add a little paprika. Contemplate, and add more to taste. Add a dash of black pepper, and some garlic. ($0.02)
6. Add one can mushrooms, drained. Let everything brown some more. ($0.59)
7. When everything well browned, deglaze with one can mushrooms, undrained. Look in fridge, shrug, and add half a cup of white wine, as well. ($0.59 and $0.60)
8. Add can of condensed cream of mushroom soup. ($0.69)
9. Stir, set lid on, turn to low, and let bubble to itself. Clean up everything, set table.
10. Pull bag of spinach out of freezer, dump in bowl, add a little water, and microwave by directions. ($2.20)

By the time the spinach is done, the sausage stroganoff has melded together, the rice will be long done, and the table is set for dinner. Serves 3 for $6.40, or $2.13 each, and you'll likely have leftovers.

That's a day's meals for $3.89 to $4.03, depending on breakfast, and accounting for an expensive unusual ingredient - wine - in my dinner. You'd have to have two more bowls of cereal to even get to the $4.72 the government extracts from me at gunpoint and gives to others in the form of food stamps.

This wasn't even a "I'm feeling tight budget" day, this was a "let's try this on-sale meat to see if I should stock up in the freezer with more" day. For tight budget times, I have lots of beans and rice recipes that'll keep body and soul together.

I'm in favor of young people out on their own starving every now and then - if you don't grow up learning to save, budget, cook, and clean up after yourself, the inevitable realization that paying all the bills leaves less than $20 to feed yourself for a week is the slap in the face by reality that forces the thoughtless to become thoughtful, and start to take the painful steps toward being responsible for themselves.

I'm not opposed to safety nets, but I am opposed to ones extracted from me by force and presented as a "right" to people who feel entitled to take it and demand more instead of accepting responsibility and getting back on their own two feet. If you're making Stroganoff, you're not hungry enough to really feel motivated to spend less elsewhere, or jump for something that'll bring in more food on the table.

Therefore, based on this experiment, I meet the hunger challenge and prove that really, the government should cut food stamps by at least $2.00/day.

These Are My People

2011-09-06T15:07:00.003-05:00

If the last four days had gone by any faster, you'd still be hearing the sonic booms.

Traveled down to Dragon*Con with Oleg Volk and Michael Z. Williamson. The oversocialization the weekend before with Tam's GunBlogger Meetup was merely inoculation for plunging into 35,000+ geeks and gamers in four hotels.

Wow.

A few blocks away, we started seeing people in costume, and stranger for me, people I knew. Except they weren't. In a small pool of geek, nerd, goth, gamer, otaku, and dork, everybody is an individual. In a large enough crowd, body types and hair styles are sterotypes, not an individual. All weekend, I kept turning around and seeing old roommates, housemates, gaming group partners, friends... and they weren't the people I knew, but they sure looked and acted alike. It was like meeting thousands of your old friends, who turn out to be new friends instead. Yes, these are my people.

I met a lot of awesome folks, including Larry Correia (who is an awesome gentleman, as well as a New York Times best-selling author), Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary and Writing Excuses, Dan Wells of great horror fiction like I Am Not A Serial Killer and the Writing Excuses podcast, Julie Cochrane who wrote several Posleen War books with John Ringo, John Ringo and his absolutely wonderful wife... so many authors I've lost track, and even the editors of Baen Books! (Okay, some geeks really want to meet the actors of Firefly. Me, I really like meeting the editors and authors. I may be a dork, but I'm a happy one!) Not to mention all the really cool people from the internet in the flesh! (Thanks, Ryan! You are awesome!)

And then there was dinner at the Brazilian Steak House. I think I'm still full! The only thing that kept me from falling into a meat coma was the concert later that night.

After 10 years in Alaska, with almost no concerts since I moved there, Sunday night moved into Monday morning with Jefferson Starship opening for the Cruxshadows, and I had more fun than my tired mind has words to express. After all, y'all probably are looking for something more profound than SQUEE!

Monday, despite being bathed in rain and sweat from the heat and humidity, we got people off to the airport on time, and out on the road in time to drive through the remnants of a tropical storm. While the drive itself was long and rainy, there are worse fates than being in a car with Mad Mike and Oleg Volk, both of whom are great guys. Though I think my water bottle is still in Mike's van - good excuse to visit in Indianapolis, eh?

Life is good, and I definitely have to bring Calmer Half next time.

Hey! If you like good scifi, go buy Mike's book Rogue! It comes out today, and sales in the first week drive the New York Times bestseller list - now only is he a great guy, but also a great author!

Why Not?

2011-08-31T23:54:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, life will hand opportunities to you that you weren't expecting, had no plans for, and aren't quite sure what to do with, but know they definitely interfere with your set plans.

Sometimes, these are the stuff that memories for a lifetime are made from. I certainly wasn't looking for a partner when I was introduced to Calmer Half. I wasn't looking for my plane when I met her. I didn't expect to fly her down to the Lower 48 right after her wings went on and were rigged - at least, not for the first two years I was rebuilding her.

So, when I had to go a couple states away to deal with a paperwork snafu in person, it wasn't that much further to go see my brother and his family - and given life happened and the road trip was pushed back a week, it was just as easy to go a few hours further out and make it to the blogmeet in Broad Ripple. Which was awesome!

So, back home - cleaning up my house, cleaning up a friend's house, cooking, trying to not chew my nails to the quick waiting on word when the start date for the new job will be... and today, the opportunity comes up completely randomly to go to Dragoncon.

Well, why not?

So I'll be headed down with Oleg Volk and Michael Z Williamson.

This oughta be fun!

Oh, hi!

2011-08-30T14:39:00.003-05:00

Funny thing, I go on a road trip culminating in a blog meet and get thoroughly oversocialized, and now I feel guilty because I've been too busy on a road trip and cleaning up the house to get a blog post up about the blogmeet. Do me a favor and go over to Home On The Range, who's on the sidebar, and read her post. She's linked to everybody, with a great set of pictures, so y'all can read about the fun there! (Because Brigid is thirty-seven flavors of awesome, including the nutty one of secret squirrel).

Right. Um. Let me finish making a new DIY dog bed to replace the ratty, stinky old one, paying the bills, and mopping the floor, and I'll get to the blog three days late and a dollar short.

Speaking of bills, I'm contemplating doing "the hunger challenge" this year - you know, the self-righteous feel-good guilt-tripping-for-liberals idiocy that's supposed to "raise awareness" of how food stamps aren't enough money for farmer's markets and brie, and the poor starving masses that weigh twice what I do and have better cars and brand new sneakers are supposed to get more of my money extracted at gunpoint by the IRS. Mainly I'm interested in the snark, because the food bill for this month works out to roughly $5/person/day already, so if I could cut that to $4.77, I'll be "starving for a good cause!" ... if you call homemade beef stew with sirloin tips and syrah, fresh-baked bread, corn chowder with roasted poblanos, fish tagine, spicy beef kabobs, creamy polenta with roasted red pepper coulis, spinach frittata, scalloped potatoes and the like starving, not to mention the amount of ice cream, peanuts, and chocolate sauce this place goes through.

Clearly, if I can squeeze the food budget by a buck a day more, by dropping some of the feta, the ice cream sandwiches, the shrimp, possibly even cutting my wasabi-pea habit, we'll be starving. Awesome! If I'm starving, clearly I won't have to go to the gym, and the weight will magically come off!

Yeah, right. Back to reality and paying the bills, and the floor that still needs mopped, because there are no such thing as rainbow-farting magical wish-granting unicorns, and the marxist in chief keeps making my food bills rise while insisting there's no inflation.

What's a good answer?

2011-08-28T04:21:00.005-05:00

As we rambled through the World War II section of the Air Force Museum, my niece pointed at a plane. "Daddy! Daddy! What is that?"
My brother folded down to preschooler eye level. "You mean the metal above the wheel?"
"No! That!"
"Do you mean the wheel?"
"No! That!" She stabbed her finger out again, waving in the vicinity of the wheel.
"That's a chock, honey. That's to keep the airplane from rolling away."
She stomped a foot, face screwed up in a scowl. "That's stupid! They should use ropes, like you do!"

...

"See this? These long ones running the length of the wing are spars. And these ones running front to back are ribs."
"Airplanes have ribs? Are they ticklish, too?"

Have you read

2011-08-24T17:58:00.002-05:00

So, the top 100 NPR sciFi/Fantasy Books. Frankly, a lot of things I liked better weren't in here, which shouldn't be a surprise - after all, it's listed by NPR. Michael Z Williamson's Freehold and related books in the series are anathema to them, much less the sheer fun of Larry Correia! They also missed a lot of good military scifi from Weber and Drake, and a lot of good fantasy by Charles deLint, Jane Yolen, Emma Bull, Charles Stross, and Joan D. Vinge!

Bolded are the ones I've read, and italicized are the ones I picked up and just couldn't finish. Or hated, and wouldn't recommend even if I finished. Did you notice how any of these are movies or cartoons, tv shows or musicals? How many do you think have been read as opposed to watched by the voting audience?

1. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
5. A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin
6. 1984, by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
22. The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand, by Stephen King
26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
28. Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman
30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
35. A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys
39. The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson (only the first one so far, but I like it! Will finish as funds permit!)
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once And Future King, by T.H. White
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
49. Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, by Stephen R. Donaldson yech! Do Not Recommend!
59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote In God’s Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62. The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks
68. The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson - need to read this.
72. A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore
74. Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel’s Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey Do Not Recommend
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire The musical was better
81. The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock - Stopped after one
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

Gloom is not synonymous with doom

2011-08-23T18:11:00.002-05:00

I had a beautiful summer day, but no one wanted to go flying with me - Calmer Half is still recovering from getting cut on by the doc, Awesome Farmer was busy moving a tractor and fixing things, and Line Guy was busy working, and busy after work. Housemate wanted to, but he was exhausted from a week of work - so he took a nap first. The nap stretched til 5:30 in the afternoon, when I had dinner already cooking, and house chores I was doing.

After a dinner of red beans and rice, we headed out to the airport (over 20 miles away.) The FBO was already closed, as they go home at 7, and the sun was a mere handspan over the horizon. In Alaska, this means we have anywhere from 2 to 3 hours of usable dusk - not so much here in the sunny south, where they think it's proper for August to be the hottest month of the year.

By the time we had checked the airplane thoroughly, discussing the whys and wherefores of the engine, and taxied to mag check, the sun was finger-widths above the horizon, and dropping fast. We climbed into golden air, smooth as silk and all the haze aglow with honeyed sun. Below, shadows streaked indigo and violet across the land, and the river was a tracery in deep shades of purple and blue as night rose from the eastern horizon and the land below to the still-lit sky.

We turned around, and by the time I was in downwind, the instrument panel was getting hard to read, the runway lights were shining like stars, and the headlights of a car parked by a plane cast long beacons across the ramp. I sank into dusk and landed, amazed that the air was so smooth it barely seemed possible that a 7-knot wind was blowing, and taxied to the tie-down.

All the way home, Housemate and I discussed the questions that came to mind during the flight, and what I felt I could have done better. Among other things, I think next time we skip dinner and eat afterward - from daylight to deep dusk was a mere fourteen minute flight.

Scalloped Potatoes and Ham

2011-08-18T20:02:00.002-05:00

Scalloped Potatoes for hungry people

5 or 6 potatoes, peeled & thinly sliced (you know, this is one of those times you use that other side of the square cheese grater)
1 chopped onion
1 cup chopped ham
1/2 cup grated cheese (I used pepper jack) or 2 Tablespoons Parmesan
2 cloves chopped garlic (1 Tablespoon, roughly)
3 Tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup flour
1 can vegetable or chicken broth (roughly 2 cups)
2 Tablespoons mayonnaise (NOT Miracle Whip)
Breads crumbs
Paprika

Grease a casserole dish, and preheat the oven to 325.
Slice your potatoes thinly, and chop your onions and ham. Layer or mix these in the pan as you please (I stuck the onions and ham in the middle for tasty surprise, and sliced the last three potatoes on top.)If you're working with red or yukon gold potatoes, you might even leave the delicious skin on. Add the cheese to the top of this.

If you have stale bread, pulse it in a food processor (or put it inbetween a folded clean towel and pound it with a hammer) to make bread crumbs. If you have seasoned bread crumbs, do not add salt to the upcoming roux. Set aside.

In a saucepan, heat the butter, and saute the sliced/minced garlic. Add the 1/4 cup flour, rosemary, salt, and black pepper, stir well until all the butter is absorbed into the roux. Let it cook a little while, stirring constantly, until the roux starts to turn a dark ivory color. Add the chicken broth slowly, stirring to incorporate, and add the 2 tablespoons of mayo. Mix, stirring, until thick and bubbly. Pour it over the potatoes, onions, and ham, and then sprinkle the crumbs and paprika over the top.

Cover with aluminum foil and cook for 20 minutes at 325F, then remove the cover and cook it 10 more minutes. (If you chopped your potatoes not-so-thinly, stretch out the covered cooking time another 5-10 minutes)

Serve with a nice green vegetable, like broccoli or brussel sprouts, that'll go well with the cheesy sauce from the scalloped potatoes.

Should serve 10, but probably only serves 4-6; It tends to evaporate around hungry people.

Three Flights

2011-08-14T11:41:00.004-05:00

The thunderstorm had barely rumbled on to the east and rain stopped falling when I led the motley crew out to my plane. Well, via the community hangar - My housemate's freshly-ten-years-old boy was super-excited to show his father the Focke-Wulf in the community hangar, and I was happy to distract them while the isolated cell put a bit more distance between the airport and us.

While the boy went directly to the airplane in camo and iron crosses, my housemate stopped in his tracks to stare at the beautiful black, red, and yellow Citabria gleaming under the lights. He's had a ride in one before, and for all the disparaging remarks he makes about hanging from the straps when inverted while 40-year-old dust falls out of the floorboards and up your nose, there was nothing of that in his face as he looked at the lady sitting pretty on her tailwheel and daring him to fly. His daughter, too, was far more distracted by the Citabria, and they walked around, examining it and giving her a beautiful fabric reality to her dad's stories of flight. My Calmer Half, who was uninclined to fly that day, was more interested in the Cherokee undergoing maintenance, but let himself be the interested audience dragged along for the boy's excited exclamations and explanations.

As we headed out to the airplane, the boy was highly excited, the girl was interested in a "well, this is better than fighting with my brother for which game on the wii" sort of way, and my housemate had ceased to pay any attention to us at all, as his eyes and hands were on my full-scale non-remote-control rag and tube airplane.

After a thorough preflight, I decreed I'd take my housemate up first, with the coolest air and the least amount of fuel. The rest of the gang trooped back to the FBO, and a man who makes a 1911 look like a small gun in his paws tried to figure out how to fold into the airplane. Once he managed to get buckled in, I slid in next to him, and pulled the checklist off the top of the instrument panel. He adjusted his left knee so it wasn't blocking the mixture, and started to laugh when he saw that I'd condensed all my checklists onto a single laminated sheet. The windsock was hanging limp, the asos reporting calm winds - but a faint breeze was coming from the south, and I never take a tailwind. Besides, with the full asphalt runway in front of us, even at almost gross weight, we managed to climb high enough to safely rock the wings as we passed everyone standing outside the FBO.

After I'd rocked the wings, I belatedly remembered the good advice to never make seemingly-drastic moves with new passengers on board, and looked over, worried, at my housemate. He grinned back like a boy who's just managed to pull off a dirt bike stunt, and I figured he wasn't going to be too upset. We headed southeast, toward the speedway. When I turned control over, the grin disappeared into a frown of concentration. In a long-ago epoch of B.C. [Before Children], he used to catch rides quite often in airplanes - and after a couple decades away, he was having difficulty holding it straight and level. After turning the controls back over and watching two cars doing laps on the speedway, the grin came back.

The battling duo decided on the next passenger, and the girl won. After fueling, we took off - and with her, I remembered to ask if she wanted the wings rocked. She was completely emphatic at not wanting to take the controls at any point, and I was quite worried that she didn't like it - until we headed west and I started pointing out things she knew, like I-40 and the Cumberland River. "Cool!" She was excited and taking cell phone pictures, especially when she spotted her high school. We circled for a bit, then headed back, and I reminded myself that she hadn't wanted to take the controls of the truck after turning 16, either. I'll have to talk to her father about how to win her over to wanting to take the wheel, as I know she likes racing around on the farm in the four-wheeler (and coming back splattered in mud.)

The boy was last, and if least in weight and age, definitely not in excitement. He'd been looking forward to this for the last two weeks, and was split between playing with his birthday present binoculars and taking the controls. We went north over the Cumberland's winding river, and he got to look down at plenty of people floating, fishing, and skiing along its channels. By the time we flew, the sun had come out enough to grow thermals, and he spotted a bird that was all black but for light tan chevrons near the tips of its wings, riding the thermal along with us.

Coming back, I tied down as the others came out to meet us, and then piled into the air conditioning while I paid for fuel. The line guy who'd pumped my fuel as I'd explained to the kids that his job was a great one for finding ways to trade time for flying was behind the counter. He gave me a big grin, and recklessly plunged in. "So, if I pay for gas, can I go flying with you sometime?"

You never accomplish anything if you don't try - and it's better to ask than to wish you had! How could I turn him down, especially after I'd pointed out to the teenagers that this is how you get rides? So I grinned, and we roughly coordinated schedules. Next weekend, weather permitting, I'll swing through the airport and see if he's up for a ride.

Once home, the girl was more interested in getting the lawn mowed in exchange for pizza for dinner, and hanging out with her boyfriend (who seems torn between his love for a WWII M1, and his young love for the girl - and happy that her father encourages the former and tolerates the latter). The boy was totally engrossed in playing a World War II aces games on the wii (to occasional cries of "You just shot down your own bomber, son!"). And their father, inbetween working on the recalcitrant boat motor (worthy of a saga like Adaptive Curmudgeon's on his tractor), was the one muttering "I like the lines of that Taylorcraft. You know, she's a sweet little airplane. Damnit, you did a bad, bad thing. You've got the flying bug back in my head again!"

Calmer Half retreated to the cool of the basement, where the old black lab had also decided that being underfoot for testing a boat motor wasn't nearly as interesting as stretching out under an air conditioning vent and trying to summon treats by her pathetic looks alone. My husband may seem relatively calm and deceptively mild, but his eyes sparkled with wit as he waited like a jaguar in a tree until both Housemate and I were in range, and proposed selling the plane under an installment plan of free rent for a few years - and waited to see which of us threatened him first.

A good day.

Not Applicable?

2011-08-03T12:49:00.003-05:00

Not everything fits into neat boxes in life. This is a problem, when those neat boxes are the gatekeepers to getting a job. How do I explain "No, really, I haven't collected any unemployment, I'm not a lazy layabout, I've just moved twice, gotten married, finished restoring a '41 Taylorcraft and flown it four thousand miles across the country between the last time I was punching a time clock on an 8-5 with a regular W2 and now? (Not that the last one was 8-5, but anyway?)"

Sigh. I think I'm going to indulge the inner child who's glaring in puzzled bafflement at the job apps and go clean the house and do laundry, so I can feel like I was productive and got something done today. Then back to being in a maze of twisty job apps, all alike, hoping I don't find a Grue...

First Flight Grin

2011-08-01T23:01:00.003-05:00

Note to self: when you put a boy on top of an Oregon Aero cushion and a PFD cushion, and stick a horse blanket behind his back so he's comfy and can see over the instrument panel, there is no real way to get the shoulder harness straps short enough to work. Must eyeball the setup and see if I can fix that before next flight with precious cargo/copilot.

Note to self II: Do not propose where you'll go until you've gotten up and can see the weather north of the airport.

Note to self III: Wearing shooting muffs so he can't communicate, perched on top of a stack of stuff, hazy day, unable to go north to the farm due to low ceilings... none of it matters. Look at this picture and stop worrying about it.

Note to self IV: Weather permitting, next trip is to see Dad's house, and the farm, in that order. Because we all know there's gonna be a next trip. And he's too young to demand gas money, does too well at his chores and in school to hold a flight out as a bribe... aw, I'll leave those negotiations up to his father, anyway. Well, maybe I'll demand to get to fly his RC airplane. Or some doves and rabbits when the seasons open. There's a new meaning to will fly for food...

Weather doesn't matter sometimes

2011-07-30T12:42:00.003-05:00

Last night, a certain 9 year old boy's father looked at me, thoughtfully, and asked, "You know, a passenger doesn't really need to talk in order to fly. And if they're just being a passenger, I bet we could put a pair of shooting muffs on him, and it'd be good enough to protect his hearing. He wouldn't have to wait until we got a second headset for the plane, would we?"

And I thought about it, and nodded. "Sure. We wouldn't communicate well, but it wouldn't keep him from flying. We could do that."

The gentleman paused, and slowly asked, in an all-too-casual manner, "Then maybe you could go flying this weekend?"

"I think we can." I said, with a slow smile starting at my eyes and working its way down.

He glanced down by his knee, and said, "Oh, don't show that to me. Show that to her." And the 9-year-old spun around and displayed a grin so big I could count every back molar.

This morning somebody threw off their covers at the first gentle "Hey, rise and shine." He'd put his clothes on the night before so he could be ready, and hurriedly rushed through brushing his teeth and gulping down a bowl of cereal. A thunderstorm was passing overhead, but we left it behind as we drove to the airport, where weather was reported fair. Unfortunately, the storm was moving toward the airport, and it was a nasty cluster of cells. By the time it would be past, somebody would be very late to their test at the dojo.

So instead of flying, we walked around the plane, comparing everything to the model airplanes he's flown with his father, and he made like a monkey climbing inside the cockpit to work the yoke and rudders, and go over the instruments. As the rain started to fall, we headed back to the FBO, and with permission wandered around the attached community hangar.

I didn't know there was a post-war Focke-Wulfe in there, in camo and iron crosses. Somebody headed straight for it like a moth to a flame, only slightly diverted by the Citabria. We spent a good twenty minutes examining aircraft, and then I showed my evil side by shamelessly buying a coke for each of us, and splitting a couple brownies. (Fortunately, the aforementioned dojo will be a great place to work out the sugar high.) After some more chatting on everything from thermals to deer hunting to rainbow-farting unicorns (he is a 9-year-old boy, with 9 year old humor), we headed home.

Despite not flying, he had a grin and bounce to his step as he headed inside to eagerly tell a sleepy father all about the airport, and sitting in his first full-scale airplane. Then it was back to plotting with his sister on how to get past the mountain lion on the Cabela's hunting game (which is nothing at all like doves or real deer, I'm thoroughly informed).

I'll get him in the air yet, and I'm glad he had a great Saturday morning.

Home

2011-07-26T18:18:00.004-05:00

After calling off flying out Monday, Brigid and I set out to find Tam, food, and fun. We definitely found Tam, and my goodness was there excellent food in large quantities. The fun was spectacular, though I wilted a bit in the heat of the day.

The next morning, the weather briefer was full of warnings about mist and low vis, practically IFR and I shouldn't fly until after a cold front came through in the afternoon. It was a glorious morning, though the faint hazy mist rising off the corn promised another mugging by Mr. Heat and his drinking buddy Mr. Humidity by the afternoon. A cropduster came in for another load, and reported a wonderful morning with calm air. I took his opinion over the weather briefer's.

It was a nice morning, and even nicer once I got up a few thousand feet. Above the haze layer, visibility was endless, the air was crisp and cool, and I even had a tailwind.

DaddyBear of DaddyBear's Den had offered a place to crash halfway, and I declined it with gratefulness to him for offering, and to God for such wonderful weather that it wasn't needed. One quick stop in Tell, Indiana to fix a patch, check oil, and let my husband know when to pick me up, and I was on my way home.

The last sixty miles I was back in the haze, as a broken layer of clouds started capping every thermal. I soared over the farm where I've gone shooting and stoked bonfires (soon I'll get to be there and see the farmer again!) Then a little further south, and landed in Lebanon, TN.

The FBO called on unicom, wanting to know if I'd be staying a while, and were confused when I replied that I was going too be based there. When the gent brought the fuel truck out, he recognized me from the times I'd come through, and rented the Citabria to knock the rust off before leaving. The CFI I'd flown with in the Citabria came out, astounded that he'd caught me just as I was landing from the long trip.

Then, best of all, my husband was there. He looks a little slimmer, but much stranger. He'd decided to whimsically grow a mustache. Hey, I was gone a few months, he had to get up to something. Perhaps, though, he should have consulted with Lawdog about mustaches... But I digress. After a long hug and a short kiss (mustaches are prickly!) I was finally really truly home.

One more day in Indy

2011-07-25T08:18:00.004-05:00

After a long day of good food, good fellowship, and good fun, we went to bed early...earlier, anyway. life was awesome. (There's no way I can top either Brigid's version, or Tam's. Go read their posts.)

Then I woke up at 4am feeling like someone had kicked me in the bad leg, wearing steel-toed boots. Why can't barometric-pressure-sensitive old injuries be more like weather widgets, with a vague notion of impending rain instead of an early warning on the pain scale? Ibuprofin, a little net surfing til it kicked in, and bed. Yay painkillers!

Fortunately, Brigid is a very understanding host, who sent me back to bed the second time I limped out of it, and gave me coffee on my third try at getting up. I love my friends!

...and there's still cheesecake left...

Picture Post Bozeman to Indianapolis

2011-07-24T11:01:00.008-05:00

Over the Badlands

Flying into the smoke trail of a contained wildfire

Over South Dakota, which alternated between luxurious fields and struggling ones - the trails of poor growth from flooded soil were everywhere.

Why, yes, that is a storm moving in from exactly the opposite direction of the stiff low-level wind. Chamberlain, SD.

See the puffy cumulus hidden in the haze? Or, why I diverted yet again in Iowa.

Sylvester the airport cat, waiting for dues of scritching to be paid should I want fuel.

Why there are almost no pictures after Carroll, IA: the sky was full of thick, low-vis haze that I could not outclimb, even when I went to 5,500 feet. Also full of cumulus that I was busy steering between, and thunderstorms I was very hugely avoiding. That's the Mississippi River, by the way.

Near Indianapolis

2011-07-24T06:58:00.005-05:00

Got up at the crack of dawn to get the plane out before the semi with the cropduster's loads showed up and parked in front of the hangar. Checked weather, loaded airplane, waited for a storm to pass from southwest to southeast. Walked out to an airshow intended only for the corn, as a thrush was spraying a field just north of the airport.

Went further south to get behind storms, then rode the wind they were using to rumble across the land into Illinois. Three hours later, my fuel was low and my bladder sounding the amber overpressure alarm. I diverted to the second-nearest airport, as it had a runway into the wind and the nearest one did not.

Galesburg, IL, had half the ramp full of ag planes loading fuel and chemicals... but the other half the ramp was crowded with personal airplanes, many of which were beautiful, shiny, freshly washed and waxed. An RV, a round-engine Cessna 195, light-sport composite that looked like the cockpit still had the new airplane smell... I wondered as I tied my plane down just what I'd found.

Then I walked into the lobby, and found the weather computer niche overstuffed with pilots trying to find a way through the storms to Oshkosh, for EAA's greatest aviation show on earth. We chatted until the fueler was finished with an ag plane and could get to my plane. Then in the air again, until my GPS was nearly dead, I was on my third sectional for the day, and I was emptying the wing tanks.

Finally, I got near Indianapolis, at one of the smaller airports nearby, called in on the low-battery left on the handhold, and landed in the thick humid heat. After I taxied in, I took the nearest parking space... just past two T-6's that were tied down and swathed in covers. I don't know if they're headed to Oshkosh or back from the Peoria airshow, but it was quite the sight.

I'll be here a day or two, as Brigid of Home on the Range has been kind enough to let me crash at her place. Really, guns, good food, airplanes, a black lab to spoil (and get back here with that underwear!), a bit of good alcohol to cap the night... Life is awesome.

Jousting with storms like Sir Robin

2011-07-22T21:27:00.003-05:00

When it comes to thunderstorms, I stand with Sir Robin - bravely running away! When flying over I-90 and realizing I was pointed at a very large towering cloud rising out of the haze, I looked to my right, my left, and dove left for the nearest airport. I waited until the coast was clear and snuck around behind the thunderstorm... only to find out that a thunderstorm's passage doesn't always mean clearer, dryer, cooler weather. As the haze got thicker and thicker and cloud deck overhead became solid and started getting darker, I promptly picked the nearest airport, and landed at Sioux Center, Iowa.

The ramp was full of Agcats, Thrushes, and all other sorts of cropdusters...and a twin. The dampers started playing tetris with towbars and airplanes, and when an obvious hole opened, I was glad that I still had my large tires - I simply checked to be clear of taxiway lights, and promptly rolled off the asphalt, across the grass, and onto the ramp where the hole for parking was.

Sioux Center Aviation loaned their crew car to me, and I set out with directions to the public pool. $5 for a day pass, and I had all the hot water in the world for a long, hot shower to finally get my hair clean while waiting on weather to clear. I love public pools! Yay hot water!

The sky opened up, and I set off into the same high headwind even as ag pilots were busy calculating loads, trying to poach each other's mechanics, and splitting for a last few passes in the golden evening light. Unfortunately, at an airspeed of 90mph and a groundspeed of 68mph, the weather built and moved faster than I did. So instead of trying to run the gap between storms moving northeast, I went south, and east as able. Run away!

Good thing I did, too, because as the haze grew thicker, the sun lower, and little while puffs started to rise above the haze, I landed at Carroll Municipal airport, in beautiful Carroll, Iowa. An Ag plane was just finished loading, engine rumbling and pilot putting on his helmet as I taxied up to a tiedown.

This airport is just incredible whenit comes to friendliness and hospitality. Free hangarage for the night, free laundry, free shower with provided towel, soap, shampoo, courtesy car, fine by them if I sleep on the air conditioned couch... If I'd known this place existed, I would have been steering here all along, not come by storms and chance!

Of course, the airport cat did stretch herself out in front of the gas pump so I had to pet her to get to the fuel, but that's hardly an imposition. Good things come to those who see thunderclouds and run away!

Mitchell, SD

2011-07-22T12:31:00.003-05:00

The wind in Billings finally died a little after 5, and I got out. About 15 miles out of Gillette, WY, I flew into the smoke trail of a contained forest fire. Visibility was still fine as long as you weren't looking toward the sun. I put my lights on to be more visible, and landed at Gillette right about the time the sun touched down, too.

The next morning was cool, bright, with fair weather, and I tried to cover ground as fast as I could. Stopped for fuel and sunblock in Wall, SD. Wall Drugs is a tourist trap, not a functional drugstore... darned hard to find sunblock. Got back to the plane, and managed to burn my legs right through SPF 45.

Got to Chamberlain, SD before the heat exhaustion started making me stupid. Landed, drank half a gallon of water, talked with a couple Agcat mechanics (working on a Thrush, right then.) Realized I was flat-out exhausted, camped. Spectacular lightning and thunder show around midnight, but almost no rain.

Woke up this morning to the sun shining, birds chirping, jake brakes... wait, no, that's distant thunder. Waited for the thunderstorms to pass, then took off along I-90 as it was the clearest corridor east. Fifty miles later, realized I was pointed directly at a growing thundercloud just down the road. Landed at the airport to my right, and having a cold soda while watching the radar until it reports the coast is clear.

Billings, MT

2011-07-19T22:35:00.003-05:00

About an hour out of Bozeman, I noticed my oil temps were slowly but steadily rising, and my oil pressure very gently declining. Having just changed the oil, this worried me. So, I set down in Columbus, MT. There, I found an IA to talk to about operating temps and pressures for my engine... for 4400 feet above the sea, when it is 96 degrees in the shade. Long story short, the engine's fine. By the way, Woltermann Memorial Airport has an awesome pilot cabin with couches, microwave, shower, bathroom, even towels and a stocked bookcase. It's all built and maintained by volunteers, and funded by donations.

While talking to the IA, we noticed an airplane circling overhead. Neither of us recognized it, but we both recognized the sound of a sick engine. The airplane turned out to be a beautiful DeHavilland Chipmunk, with a sick carburetor. ATC (Billings Approach) called the IA to see if he'd gotten in safely, as there is no tower. As the pilot had to go to Billings to catch a commercial flight back to Idaho and retrieve another carb, and I was headed near Billings, I gave him a ride in.

Once on the ground, thunderstorms set in, and I spent the rest of the afternoon circling the radar updates and calling weather briefers until giving up for the night. By the time I had the airplane ready to go this morning, the sky was bright cloudless blue... and the wind kicked up strong. By the time I got the aircraft back into a tiedown and ties firmly down, it was 24 gusting 30 knots.

So, a beautiful day for Sudoku puzzles and tea in the FBO!

Picture Post Whitehorse to Bozeman

2011-07-18T11:06:00.009-05:00

Having discovered after some good sleep and coffee that I got the pictures in the last post out of order, I've corrected them and will continue on.

Leaving Whitehorse in beautiful weather, I followed the Alcan down past Marsh Lake.

Refuelled at Teslin, where I met a wonderful young bloodhound puppy who will grow into a full howl - he's sure working on it! Canada has Community Area Radio Stations instead of Flight Service Stations like home in Alaska - the folks there can only tell you about the local weather, and update or close your flight plan if you file to that airport. They're pretty awesome folks, friendly, extremely well-versed in their local weather. After transferring fuel from the jerry cans to the gas tanks and chatting with a mechanic who came out to check out my plane, I went on to Watson Lake.

After Watson Lake, I flew on to Fort Nelson (the river rapids and rainbow are in the last post.) I dodged enough showers getting there that I went left over the Liard River instead of right over the Alcan right after Liard Hot Springs. That would be the last good weather I'd see for days.

This is what the sky looked like south of Ft Nelson when I got there, and the next day it only looked worse. The FBO was awesome, though, and I found enough to do that I wasn't bored.

Like helping diagnose, try to repair, and replace a magneto.

Finally made it, going low over the railroad tracks instead of taking the high road down the Alcan, to Fort Saint John, and spent another day weathered out there. How can you tell when the FBO is used to dealing with tired oilpatch roughnecks?

Got out of Fort St John to Grande Prairie by running low, close to the ground, dodging the worst of the lowest ceilings and keeping a sharp eye on my sectional for terrain. At Grande Prairie, weathered out for the rest of the day, and split a hotel room with a wonderful couple in a Maule who'd started from Watson Lake that morning. Yes, they covered in one day what took me five days - not only is their plane faster, but I have been pushing against a low weather trough, and they were not... until they caught up with it and with me.

The next day the heavy rain stopped, and several hundred square miles were covered by fog. It lifted slowly, and a little after noon, we determined it was high enough to go. So we flew out as a two-ship flight, pushing forward.

We got to Red Deer, and split another hotel for the night - this time exhaustion, not weather was the primary reason. It's an awesome place - the AirSpray hangar has a bunch of DC-3's outside. See the one in Reeve Aleutian colors? There's something I haven't seen in a long time! The folks at Hillman Aviation were putting a Christen Eagle biplane back together after the import inspection, and it was just head-turningly beautiful. We got gas at the tanks right outside, and they were kind enough to give us a lift into town and back.

The next morning, life was beautiful. I departed right behind the Maule, but there was no way I'd keep up. They called back from near Lethbridge, diverting toward Medicine Hat because the wind was high and gusting - but by the time I got to Lethbridge, the wind had dropped to 15 gusting 18 knots, and the wind at the diversion was the same.

Fuelled and filed for customs at Lethbridge, waited an hour for the wind to die just a little, and then continued down to a border strip. 4000 feet of grass, and thank goodness it was mostly into the very gusty wind, because there were barbed wire fences on each side of the runway. Had a little trouble - EAPIS will kick back the application unless you tell it you're going to a 4-letter identifier airport. Which the border strips definitely are not - that's for big airports that have plenty of asphalt and registrations with ICAO. The help file on EAPIS says if you're going to a smaller 3-letter identifier strip, to put the nearest 4-letter identifier strip in the destination, and then put your actual customs airport in the remarks below.

So I did, and called ahead as I'm supposed to do (and why on God's green earth do I need to file online to enter the country, when I'm already going to be going to a customs port, and I still have to call the customs port to let them know I'm coming?)

When I got there, they had decided that since I'd filed for the 4-letter airport nearby (DESPITE PUTTING THE SMALLER AIRPORT IN THE REMARKS AS INSTRUCTED), I must not be coming... and didn't come out to look at my plane until I called them on the cell while sitting a hundred feet from the building.

Despite all the bureaucratic bullshit and stupidity surrounding the whole process, the customs agents themselves were polite, professional, and remarkably easy to deal with.

As for bull shit of a more elemental kind - I have now learned to always be upwind of a cattle or pig lot like this one when flying by at a mere thousand feet off the ground. Spent too long in cities - you'd think that's obvious.

Spent the night camped by the plane at Choteau, Montana, as thunderstorms were blocking the passes south, and I'd rather camp under clear skies and wait out the billowing clouds to the south.

The next morning was bright, beautiful, blue skies everywhere, wind dropped to a playful five or seven knots just light enough to keep the mosquitoes and flies off. The major oddity as I packed up the tent - no dew on the grass or ground.

The road down goes past Helena to Bozeman, and the river and chain of lakes follows it before splitting off to one side. I took both down until they split - and seeing the narrowness of the road passes versus the width of the river channel, I took the river.

Finally arrived Bozeman, picked up by an old friend, and given coffee. Miss Cinnamon is no longer a small bundle of fluff with long legs sticking out, but she's definitely shedding as much as she always has! Just about everything I own has been liberally coated in dog hair as she has expressed how happy she is to see me, get a walk from me, and can she lick my plate when I'm done?

huh

2011-07-16T10:24:00.002-05:00

Been away from the news for a few weeks, and it looks like I didn't miss a damn thing except a case of sour stomach over the idiocy in DC and the rest of the country's politics and courts.

Did it get that much worse that fast, or has being immersed in reality for a while, interacting with honest folks simply made the power-mad insanity seem that much crazier?

Picture Post Anchorage to Whitehorse to Fort Nelson

2011-07-15T20:16:00.011-05:00

In Bozeman now, doing laundry, resting up, loading pictures to Blogger and catching up. These pictures were a little out of order when I posted them, so the post is edited for the actual order now that I've had rest and coffee.

Setting out, I was more interested in dealing with the airplane than taking pictures, so there are none until Sheep Mountain.

The Gunny (and J of Call to Wings) flew escort to the border. The Gunny's plane is so much faster, he flew racetracks around me in order to fly with me.

Mentasta Pass. Wasn't fast enough on the camera to catch the two eagles circling in a thermal, and then I found the turbulence, so I was busy with yoke, throttle, mixture, and carb heat.

Weather was good until Mentasta Pass, and then it lowered again after Northway into Beaver Creek. I camped under-wing and stayed dry, but the ground was hard enough (and then loose enough when soaked) that the tent stakes slowly collapsed. Let's not even go into all the places one can be bitten by mosquitoes.

Burwash Landing was pretty, but I was more interested in refueling than taking pictures. After getting past the low rain right outside Beaver Creek, I was trying to make good time getting to Whitehorse. It was as well I did; in the last 25 miles, my radio decided to be cranky about not getting a charge the night before, and the transmit power started dropping fast well before the low-battery light flashed (and I could still hear them trying to talk to me). Fortunately, a Cessna relayed my answers until I got within 10 miles and around the last mountain. People are awesome, given half a chance.

Missed the fact that there's a pilot shelter on the Whitehorse airport, with a gazebo. So, I slept down in town at the Robert Service campgrounds, which are pretty well run. The next day, met up with a friend right before takeoff. His son went from scared of the airplane to upset when he was removed from the cockpit so I could go - always happy to delay to create another fan of aviation!

Out of Whitehorse, I put fuel in at Teslin, then went on to Watson Lake - great people there, and great pilots passing through and camping. I really should have gotten photos. Ah, well. Had a wonderful time with great people, and a blessedly dry and mosquito-free couch. Taking off was interesting - a rain front decided to start coming about the time I was doing a run-up. Busy with controls - no pictures until well clear.

Hell's Gate on the Rapids of the Drowned, lower part of the Grand Canyon of the Liard River.

Dodging storms and showers, found a rainbow on the way into Fort Nelson.

In Red Deer

2011-07-13T21:37:00.002-05:00

In Grande Prairie I met a wonderful retired couple flying their Maule down to Oshkosh from Anchorage, and we split a hotel room for the night. The next day, we waited on weather until noon, then took off as a flight of 2 to Whitecourt, then Red Deer beyond. As Bones said in Star Trek IV, "One little detail..." I can push my plane to cruise at a hundred, and they cruise at a hundred. But they meant knots, and I meant statute miles per hour.

Three and a half hours of slow flight (for them) and pushing the engine at the top of the green while trying to lean and save any possible bit of fuel (for me), we got to Red Deer. If we'd stopped in Whitecourt, I wouldn't have been at all worried about fuel, but then, we probably wouldn't have finished as a flight of two, either. We're both exhausted - them from the extra work of flying slow, me from the work of flying fast. So, splitting another hotel room, and in the morning they're headed for Saskatoon, I'm for Lethbridge.

One other minor detail; I forgot the charger for the radio in the plane. May delay a few hours while I charge it tomorrow. Oops. Too tired to really care right now.

Fort Saint John

2011-07-12T06:54:00.002-05:00

Being weathered over for a day in Ft. St. John has been the longest time I've had to work at not feeling like chewing off my leg to escape a trap. The people are great, the FBO luxurious, and I... I'm not their kind of client. This place has exactly one tie down for a small aircraft, and I'm in it. They have a large asphalt pad for jets to pull in and out, and though the pilots have been unfailingly good, I still cringe inside every time a corporate or charter jet, including a 727, turn and sweep my little rag n' tube with their jetwash.

I may not be the only pilot yesterday without epaulets, but it was close. At least I fit in with the charter passengers, headed up to the oil patch (except they are all male). I feel a bit like the ugly duckling around the swans, foregoing the leather couches and tasteful rugs of the pilot's lounge for sitting on the floor playing with a five-month-old toy breed puppy.

That said, the rampers and receptionist have been awesome, ranging from amused and generous to apologetic for the "worst summer since 89". The pilots with their pressed uniforms and epaulets either ignore me or want to know all about my plane and trip with a grin in their hearts at the challenge.

Today's weather is forecast to be no better, but I'm hoping for a break. I would rather be camped under my wing off the side of a gravel strip, no showers and mosquitoes all around, than out of place in asphalt and luxury. Maybe it's just early curmudgeonliness, but after a two days of working at being cheerful, I don't want to deal with people for a while.

Fort Nelson

2011-07-10T01:05:00.004-05:00

Fort Nelson was massively undersold to me by pilot report as an industrial airport, noisy and run down, with friendly people. As its geology, it's the first town out of the mountains, on the flatter prairie. It's a heart for the oilfields, with a humming industrial hub supporting them, instead of the touristy feel of Whitehorse or the silence and sparrows and sunsets of Watson Lake. To me, it feels like Merrill Field. It feels like home, alive with people doing things with aviation and going places.

The people are awesome. The FBO, Sky North Aviation Fuels, was officially closed for the day when I got in, but the gent working there offered a ride into town. The grill, he apologized, was out of propane for grilling up hot dogs or burgers, but I was welcome to the microwave, the incredibly comfy couch, the shower, the small kitchen, the wireless... It is a place designed to keep people happy even when waiting out weather for days. The people are what turn it from a nice place into an awesome one.

The next morning, Fort Saint John had ceilings of 600 feet. The low that was forecast to move... hadn't. A couple in a nice lightly modified Cessna still mostly kitted for high, fast, and long distance took off, as did a couple in a helicopter. The two very nice gents who'd camped out at Watson Lake filed IFR, but came back with a bad mag. We pooled our toolkits and set to work finding and fixing the problem (and fixing a primer line while we were at it). As they were an experienced A&P and IA, I mostly held tools, fetched things, and learned about mags (one of the things that hasn't broken on my plane yet. ) After fixing the obvious problem, reassembling and timing everything, and finding the secondary problem, we turned to the mechanic Sky North found. He wasn't officially working today, but was doing paperwork in the shop. A new mag was procured, timing box borrowed, and the airplane repaired.

I saw them off, as ceilings has risen, bit visibility had dropped to 5 miles with light rain and mist. I don't mind relatively low ceilings, but I very much mind low visibility. You don't hit what you see coming. So I hung out, chatted with folks, and am preparing for a second night with my sleeping bag on the couch of incredible comfiness.

Tomorrow, if the low goes where I want it to, I'll be in Ft. St. John, or maybe all the way to Grande Prairie. If not, there are a lot worse places to spend a quiet Sunday! Maybe I'll even find all the autocorrect spelling and grammar errors in these last posts...

Watson Lake

2011-07-08T21:42:00.005-05:00

The sound of Watson Lake is the silence of wind and sparrows, as rain falls on distant hills. I asked the radio as I landed long where the fuel was, and they said, "Just look for the big white tank that says AVGAS." The fuel tank I needed was behind me, so I went left instead of right, toward the big tank that said AVGAS 100LL. This tank belonged to the forestry fire-fighting base, as it sat next to the Jet A tank and three tanks of fire retardant for water bombers. The only person on duty came out to wave me off, but we got to talking instead. Well, some talking, and a lot of watching the distant rain, and waving idly at mosquitos.

The entire airfield is huge, for all the crosswind runway is closed and the control tower stands vacant (but unlike the WWII hangar barely inhabited by a very few planes and a great many swallows nesting above the doors, near-pristine.) Inside the terminal with its motion-activated lights, the walls are covered with pictures from the lend-lease program, and inset glass cases with artifacts. It was utterly silent, and felt like a monument to flight - not even a museum, but rather something lovingly gathered and preserved, in pristine condition, to a town once thriving, to a distant past when air travel was not an intrusive, abusive trial, set in a museum exhibit to the history of flight in the Yukon.

In a low side wing, there are signs of life - the television keeping the person behind Watson Lake Radio awake. The Community Aerodrome Radio Station folks in the Yukon have all been very friendly, very accustomed to solitude, and very willing to talk about anything to a live human being. The brothers who man the afternoon and graveyard shifts were no elections to this rule, and shared in-depth history and background on the weather patterns, from the vicious spring fog to the frequency of thunderstorms, and on life in general.

Out by the gazebo by the lake, two gentlemen from Massachusetts and the most mellow Jack Russell terriers ever were camping with their 182... the first example of the breed I can remember seeing with small tires and wheelpants. When not modified for the bush, they can haul serious amounts of stuff at very high rates of speed! They very generously shared their dinner, and we talked late into the night on aircraft maintenance, sattelite components, balloon launching in Antarctica, dogs, guns, and people.

No matter how nice the night (and it was beautiful), I elected to forego the 5 star camping experience for a warm, dry couch with no beautiful views of the long sunset, no campfire, no haunting cries of loons... and no mosquitos, no rain, and thermostat controlled warmth. Romantic, after two nights camping, I am not.

In whitehorse

2011-07-06T17:39:00.003-05:00

Got escorted to the border by The Gunny and J of Call to Wings. Wonderful time, awesome friends. Miss them already.

Made Beaver Creek at 8pm local, cleared customs, got tent set up, tea and oatmeal, went to sleep.

Then it rained. and rained. And rained.

Made it whitehorse anyway. Exhausted. Thuderstorms popping up all over, going to stay here tonight.

Cell phone no worky. May update later, may update in Montana. Take care!

Independance

2011-07-04T13:15:00.002-05:00

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

-The Star Spangled Banner
Francis Scott Key
1814

It's not a perfect nation by any stretch, but there are none better. I'm proud to belong to her in bone, blood, and spirit, and grateful for all my ancestors who fought and fled to come here, and all the men and women, military and civilian, who have made and continue to make her the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Rain, rain go away

2011-07-02T13:32:00.003-05:00

This is not a sign of hope and cheer. This is a sign that the cloud deck is a little broken over by the next range of mountains to the west, and the sun has sunk down low enough to light the rain falling on our heads. (This was taken around 11:30pm last night.)

Tahetna Pass - Closed. Eureka - MVFR. Gulkana - MVFR. Mentasta Pass - about what you'd expect, but at least you can see sunlight in the broken layers! Big Delta - MVFR. Northway - IFR.

So for those of you who were asking, that's what a double rainbow means.

Waiting on weather

2011-06-30T14:15:00.002-05:00

Not dead, not gone yet. Just waitin' on weather. There was a beautiful day - but I was down sick. There was another beautiful day - and I was still trying to get over the sick. I got healthy, and the weather's been down.

Today, the weather here is good, the weather at Tok and Northway is... passable VFR... and Mentasta pass is "Um, I think I see a little sunlight coming under those clouds, maybe..."

Not that I've been grounded - I took a fellow apprentice mechanic flying, and it was as rewarding to see the fun she was having as it was to fly. She helped rebuild the tailwheel and overhaul my brakes, among other help, so it was fun to let her take the controls and enjoy the feel of being in the air in something she'd worked on.

Yesterday, I went up with The Gunny, but I was the least important passenger in the plane - the most important one was the eagle scout sitting up front, who was completing his aviation merit badge, and his father sitting behind him. The Gunny's right - you do get to see a lot more when you're an interested passenger instead of the pilot focusing on the runway coming up.

Today, if able, The Gunny and I may take his plane to Talkeetna for lunch. I'll mail out a last few items - tomorrow I'll drop off the town car my favorite park ranger in the whole wide world has let me borrow. And if I'm not gone by Saturday, unless we're socked in solid, I'll be going as far as I can, even if I have to camp, to get out of here twenty or a hundred or three hundred miles at a time.

I miss my husband. Alaska's glorious, but it's time to be gone, to be home.

Homer Trip

2011-06-22T22:35:00.007-05:00

The weather has been less than stellar, and I needed a long cross-country trip to really get the feel for fuel burn when going places, not in the pattern or hanging around something at a slow speed. The Gunny and I have long wanted to give each other rides in our airplanes, trips dreamed of when our birds both sat under extensive maintenance in the same hangar. We picked a day, and it spawned miserable weather. As the day wore on, the clouds lifted from MVFR to fully VFR, and with the long sunlight of almost-solstice, it seemed like the best chance was to seize the moment. If all the passes are closed, straight south along the mountains to Homer was opening up.

Going south across Turnagain Arm, I couldn't climb as high as I'd like for a water crossing - there were solid clouds in the way. My fuel burn may be a little rich for better weather, as the following picture shows well why carb heat was pulled practically from takeoff to landing.

click to embiggen; the pictures look better when bigger!

Fortunately, we didn't have to go directly through much rain, and the rest of the way was more like this:

The Gunny is a helicopter pilot. Yes, he has a "seized-wing" airplane he loves, but rotor-wing is addictive enough that it's very rare to find someone who'll identify with fixed-wing at heart if they have both ratings. Like most rotor-wing pilots, especially those who learned their training for environments where people are shooting at them, he prefers a flight altitude of about ten feet below tree level. I prefer about 2000 AGL as a cruising altitude. When he had the controls, this meant we compromised, if not without some good-natured teasing.

Skilak Lake

Lake Tustamena. If anything, the camera washed out the startlingly bright shade of blue that comes with the rock flour in the glacial meltwater.

South of Tustamena, the land rises in a giant swelling dome of rock wreathed in clouds. We tucked toward the mountains, taking the channel carved by massive glaciers before, following meltwater rivers down to Katchemak Bay.

No photos of the Bay itself, though it is very impressive - about the time we came in range of Homer's CTAF, got the ATIS, and got ready to enter a long final, another plane reported in behind me. I know the plane, and it's owner, and it's a fast, impressive hauling machine. (I keep thinking it's a twin. It's not, but the owner does work all over the state, and it hauls everywhere from Nome to Dillingham to Kodiak to Yakutat every day there's a job.) So I was more interested in flying the plane and reporting my position to the other traffic than taking pictures.

(He didn't spot me until I was on the runway - if he had, I would have arranged for him to overtake me. But he couldn't find my bright yellow plane, so he ended up doing a 360 for spacing, despite starting 8 miles behind me at the first report. He's fast.)

With my new nifty phone with internet, I looked up a cab company, and used the highest-tech, most-reliable method for finding a great restaurant: ask the cabbie. It worked, too - Fat Olives is a great restaurant. Some really good food and strong coffee later, we returned to the airport.

On the way back, we went the long way, stopping at Kenai for the utter luxury of flush toilets. Sure, I could have landed at some short strip and used the weeds, but honestly? I like hot running water and civilization. I should have decided to put my bulky jacket back on when getting in the cockpit, but it wasn't until the next day that I'd realize I was already falling sick. The cabin heat, despite its legendary weakness, actually served well enough to keep our feet warm, and as we got closer to home, the sun drew down to hover below the cloud deck, spilling golden evening sunshine across the world and painting the mountains in burgundies and claret.

Inner Lake George

2011-06-21T20:14:00.005-05:00

By the Knik Glacier - a good place to land later, in dryer weather. Wide, flat, long open approaches, nestled btween the terminal moraine for one glacier and the Knik Glacier below.

Flew to Homer last night, with The Gunny. Ate at Fat Olive's, good food, even better company. Didn't put jacket back on after stopping in Kenai for a brief break, caught something that's kicking my immune system.

Will post pictures soonish. More hot tea now. Anyone looking for pre-war Taylorcraft wing parts? Have some for sale.

Coffee and Glacier Run

2011-06-20T01:09:00.007-05:00

The rain drifted down in a light mist, barely enough to notice on the windscreen, while north of Palmer it was an opaque veil obscuring the mountains and the ground below. It made the day seem dimmer, grainy, washed-out like a bad photograph taken too quickly.

But the clouds had lifted while we'd had coffee at the Vagabond Blues in Palmer, so on the way out we turned left instead of right, and went up the meltwater river to the glaciers that spawned it.

The picnic table strip is at the terminal moraine for the Knik Glacier - some enterprising soul ran a picnic table up on a jetboat some years ago. Last I heard, the main strip is so well-used that it's rutted and rough. People have actually started landing on "the alternate strip" often enough it's becoming the new picnic table strip. On the other hand, the main one is the easy one to spot from the air.

Carrying the mountains down to the sea in a reverse skunk stripe, the glacier touches my bones with a bit of cold no engine heat in the cabin can erase. Wind leaking in every crack and space brings the scent of ice, ground rock, age, and implacable force.

Going down the valley on the way home, the ground dropping away beneath my feet, with thousands of spots to land beneath, I always feel a little internal sigh of relief.

No landing at the Upper Lake George strip today - the old dry lake bed was not nearly so dry right now, and I'm new enough to my airplane and low-time enough I know when I'm out of my depths. It was enough, anyway, to satisfy my passenger's sightseeing desires.

The Case of the Howling Cowling

2011-06-18T02:55:00.004-05:00

Blame Calmer Half for the title - he thought it up, and it was just facepalm-inducing enough to convey my feelings of the past week.

The alternator came back from bench testing with a clean bill of health, but when I flew the airplane for three circuits, the high shrill whine was still there. (Softer, though - it was no longer washing out my voice when transmitting, just really annoying.) I came back, talked it over with the IA, and he suggested a longer flight, and trying turning off the field switch, then the master switch entirely, to see if that changed anything.

It didn't. What did change, however, was the level of noise when I started doing some rusty dutch rolls, yawing the nose wildly left and right. Waitaminute...

I landed, called my IA with much chagrin - because a high metallic whine that changes with airflow over the cowling is likely to be... the cowling. It only appears at high RPMs, because that's when the vibration is worst against the front piece and the fuselage. I recalled, then, that there had been some very ratting clear tape - it looked like packing tape - on the edge of the cowling. Between a puppy that likes to chew loose things and a mechanic whom I remember pulling the "loose trash" off... a cowling suddenly bereft of its anti-chafe tape chafes miserably, with a high metallic shriek of tortured metal.

*facepalm*

So, out comes the can of brakeclean and paper towel, to take off the last lingering remnants, note the shiny spots and dirty where the top cowl has been rubbing hard, and start prepping surfaces to take brand-new anti-chafe tape. Taping, a check flight, and more taping later, the whine is down to as soft as a mosquito in a summer back yard - only really noticeable if you're looking for it.

Who would have thought?

In the end, the plane is running fine, I know more about the engine, and it could have been so much worse. It's all good. And sights like these wash the frustration away.

Whining

2011-06-12T00:19:00.002-05:00

I don't like whining. I don't like whining when adults do it, or when I catch myself wanting to do it. I don't like whining when small children do it, and I most especially do not like it when my airplane engine does it.

Unlike small children, adults behaving same as prior, and frustrated puppies, when my airplanes whines, it means something really has gone wrong and is getting worse rapidly.

When the whining came right as I applied full power for takeoff, I thought it was electronic - it was not that far off in tone from the radio antenna that bleeds over frequencies into Birchwood's CTAF and leaves squeals and ghostly echoes of music in horrible harmonics filling every second no one's transmitting on the frequency. I was almost to the mountains when I'd troubleshot all possible electronics, and did the last thing possible - lifted my headset off my head.

The whine was definitely coming from my engine compartment, and loud. Very loud.

Right, so, FLY THE AIRPLANE. Immediate turn back to the airfield, keeping the army airfield in gliding range until the air force base's runways were in gliding range, over the highway in case I wasn't in as much range as I thought. Check all the gauges. Tell the passenger the flight is terminated, calmly, explain the problem, do not say four-letter words or anything to panic them. Call tower, inform them that we're coming right back, not yet declaring an emergency, but the engine's making a very unhappy sound (realizing it's loud enough that it's transmitting with my voice, as though I'm speaking with heavy static).

Why does the wind, which was high and gusting but still inside my personal limits, decide to start switching directions by twenty degrees and getting worse - and gusting harder - while I'm headed back unexpectedly? Why am I suddenly having trouble mentally picturing the right base I need to make for the runway? Why can't I find the very well camoflauged C-130 doing touch n' go's at the air base and intruding on my airspace the tower is warning me about, even after my passenger spotted him? Why in the whole wide world are my gauges still all showing green - oil temp, oil pressure, CHT's, Voilts, Ammeter, Fuel flow, fuel remaining, all green and good, and this would be a perfect flight if the engine would stop screaming, so what can it be that's failing?

Note to self: when a lot of my brain is locked up on monitoring all guages with the expectations of something going wrong Real Soon Now and trying hard to appear calm for the passenger, my landing skills sink to the lowest level of sloppiness I've ever allowed myself, and then go a bit lower still. Train for perfection, not good enough, because my landing skills sure didn't rise to the occasion. On the other hand, the judgement still worked - when I knew the landing was on the cusp of absolutely unsalvageable, I made the conscious decision not to turn a bad situation into a worse one. The guages were all good, so I applied power and went around. Interestingly enough., the screaming whine went away when I pulled power - and came back instantly when I re-applied power. Definitely engine, the pooor thing.

Landing number two proved that 20 knots is a good fraction of my stall speed of 28mph - the wheels were planted, and then suddenly, they weren't, anymore. I threw in too much throttle to soften the sudden descent back to earth when the gust died - and as the wind got stronger instead, and we were climbing, with the runway rapidly disappearing beneath me. Go around again. Third time was so smooth it would have been a perfect end to a flightseeing trip, which only chagrined me more for the two prior.

The whine was gone like it never happened at taxi idle, so we crept to the parking spot, shut down & tied down, and I popped the cowl. There I beheld... nothing. A perfectly normal-looking engine. No oil leaks, no loose nuts, engine mounts tight, not a single piece of stretched safety wire or chafe mark. Confused, but relieved to be down (and wired on adrenaline) I called tower and gave them my heartfelt thanks, swearing I didn't know what it was, but it was going straight back to the shop in the morning.

Given I just put in a new starter, that was the first thing I pulled the next day - and it was perfectly fine. We checked the prop - tight, but fine. I put it back on, and did a full-power static run-up, tied down. Nothing. If there's one thing I like less than problems, it's intermittent problems. Next, I pulled the alternator - and while there was nothing I could immediately point to, the gear did have a strange amount of wear for barely more than ten flight hours (it's a newly overhauled alternator.) Off to the shop - they'll bench it first thing next week.

Just when I was starting to feel a little defensive (I'm not crazy, there was a sound I can't reproduce with no obvious causes), my passenger comes up with video she shot of the flight (it was supposed to be a flightseeing trip, after all.) Note - neither my IA nor any of the A&P's, despite any jokes about "autorough", ever doubted that I had heard something unusual. I've had plenty enough condescension, derision, and outright dismissal from male car mechanics to really appreciate that when pilot says there was an unusual noise loud enough she terminated a flight immediately, people take me at my word.

My IA listened to the video, and nodded, very calmly, then began explaining the variety of things that can go wrong with an alternator, and how they lead to intermittent failure. Another A&P stopped by the computer, listened, and nodded. "Sounds like the alternator." Given the alternator's already at the shop in queue to bench-test, it'll be ready to fix Monday.

I feel better now. Given a cause, I can fix that. Hopefully this doesn't sound too much like whining to you!

New Starter - Now in Black!

2011-06-07T11:02:00.013-05:00

The old starter, generally referred to as a T-handle starter, or a pull starter, had a very simple operation. The pilot smoothly pulled the T-shaped handle, which had a cable that ran to the starter arm. (We're looking at the arm in front of the green cylinder on top of the engine compartment.) A stub at the base of the arm pushed the starter gear into the engine to engage on the first two-thirds of the arc, and then the arm would make physical contact with that big metal button - the one with the giant wire running to it from the battery, and the merely thick wire running away to power the electrical bus. The button would then be depressed, and the starter motor would engage its gear. When the starter handle is released, the motor shuts off, and the gear is spun out of the turning engine back to its resting position. Simple, troublesome, annoying, and a world better than hand-propping.

The teeth on this gear are supposed to be slightly angled, because there's no guarantee the gear with which it engages on the engine are going to stop exactly in alignment on engine shutdown - and the hole in the center is for a stud in the engine that keeps the gear aligned. Slightly angled does not mean chewed like this - this gear is now a paperweight. I wanted a new Sky-Tec starter, but the stud in the engine must be ground out. When it comes to taking my engine off the plane, cracking the case, packing it so the metal from grinding the stud off doesn't destroy anything else, and then reinstalling... I put the new Sky-Tec starter on my someday list, and got a used serviceable replacement of the same type.

Since the gear looked like it was missing bits of metal, I changed the oil. Sure, the oil was only 8 hours run-time old, but looking at that gear, I knew there was metal in there somewhere. When draining the filter, prop it at an angle so the drained oil does not create suction inside the filter, making it stick to the pan.

The longer you let the filter drain, the less messy it is. I was impatient, and only gave it a few hours - with cold oil. Generally, if an airplane's flyable, one should fly the plane, then change the hot, thin oil.

Also, best hand soap for getting engine oil off your hands? Dawn dish soap.

No significant metal was found in the filter, which made me happy, but it's not the only place to check - the oil sump itself has a screen designed not to let any large chunks through the pickup. (This isn't my plane, but the owner of this one in annual was kind enough to let me take a photo for reference - same kind of oil sump.) So we ran a magnetic pickup around the bottom of the sump, fishing for chunks.

Found one. Go on, click to embiggen and clearly see its sharp shard-like menace!

Here's the new starter. Yay new starter!

As long as we were swapping all other starter-related items, it was a great time to pull the starter cable out, check its condition, hit it with brake cleaner to remove corrosion and lubriplate for protection and easier pulling.

Also, new tie-down ropes. The ends are not only melted together, but secured with heat-shrink so they won't fray when the melted end cracks. The rings marked in red sharpie are so I can tell if I've got two ropes or two ends of the same rope.

Breakfast Run

2011-06-04T21:48:00.008-05:00

Today I flew out to Palmer, not far away, for the pancake breakfast. It was an interesting flight, as the shiny RV taildragger in front of me requested a deviation across Elmendorf AFB's airspace. Tower asked if I was headed to Birchwood or to the Palmer pancake breakfast as well, and offered to coordinate a deviation for me, as well. Well, heck, take the hypotenuse of a triangle instead of two longer legs in the crowded corridor between highway and mountains? Sure!

Thankfully, tower told the RV Elmendorf's frequency about the time I was going to turn crosswind, so I had spare brain attention to get ready and dial it in myself. On the other hand, it was a good thing Elmendorf was quiet. While the RV went like greased lightning and was almost out of the airspace before I was in it, I'm not so fast.

The rain yesterday was very soft and gentle, like melted snowflakes drifting down. On the mountains that aren't on the western flank of the Chugach, you can see why; a fresh layer of new-fallen snow. I need to get some gloves before I fly out; my hands were getting a little stiff from the cold. Fortunately, it was nice and only lightly cool, mid-fifties, on the airport surface.

The food was good, but while I was there, the wind off the glacier went from strong, with a few turbulent bumps, to much stronger. Leaving, it was blowing 16 gusting 22 knots, so I opted for the short runway, 9, into the wind. (See the dust trail it kicked up from the meltwater river bed.)

Departing traffic was like a hive the bear is still digging in for honey - I was in a swarm of taildragging Cessnas, a Harvard Mark IV, STOL nosewheel Cessnas, supercub-like experimentals, and various other planes. Not all of them were announcing, and some didn't remember to listen first, then tell the FSS on field that they had traffic and the numbers (the automated weather), so the poor Flight Service Station guy was trying to cram the information in while traffic was in very active motion. I feel bad for not telling him when I was clear of the airspace, but frankly, I couldn't get a word in edgewise. So I flew the plane, kept my ears and eyes sharp, and didn't have much time to spare for pictures.

Passing Chugiak, you can see summer coming up the mountain with verve and vigor.

Back to Merrill:

Transponder waivers

2011-06-01T13:14:00.007-05:00

Public Service Announcement / reminder to self:

The TSA/FAA waiver website is at https://www.c3.faa.gov/default.aspx

Yes, the TSA themselves reference the wrong URL in their own FAQ - they tell you to go to "www.newaddress.com". Sigh.

Yes, when you find the right site, it not only proudly proclaims it is a site still in beta testing, it crashes like it, too.

It does not work on android phone browser - any attempt to login will take you immediately to a 401 Bad Login page, with no way to see a login screen. It randomly goes bad and fails to load on both IE and firefox. I could not, on Internet Explorer, find the link to check prior submissions to see if the first try actually submitted when the website fritzed and started returning "failed to load - please refresh". It works tolerably well on Firefox, but still returns errors. At least I can log in on Firefox and see that the first one that started reporting the page didn't load and was in error actually did submit, and that the other two I got kicked out while trying to submit (not knowing the first one went through) were saved as drafts.

In the end, it doesn't matter - what matters is the thing is submitted. Remember the real URL so I can go back and check on it in a few business days.

ReStart

2011-05-31T12:18:00.002-05:00

Monday, with the battery freshly charged, I went to go fly. After all, if the problem is a slow leak to ground, then as long as the battery is charged enough to start, and the alternator is providing juice back into the system, the plane will fly fine - I just won't take her anywhere that shutting down for a while might lead to a problem.

That was the theory, anyway. The reality was that I pulled the starter, and I got the prop to turn over a little with an interesting grinding noise, before it stopped. This is not the battery - there's still plenty of juice in it. It's not a leak to ground, because that wouldn't keep the starter from going. I was wrong.

It's the starter. That horrid grinding sound before the prop stopped? Yeah, that's the gears not meshing. Thankfully, I didn't try long (about as long as it took to go Oh No That's Not Right). So today, tearing down the starter, and finding the problem starting from the engine back, while making sure the gears didn't leave any metal loose in the engine as they failed to mesh.

If it's the starter, which it likely is, I'm going to pull the engine, have the local engine shop modify it slightly to upgrade from 1941 technology to 1980's technology with a new Sky-Tec starter. They're smaller, much lighter, and far more reliable - so I won't have to deal with this again for many, many years.

And here's the part where I know God has an interesting sense of humor - modifying the engine, buying and installing the new starter, and reinstalling the engine on the airplane will cost... just a little more than the amount a friend just paid for my old radio, VOR head, and associated wiring. It'll be okay.

If you'll excuse me, I'll be out in the warm sunshine, working on my airplane, laughing about life and reminding myself that this happened before I was in the middle of nowhere over the Rockies, no one's shooting at me, and my husband loves me. All else can be handled easily.

Dead battery

2011-05-29T15:10:00.003-05:00

Hopped in the airplane yesterday - well, climbed in after cleaning the windscreen, stop-drilling a crack in the cowl, applying NO STEP placards to the struts as a gentle reminder to any non-pilot passengers to come, checking the fuse seating, fueling, and zip-tying a loose bundle of wires back in place.

The battery had enough juice to try to crank, but after three blades, it ran out of power before the engine could catch. I didn't leave any switches on after the last flight. The ammeter has shown charging after every start-up, which means the newly rebuilt alternator is likely fine - the new battery should be good - so that leaves a leak to ground somewhere in the system.

I am not fond of electrical problems. V=ir , and after that it gets fuzzy. Well, I guess I get to learn now!

All full of frustration, unhappiness, rage at another setback, and despair, I had reached the point of laughing helplessly (rather than screaming) when I called my husband to let him know I'm just arbitrarily pushing the leave date back another two days, because I've never found electrical problems simple or easy to fix yet. My Calmer Half listened, then reminded me that he views this the same way I do - better now at the shop than in the dark, in the rain, with ten million moosquitos and no services. He calmly and firmly told me that he loves me, that I'm doing fine, that he looks forward to me coming home, but places no hurry-up on me getting there.

I adore that man beyond words. I know I'm highly strung; it's part of who I am - but he is so calming, so stable, so unstinting with his love and good humour, that he could make the worst day better. And, he's right, no one's shooting at me, so it's all a good day.

Funnily enough, my CFI is of a very similar mind - a few days ago, when contemplating a fuel tank that wasn't draining, he shrugged, and smiled broadly with nothing but genuine good humour. "It's not raining, it's warm, and there are no incoming mortars. Cheer up - it's a good day!"

It will be a good day. It is a good day. Instead of flying, I'll charge the battery today, and go on a motorcycle ride with a friend. The sun's out, no one's shooting at me, I have friends here who give me a nice bed to sleep in and a car to use, I'm in good health, and I'm going to go play!

Day is done

2011-05-29T05:39:00.004-05:00

One of the first sights I remember is green grass under my feet, and a folding chair whose seat was roughly at my eye height. One of the first sounds I remember is the bugle, echoing through the graveyard, and the crack of the guns.

One of the standard beginner tunes for the trumpet is Taps, because it's all open C's, and teaches breathing and lip control to vary the notes. As soon as I played it, I knew I'd heard it before, knew that I should know this song, and that it wasn't quite right. My father would leave the house to not have to listen to me practice - and it drove me, haunted me, because I knew this song somehow to my bones, but didn't quite remember why.

Later, I learned all too well why I never could make it sound right on my trumpet, and why my father would leave the house, as the bugle and its echo came across another graveyard. I watched a folded flag be pressed gently into hands that had poured years of life into a son, only to have it poured out in defense of our land. Later, I'd learn the cost we pay in flesh and blood, in hopes and dreams, in fathers, daughters, sons, mothers, brothers, sisters, and friends.

To everyone who is serving and everyone who has served, you have my deep and grateful thanks.

Signed off

2011-05-27T22:53:00.002-05:00

Today we did wheel landings at Palmer, which is a pretty reliable airport for crosswind. The wind was amusingly light, given we'd come just for that - but the windsock at the head of 16 didn't agree with the windsock at the tail end of 16. Combined with the bluff on downwind to base that fools a pilot into coming in high, and the inevitable burbles over the river and the treeline, it was a good thing that I had 6000 feet of runway available. Not that I used it all, but that I didn't feel much pressure or panic to either monkey with my landings or go around. So we worked on wheel landings, and when a wheel landing has gone too far wrong to be pulled off - but can still be converted into a 3-point landing.

In the middle of this practice, we stopped in at the FSS, and met the guy on duty. (They have flush toilets instead of running into the woods! The utter plush civilization of it all!) We tsill have local FAA employees at the Flight Service Stations in Alaska, and unlike the outsourced version in the lower 48, no matter what the patchy automated weather information may indicate, you can take the FSS briefer's weather predictions to the bank.

After we got back, my CFI signed my logbook with all due endorsements as safe to take off and fly this thing alone, anywhere and everywhere I want. I still scheduled another lesson with him, tomorrow at 1300, to polish the last few rough edges - I'm not happy with my wheel landings yet, and want a little more crosswind practice.

No pictures today - busy flying. Maybe tomorrow?

So I celebrated by scarfing down the last of the blueberries and yesterday's donuts, like any good airport scavenger, and then pitching in on power-washing the ramp. I've wanted to do that since the first time I knelt in the accumulated dirt and sand blown in from around the city - I may not be able to pull-start the motor, but I can run the hose for a while.

One of my favorite gunnies in the whole wide world stopped by, freshly retired and with the few day's worth of beard growth and ear-to-ear grin to prove it. Our planes were long-term projects together. It's awesome for us both to see each other's birds as finally flying, and congratulate each other. My big old brick of a radio, which I uninstalled months ago, will now find a new and happy home being used in his plane, making everyone happy in the deal. Yay!

Back in the Air

2011-05-27T02:12:00.004-05:00

Sorted out the paperwork and finished some maintenance today, and got back up in the air. Went to Goose Bay, and worked on wheel landings. Note: I was not flying the plane at the time this picture was taken; I had the CFI set up and do a wheel landing first, so I could see the right sight picture to reference when I made my own landings.

There were a couple go-arounds; I default to going around after two bad bounces, and am also learning to feel the difference between skipping off the surface of an uneven gravel runway and an actual uncontrolled bounce from too little power or wrong control movement.

In general, life was good. I don't expect to get happy with my wheel landings in the next few hours, but I do expect to get functional and safe - finesse will come with practice.

In the meantime, for everyone who's ever whiled time away reading bumper stickers in traffic, here's yet more evidence that airplanes are viewed as trucks up here - meet one half of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's cowl.

Stretching my wings

2011-05-25T01:56:00.010-05:00

I had hoped and planned to go to a fly-in last weekend, but the test pilot's schedule filled up, the plane needed to go down for maintenance to tweak her rigging, and I didn't have enough time to feel comfortable and safe solo. So with heavy heart, I sent word that I wouldn't make it.

Then I found the new CFI, who had Sunday afternoon not only free, but free in a "my wife wants me out from underfoot" way that held no time constraints. So, he showed up as I was fueling the plane, and we went over the pre-arranged plan, the route, and the weight and balance with me. Off we went into the wild blue yonder...

It was great fun, with reindeer and moose sausages, potato chips, soda, and one awesome woman brought cookies and cupcakes. We even had the madatory kid and/or dog underfoot, in this case an eldery Chow who was pretty laid-back about the whole thing.

While the main goal of the flour bombing competition was to hit the tarp laid out on the gravel at the center of the run-up area before the runway proper, while the group gathered by a runway threshold panel with a drink cooler, the main rules we agreed on were
1.) Hit the surface of the earth.
2.) Don't hit the dog.
3.) Maintain at or above 150 AGL while dropping the flour bomb.

Note: this one was NOT mine.

We didn't win, (there are some guys who are really good at dropping things where they want it), and if my takeoff could have inspired a good round of ribbing for putting in more aileron than needed for the calm wind below the treeline, well, the good folks were kind enough to give me a pass. The long flight home was faster than we'd planned, as we picked up a tailwind, and we were having too much fun to be bored. A few rain showers impeded visibility - it may only have been 80 miles.

The airplane's down for a few days with paperwork, and mechanical problems - tweaking rigging, checking a rocker box cover that decided to leak oil, patching a few spots on the tailfeathers that may be old damage, or may be fresh damage from the gravel runways, converting temporary placards to permanent, and so on. It's been a good shake down.

Talk to me?

2011-05-18T17:14:00.005-05:00

Went flying today in my own plane. Still need to work on adjusting the wash-out on the right wing and adjusting the brakes, but today I finally got the sight picture... mostly. Unfortunately, as we were on downwind at Lake Hood Strip, the radio (which we were having a little trouble with already, but I thought that was just me), decided to start giving all static and no transmission, then nothing at all.

What do you do when you can't talk to tower? First, you fly the airplane! Of all the things to fail on your airplane, the radio is the best, because you still have altitude, speed, and time. Don't panic just because you can't talk.

Second, stay predictable. If you were in a pattern, or headed somehwere, keep going. People who know where you were and what you were doing will know where you ought to be based on last report, and therefore try to avoid you based on what they expect you to do. So, we stayed on downwind, turned base, then turned final while trying to sort out the radio problem. However, if in the pattern at a towered airport, DO NOT LAND WITHOUT PERMISSION. Tower hadn't cleared us for landing or the option before the radio failed, so the intended wheel landing became a low pass, while the instructor checked the push to talk to see if the button was stuck.

Third, just because the radio failed doesn't mean we have to land immediately. We were at Lake Hood Strip, and the plane is based at Merrill. The instructor's truck was at Merrill. There's a radio shop within easy ambling distance of the tiedown - the best place to get the problem checked out and fixed. So we didn't seek permission to land - after the low pass, I climbed out. As we did, the CFI continued to work the problem. He changed frequency to ground, but couldn't raise them, or hear them. So we climbed above traffic pattern altitude, and headed for Merrill.

Now, while I do not encourage the use of cell phones in the air on a general principle - among other things, the FCC frowns on it, and more importantly, there is never a good time to be flying distracted, when the fecal material hits the rotating device, the pilot should use every available means of making the flight end safely. So as I climbed out, it would have been a great time for pilot not flying to get out the cell phone, if he had merrill tower's number, and call them. However, about the time we got the radio on an alternate power souce and verified it wasn't dead battery, the lower right panel of one of the tower's big windows lit up like a green LED flashlight pointed at you by a friend across the room. The controllers were on the ball, and on the light gun. Steady green means cleared to enter the pattern, and that was a warm and welcoming light.

We aggressively rocked the wings, flashing those big signal panels that the message was received and understood, and entered the pattern. On downwind, while I was still trying to trim this plane up and get her straight and level, my CFI was the first to spot a plane orbiting a nearby hospital, staying out of the pattern and waiting for us to land. As I turned base, I spotted another off my wing strut, casually circling the Muldoon overpass. And on final, we kept an eye on that tower, waiting. Would it be the red of wave-off, the flashing green of go around but keep trying, or the steady green of cleared to land?

Like a lit window of a friend's house after a long winter drive, the bright green light welcomed us home, and we rocked our wings like we'd spotted a friend waiting by baggage claim after a long flight. We landed carefully, gently, and pulled off the runway as we slowed down. Once the engine was back to idle, the instructor pulled out his cell phone, called tower, requested taxi clearance, and thanked them sincerely for their help.

Tomorrow: round three, with adjusted brakes, new radio, and a much better feel for the sight picture. I love my plane, and I'll learn to fly her well yet!

Test Flight

2011-05-18T01:53:00.004-05:00

After the most thorough preflight I have ever seen, heard, or experienced, complete with a running commentary on what could go wrong with the airplane at that part, we went back to the break room, and combed carefully through the paperwork until every single item, every AD, every 337, every possible requirement and notice and notification and signature was double-checked and found satisfactory.

Among other things, this means my airplane has temporary (read: sharpie on tape) placards notinng the on-off positions of the auxilliary tanks, and no smoking allowed. It's not just dotting every i and crossing every t, it's dotting every j and crossing every f as well!

Six runs for parts & peices later, we called to taxi fourty feet and reposition for petrol. Not only must everything be done by the book, to the letter, it must encompass every possible interpretation of the book and the letter, and work to the most conservative definition, while watching for every possible way for it to go not-right or actively wrong.

I am completely at peace with this - an aircraft is most likely to have things go wrong, or discovered to be not-right, on her first flight. The more aware, thoughtful, and meticulous the test pilot is, the better.

On the other hand, trying to learn everything he was saying, doing, and thinking was like trying to drink from a firehose.

The brakes need work - not that Shinn brakes are good at the best of times, but these weren't good enough to hold the airplane from rolling forward at 1800 RPM runup. More adjustment needed. We took the longest runway, for enough room to abort a flight without brakes, or to abort if something else went wrong, or to have options if engine failed to develop full power, or failed on takeoff, or shortly after...

The engine purred. It was perfectly fine, and ran without a hitch. The right wing, though, was heavy - need to adjust the wash-out. He would not stall until we have the wings balanced, but otherwise I was busy writing numbers and observations as they rushed past. 14V at 2200 RPM, cylinder head temperatures, exact amount the ball was out of center on which side, angle of bank when corrected with rudder, degrees of travel, effectiveness of control...

When we came in on a long, gentle, slow landing, I realized that my little pre-WWII trainer is exactly like other pre-WWII aircraft, and some of the WWII aircraft she trained men to fly during the war... on taxi, takeoff, and especially on landing, you can't see over her nose. This may change with cushions, it may not - but it meant that he was on the ailerons, with me ghosting, I was on the rudders, and he was on the brakes while landing a tailwheel on a runway I couldn't see...

I was completely exhausted by only an hour's flight (and after-landing runup, and post-flying checks). Smoke was gently wafting off the charred and melted lump that used to be my brain - but the test pilot wasn't done yet. A quick drive across town, and he pulled up files with every checklist he has for my make of aircraft, modified to my particular aircraft, and printed them off. It's not the actual operating manual, or the operating limits, or weight and balance - it's far, far, far more detailed.

And now I need to go memorize it before we fly tomorrow morning.

Drinking from a firehose...

Mulberry pie

2011-05-15T22:31:00.002-05:00

I am sorry that I am leaving right as the mulberry trees are fruiting, the squash and tomatoes are blooming, and the potatoes are starting to put out new potatoes underground. Before I left, though, I did gather enough mulberries to make a pie.

Mulberry pie

1 batch Flaky Buttery Pie Crust

Filling:

3-4 cups mulberries, rinsed & drained.
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon (tsp) lemon juice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves

For brushing the top of the pie:
1 Tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon sugar

First, make the pie dough. If you keep any butter stored in the freezer, it is even more awesome for making the dough, as it cuts in just right for really flaky crust. Divide it into two balls, roughly equal (it's fine to have a slightly larger peice, as the bottom crust is bigger than the top anyway), and keep in the fridge for at least half an hour. When you put the dough in the fridge, also put a cutting board in the freezer - glass and marble are best. The colder you keep though dough when working it, the better.

Preheat oven to 400 F
Pull glass cutting board out of freezer, dust with flour. Pull 1/2 dough recipe out of fridge. Dust rolling pin with flour, roll out dough.
Roll out pie's bottom crust - the first time it'll be hard to work with. Gather it back into a ball, then roll it out a second time for proper workability & flakiness. Yes, you can roll it thin enough to be translucent, and yes, it'll still be awesome.
Drape pie crust in pie pan, gently poke it to conform, and fold the edges to cover all the metal. If extra hangs over, great.
Mix filling ingredients in a bowl until all flour and sugar is wet and clinging to mulberries. Using spatula, pour & scrape into pie, then level off top of filling.
Roll out rest of pie dough. Drape over pie filling, pinch & crimp the edges with the bottom crust to seal.
Cut slits for venting steam in pie crust. If you're really creative and have leftover dough scraps, form them into decorative designs, and brush lightly with milk to glue onto the top crust.
Brush crust with milk, then sprinkle on sugar.
Bake for 40 minutes.
Turn off oven, pull pie out. let cool at least 10 minutes. (Sugar stays scalding hot a long time.)

Best served warm with ice cream.

Hopefully, with this motivation, the guys will pick and freeze some mulberries so I can make more pies when I get back. I want to experiment with mulberry-apple pie next!

When "Good Enough" Isn't.

2011-05-13T12:56:00.000-05:00

I learned the hard way when rebuilding my plane that the perfect may be the enemy of the good, but "good enough for now" always meant I'd be going back and redoing the effort again later, to better standards.

I failed to apply this to my knee. I can walk, and I even climbed a relatively low and easy mountain twice, but I haven't really run. I don't play tennis, or go dancing, or scrambling to play keep-away with a dog or child. I haven't been climbing trees, or hiking regularly. And it shows - my hand-eye-foot coordination still isn't what it used to be.

I haven't done anything involving quick changes of speed and direction with my feet - no wonder they're not there on the rudder, and it took more time and practice to get them alive. If I want to have lively feet, I need to go ballroom dancing. Or at the least, go play tennis or basketball.

Also, for endurance in the plane, I need to go do more aerobics - and while I'm wheezing on the elliptical or treadmill, I need to be studying instead of zoned out to an MP3 player. This isn't for being in shape or so I know the material, but for practice on concentrating when exhausted - because no matter how tired I am, I am still responsible for being in control of the aircraft, and landing it safely.

You can coast in a lot of areas in life - but if you don't push to get that last 10% regularly, it's not going to be there when you need it. If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well, from exercise to flight planning to mopping a floor. So, even if I really feel like surfing the internet, I'm off to the gym with a copy of Stick and Rudder.

Density Altitude

2011-05-10T23:18:00.004-05:00

My CFI delights in seeking out the roughest, hottest air with the most gusts and crosswind that I can just barely handle. The downside is that I don't feel I'm getting much better - the upside is that I actually am, because he's upping the conditions I must tackle with every flight. On the whole, I really like this approach, because I'd rather tackle these conditions in training than meet them for the first time on my own.

So, today was the midafternoon puffy-cloud thermal-rich lightly gusty afternoon heat day. I'm used to flying off an airport - Birchwood - where only a gun range separates it from an arm of the sea. Even the airport I'm at now, for all its distance from the ocean, is only 590 feet above the sea. However, let me introduce you to Mr. Heat and Mr. Humidity's third drinking buddy and partner in crime - Mr. Density Altitude. When the gang gets together, for a temperature of 91 degrees, a heat index of 105, and a density altitude of 2600 feet...

I drank a full bottle of water before the flight, and the amber overpressure light never lit. We left the window open to keep from being steamed alive in the cockpit, and the 80 knot wind in the pattern kept us feeling dry and almost comfortable until the instant we landed and the wind stopped. The airplane, underpowered to begin with, acted like she was overloaded and had failed to round up most of her engine's horses for power. Even when coming in to land, pulling power back as normal to the usual airspeed meant that she dropped like a stone, unable to sustain the usual lift in the thin, hot air.

After a handful of trips around the pattern, I ran another assessment of my status, and licked dry lips with a barely-moist tongue. "I think I only have one more landing left in me." The instructor agreed - but by the downwind leg I realized my mistake. The mental and physical fatigue from heat and dehydration does not increase at a linear rate - rather, it's the upswing of a quadratic equation. By final, I was fighting myself more than I was fighting the plane. I'm not proud of my last landing - it was great until I was one foot off the ground. Then, I reacted too slow, too late, to a wind gust, and ended up putting precisely the wrong control input in at the wrong time. The bounce, lo, it was mighty - fortunately, a last hit of adrenaline sped my reactions and I wrestled myself and the airplane safely back down to the runway.

When I walked into the FBO, Calmer Half took one look at me, another at my CFI, and like a blessing from heaven, pressed a cold can of soda upon each of us. After the first half of the can, I could think again - but I was not safe to drive home. We wearily debriefed, and scheduled for midafternoon tomorrow. Next up - wheel landings in this weather.

When I get to the Rockies, this I vow: morning and evening flights or not at all. Density altitude is bad enough starting close to sea level, and while my plane has more horsepower to weight than the Citabria, I have no desire to cook myself to insensibility while operating with less margin.

Citabria Training

2011-05-07T23:48:00.002-05:00

If I hadn't learned how to be humble before, there's a Citabria 7ECA with MicroVG's that's teaching me now.

There's a world of difference between aiming a PA-12 with tundra tires, upgraded engine, powerflo exhaust, flaps, Atlee Dodge extended landing gear, and a whole bunch of other mods around the sky, and finessing an underpowered sleek little aerobatic aircraft onto and off the runway.

No matter how good I can make a Cessna look, or how I'm able to manage in a supercub, this airplane - if you're trimmed out and you lean forward, she'll descend. If you are the slightest bit fast, she'll float forever, and with the faintest breath of crosswind, she'll unstick her upwind wing. But she doesn't have the power to climb quickly away from those trees at the end of the strip - you have to keep her down in ground effect and build up speed.

Four hours in her, and I haven't managed a landing yet that I'm happy with. She's so responsive she seems twitchier than a squirrel on crack, and doesn't believe in being forgiving. Toes and fingertips, or I'm overcontrolling and she's darting about like a small tropical fish caught in a feeding frenzy. It's not the plane, it's me. She's a beauty, a fine thing, and as difficult and demanding as many a beautiful thing is - but if you want to maneuver in the sky like a swallow in an updraft, if you're pilot enough, she'll fly her heart out.

If I learn to fly this girl, my newly restored Taylorcraft (Should be doing the test flights this weekend!) ought to be a fine, easy, forgiving lady by comparison. (Except on speed. You give a T-crate an extra knot, and she'll show you just how much extra flying she can do in ground effect.)

You don't want to see any video of me in the Citabria - well, maybe you would, right there on "Pilot Bloopers! Best of youtube!" - but for anyone who's tried to master keeping the ball centered and the rudders alive, here's a short video of a guy getting into a T-6 for a flight. Be warned, as it contains guys teasing each other, there's fun made of his music choices and a few coarse words traded on the ground - but the in-cockpit video of the rudders, trim, gear, and instrument panel as he lands are awesome.

Terrible Texan: Think Toes & Fingertips

Gone Flying

2011-05-05T13:56:00.002-05:00

Can't come up with blogfodder better than recipes, as my brain is currently running between overfilled with info and exhausted. I'm trying to knock all the rust off from the last couple years of more building than flying, by learning to fly an acrobatic airplane.

In the sunny spaces between the bad weather, I'll be up in a Citabria, trying to relearn how to land safely and precisely every single time.

You all take care, now, y'hear?

Non-Fried Falafel

2011-05-02T21:11:00.003-05:00

I didn't really plan for dinner to be meatless so much as I was trying to consolidate the chickpeas in one glass jar last night, and had too many to fit in. The obvious solution: put some in a bowl to soak overnight, and use 'em for dinner.

Baked Falafel

2 cups cooked garbanzo beans (chickpeas) - or one can, rinsed and drained
1/2 diced onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, or 1-1/2 tablespoons dried parsley
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 egg, beaten
2 teaspoons olive oil

Cook soaked garbanzos and drain them(about an hour), or rinse and drain a can of 'em (about two minutes). Dump in food processor. Dice onion and garlic, saute with a little spray oil like Pam, or a little olive oil, then toss in food processor with the cumin, coriander, salt, and baking soda. Scrape into a bowl, add egg and flour, mix thoroughly.

Shape the mixture into patties, and let stand at least 5 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F, and line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. Add a little olive oil to a pan - unless your patties and pan are big enough to all saute at once, ration the oil per batch. Heat on medium-high and saute the patties, about 2-3 minutes on a side. Put 'em on the cookie sheet, and when all are sauteed, stick the sheet in the oven for about 10 minutes, until the falafel is heated through.

Meanwhile, make the salad quickly. This is a template, not a precise direction, due to lack of cucumber and pitas for tzatziki and pita bread:

1/2 head lettuce, chopped or torn into bite sized pieces
2 carrots, sliced or shredded
6 green olives, sliced
1 rib celery, sliced
1 Tablespoon feta
1 teaspoon dill weed
1 teaspoon sesame seeds
3 Tablespoons plain yogurt

Mix in a bowl, serve with the piping hot falafel.

Serves 2-3, Takes about 20 minutes if using canned chickpeas. You might want to double the salad; we ran out.

Subtle Food

2011-05-01T10:38:00.002-05:00

Nobody likes food that advertises itself as "nutritious", "low fat", "low carb", or "diet." Well, maybe with the exception of diet coke, but nobody who drinks that is fooled into actually thinking it's full of healthy goodness.

As the editors keep saying, Show, Don't Tell. So this one doesn't say anything about being healthy, and serves 3-4 people.

Moroccan Fish Tagine

1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
1 yellow onion, diced,
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced (or diced)
2 tomatoes, diced
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
3-4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 lb shrimp, or 1-1/4 lb white sea fish cut into 3/4 inch cubes
1 tin sliced mushrooms, drained
2 Tablespoons tahini (it does have other uses than hummus!)
1 Tablespoon lemon or orange zest
1 Tablespoon fresh-chopped parsley, or 1 teaspoon dried
1 Tablespoon fresh-chopped cilantro, or 1 teaspoon dried
1/2 teaspoon salt (if needed)

Serve with couscous or turmeric rice

Get out a large saucepan. I'm not kidding about large - look at all that stuff that's going to end up in the same pan, and pick your volume accordingly. Start dicing vegetables (and fish, if you're using that.) Contemplate your zest choices - if you only have dried parsley and cilantro, orange goes much better, but if you have fresh, then lemon complements the boldness of fresh-cut flavor better. Once you start cooking, this recipe takes about twenty minutes, so if you want rice, start the water before you start the main dish.

Anyway, that saucepan. Heat the olive oil, and saute the onion and bell pepper until soft but not browned, about 8 minutes on medium. Add the garlic and tomatoes and saute until the tomatoes are soft, about 3 minutes. Stir in the cumin and paprika, about another minute.

If you're serving with couscous, and you haven't already, now is the time to start the couscous.

Pour in the stock, and raise the heat to high. When it boils, add the meat and mushrooms. When it returns to a boil, turn the heat to low and simmer until the meat is thoroughly opaque. If you are using dried parsley and cilantro, add them while the meat cooks. Three-quarter inch cubes of fish should take about 3 minutes, shrimp about the same.

Stir in the tahini, zest, and fresh-cut parsley and cilantro. Take a quick taste test, and add the salt. (If you had low-sodium broth, you may need it. Regular broth is salty enough you probably won't.)

Grab bowls, add a cup of freshly cooked hot rice or couscous, and ladle in the tagine. Serve immediately.

With dried herbs, the flavors are all subtle; with fresh ones, they'll be a little brighter, but still subtle. And as you're is enjoying it, the fact that it's heart-healthy is so subtle it can be ignored entirely.

Weeds and seeds

2011-04-23T20:43:00.004-05:00

Today was a good day. I took a hoe to all the weeds and dirt among a row of potatoes, and upon seeing the farmer doing a much better job on his row, went back and redid mine to standards I could accept. Not quite as good as him, but not too shabby. Sometimes, when hoeing the rocky dirt, instead of the clank of metal hitting stone, I got a sound almost like metal hitting glass. Investigation showed some of the rocks looked an awful lot like broken-open geodes, and I was striking chunks of solid quartz. Next time I'm taking a break from farm work or shooting, I'll wash a few off in the creek and see if any make pretty paperweights.

The butter beans will be awfully sparse. When bean sprouts come up through the soil, they bring the bean with them - and to the few surviving roosters too canny for coyotes and foxes, the beans looked awfully tasty.

Some of the other plants also suffered from a cow getting loose. Fortunately, not everything has sprouted yet, so there was less damage than there could have been.

Cats like basil. Not quite as much as catnip, but I'm down to four out of the original twelve basil seedlings. I've started more seeds, and will try for better survival rates on round two.

Parsley seeds take a month to germinate. Once they've poked their first set of leaves above the soil, they then take weeks to get their first true leaves out. I'm clinging with hope to the advice that they take a long time in the beginning, but the more greenery they get, the faster they grow. (Next year, I think I'll just buy a plant from the nursery.)

I cannot find mint for sale anywhere. This is the south - land of mint juleps, right? Can I not find mint because everybody is already supposed to have it? Or did it get labeled as an invasive weed? Why may I not have my own minty weed with aspirations of kudzu held in check by minty peas, and mint teas, and lamb?

Strangely enough, I can find catnip. It may be a member of the mint family, but I refuse to plant it - no sense in training the beasts to dig about in the container garden.

Mine! .38 Special edition

2011-04-10T22:12:00.004-05:00

Today, I shot a gun in a caliber I haven't been able to in years - .38 special. No, it was not a snubby, and no, it was not pink. Sadly, the Pachmayr Compac Pro grips weren't in purple, either. Calmer Half spent a couple of hours with ten different guns and at least six different grips once the guns were narrowed down, trying to find something comfortable to my hand. He finally found a pair of grips that came on a gun he'd gotten, and were way too small for his hands.

(This being one of those points gunnies and airplane restorers agree wholeheartedly on: "Never throw useful parts away! Even if you can't use them!" Poor Calmer Half is not so at ease with the lengths to which this is taken by airplane restoration, which continue on to say "All parts are useful, even if it'll take far more than you can do to rebuild them! They might be needed as a ferry part or template, or shim, or something, someday!")

So, now exercising the grand tradition of cats and wives, I have declared "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine, and this is my gun now!" with his Smith & Wesson Model 65. He seems perfectly at ease with this, and indeed is making happy noises about me and concealed carry class.

Once we got back from the range, our housemate broke out the gun cleaning stuff, and taught me how to clean 'my' gun. Having cleaned it, it's as surely mine as when the "Just because you can fit into it again doesn't mean you should" shirt that Calmer Half unboxed gets absconded as my new nightshirt, and ends up in my laundry.

All this exercising at the gym we're doing is paying off. Calmer Half is finding new nightshirts for me, and I'm able to take the weight and recoil of more of his guns... Maybe, just maybe, soon it'll mean I have to go pants shopping for a smaller size, with belt loops that will actually hold up to a holster! ...Nah, not while I'm using up extra apples that started to go mealy by making apple pie.

I swear, I take the shirt off a man's... clean laundry pile, and one of his guns, and all he does is smile at me with this fond expression. It's darned hard to rile Calmer Half. I'm so glad he's mine!

50nm at a time, stewing all the way

2011-04-04T20:01:00.004-05:00

Today, I sat down and started plotting how to get from Alaska to Nashville. The first thousand miles are easy; I fly to Northway, and take the Alcan down, cutting a little east to cross the border at Montana instead of Seattle. Then, I started picking my way south down the mountains to Ogden, UT to visit a friend and crash on the couch. From there I tried to find an easy way out and east that didn't take me through Salt Lake City's airspace, and then a rough shot east with a descending southern curve.

Theoretically it's 3500 miles, with two couches (and more importantly, showers) assured between there and here. Hmm. More planning required.

While all this plotting and line-drawing was going on, a line of storms hit, and the house shuddered in the wind. I realized exactly why tying your plane down outside in the lower 48 seems less wise than in Alaska, and took a break from the computer to sear some cubed venison steak in a mix of olive oil and a hint of bacon grease, and follow with browning some minced garlic, then deglazing the pan with an oatmeal stout and a glass of lambrusco. (The original recipe called for sugar added, but lambrusco is a sweet enough red no extra sugar was needed.) With more thyme than I was comfortable with, a full tablespoon of my nemesis, Worcestershire sauce (Calmer Half loves the taste. I loathe it.), and two tablespoons of tomato baste, I added three cans of low-sodium beef broth and set it to simmer for an hour. Then I diced and sauteed potatoes, two carrots, and an onion in two tablespoons of butter. When the broth had simmered for the hour, I transferred it all to a crockpot to simmer merrily on high for another hour. Then I added a bag of frozen mixed vegetables and a teaspoon of pepper, and reset the crockpot to low. That kept the non-sauteed vegetables crisp and flavorful, while the rest of the stew blended together.

Then I pulled out the sourdough starter and the cast iron pan, and made Sourdough biscuits to go with the stew. Since my starter is thick, I added a little milk to thin it, and next time I'll cut the sugar to 1 tablespoon - but otherwise, followed the recipe at the end of the post. The biscuits came out of the oven as the stew was smelling irresistible, and our housemate finally made it home past downed trees and blacked out traffic lights. Dinner was good.

Now back to stewing over the route. Maybe there are state parks with camping facilities between Ogden and Nashville. Hmm. Maybe just cool places to land I could throw up a solar shower in the heat of the day, and fly in the evening calm to dry out my hair? Sadly, I have an addiction to hot water that makes being a dirty hippie slumming across the US a despicable thing to shun.

Irish Beef Stew Recipe with venison instead
Dutch Oven Sourdough Biscuits made in the oven with a cast iron pan

Cheating at Pot Pie

2011-03-30T22:47:00.003-05:00

Looking through the freezer today, I noted a package full of ice that was supposed to contain meat. The label proclaimed it turkey sausages, which are rarely wonderful at the best of times. Fortunately, they were almost untouched by freezerburn. (Note for bachelors: the nice packages of meat at the store with lots of air and space to display the meat inside are NOT good for freezing the meat! Remove it to a ziplock with the air pushed out and relevant meat & date information written in Sharpie! Your taste buds will thank you!)

How to turn unimpressive turkey sausages into good dinner? Why, by surrounding them with a thick, rich, flavorful gravy that will provide all the moisture and flavor, and vegetables that will give a good contrasting texture. Sounds like a recipe for pot pie to me!

Now, I cheated a little at first. By the time I had cooked the sausages enough to know they'd turn out to be okay, I did not want to wait another two hours while pie crust pastry relaxed in the fridge. I also object to paying $2.30 for $0.35 worth of ingredients, plus the half-hour it'd take to run to the store and buy pie crusts. So, instead of cutting refrigerated butter into flour, I reached into the freezer, where I store the bulk of the on-sale butter until ready to use. Also, instead of spilling salted flour all over myself and the floor while exercising restraint on cursing, I cut the frozen butter into the flour using the food processor. I adore technology! As for the very cold water - I just ran cold tap water into a glass of ice cubes before I started messing with the flour and butter, and it was plenty chilled to dribble on and fork the dough together. In the end, the dough rested for roughly 30 minutes while I sauteed the veggies. (And the glass cutting board rested in the freezer, to make rolling dough easier.)

When it came to sauteeing the veggies, I cheated a bit. Sure, I used the last onion that was going soft, and the celery that was starting to wilt a little, and chopped one carrot - but after they were sauteed, I reached into the freezer and pulled out a bag of mixed vegetables. As they've been frozen, they will be softer than raw veggies, and don't really need to be sauteed as much as warmed up. Stirring them in, I added garlic, and black pepper, thyme, sage, and rosemary. As the veggies were steaming, I chopped up the sausages, and added the coins of meat back to the mix, stirring them so they soaked in the juices.

I rolled out the dough for the bottom crust, and draped it gently into the pie plate. Then I considered my filling. It wasn't quite thick and savory enough. I should make a roux or a gravy, to provide a savory note that the turkey sausages lacked...

Instead I reached into the pantry shelf, and cracked a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup. I try very hard not to use the soup mixes - I try to make everything from scratch. I view it as a failure to resort to them - in fact, my test for a good slow-cooker cookbook is how many recipes in it do NOT call for "can of cream of X soup." But I was tired, and it was late, and dinner was already 45 minutes of baking away...

It tasted wonderful. Calmer Half thoroughly enjoyed it, and Housemate stated that this should definitely go on the make again list. The buttery pie crust was light, crispy, and flaky - even the bottom crust. The filling was wonderful, savory and redolent with herbs, and dense with meat and vegetables. And if it was this good with turkey sausage with a touch of freezerburn, I think it's going to be wonderful with some of the venison still in the freezer and awaiting a dish to delight its hunter.

To paraphrase Larry Corriea, "If it's cheating and it rocks, then it rocks!"

Flaky Buttery Pie Crust Recipe

Nothing Thrown Out

2011-03-29T22:26:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I wanted to make something with chives, to celebrate the fact that they're flourishing in the yard. (It's kind of strange that I'm used to thinking of chives as expensive herbs when bought fresh in the store, and common as freeze-dried herbs. Meanwhile, Calmer Half didn't even know what a chive was, and Housemate only thought of them as "darned weed." Thus does abundance blind us to value.)

So I set out to make Rosemary-Sage Burgers with Apple Slaw and Chive Mayo. Which would have been awesome, if I hadn't been interrupted right before putting the burgers on, and one thing after another that ended up being a nuke leftovers night.

Today, the rosemary-sage burgers were turned into meatballs by Calmer Half while Housemate and I were getting back from testing our newly rebuilt boat motor out on the lake. So, left with the apple slaw slowly oxidizing into an unappetizing brown, I figured the chive mayo can easily go on a sandwich or three, but the apples needed to be used tonight.

So, into Apple Bread they go! (with a half cup less sugar, a little molasses to make it equivalent of a brown sugar mix, and a little extra spice.)

I'm not perfect at making sure all food is eaten - every now and then I have to clean the fridge, too. But I make a darned good try!

Complacency blinds

2011-03-16T16:05:00.007-05:00

We went out shooting last weekend. In my case, this often means I pack food for everyone, bake something for the farmer who is kind enough to let us use his land (Sourdough coffee cake with mixed berries and a graham cracker strudel crust this time), and generally putter around. Often, my round count for six hours out in the sun is under 30 shots - I find it more fun to watch other people shoot, and maybe try five shots with a new gun - or maybe just one shot.

Both Calmer Half and Oleg are very used to this pattern, though both keep encouraging me to try this pistol, try that pistol, try this revolver. Generally, I humor them, but rarely do I really actually enjoy shooting the gun.

Sunday, Oleg handed a SU-16 in .22 to me, while another photographer set up the tripod - this is probably going to end up in an ad somewhere down the road, if he got any good pictures. So I shrugged, knelt down, and considered the berm with its strewn clay pigeons through the scope. Carefully, mindful of the height of the scope above the barrel, I centered on the top of an orange clay, and waited for the small shakes of my arms and imperfections from breathing to settle into a pattern. Touch the trigger, and the gun pressed lightly into me as the clay exploded. I dropped the gun just a little, looking a foot down at the next clay, and started to work my way across the berm from left to right, removing every target with two magazines (I switched after a misfeed, suspecting the low-powered rounds in the first magazine were the problem). I wasn't doing so well, after over a year out of practice - it took two shots to clear a couple of them, and three for the second to the last as my concentration lapsed into noting my knees hurt, and the ground was cold and damp from a recent rain.

Calmer Half was very surprised at me, and was doing his darling best to make sure I knew he was very supportive, very happy at my participation, and very pleased at my skill. What also came across was that he was pretty startled I could kneel down and remove all the targets - but then, I haven't sat down and touched off seventy-five rounds of .22 with the aim of keeping them inside a dime since I moved to be with him. My poor CZ 452 has languished in the gun safe while all my male friends have tried to convince me that I should not regard handguns with loathing, and should train and carry one for defense. No wonder they've grown to expect I'm a bad shot and less than uninterested in guns at all.

I think I'll take my lovely little beauty out for the next trip, with a camp chair, and get in practice for pegging gophers in the garden at 50 yards. It's been too long since I practiced that particular form of meditation, emptying my mind of everything but the moment, the target, and the shot.

Two Pictures To Make You Smile

2011-03-06T11:01:00.003-06:00

Be warned, some profanity ahead (I don't have photoshop skills before coffee to clean it up).

First, via Amanda Palmer - who is a rock star, and swears like it. (Link NSFW) She was getting ready to go on a flight to Christchurch for a concert when the earthquake hit - and as fan and people who were going to help with the concert checked in on her comments section, one left this picture of life going on. She included it in a later post, too.

Second, via Stephen Bodio's Querencia - which is an awesome group blog on falconry, hunting, herding dogs, and many other fascinating things. (Link is SFW; I was a little surprised at the cuss word.)

I am Not Stylish

2011-03-02T13:25:00.002-06:00

Brigid and Rev. Paul, being the classy people they are, have gotten an award for such on their blogs. For some reason (fascination with the horrible?), they've decided to tag me under the "pass it on" section. Myself, I rarely pass on such memes, but it would be impolite to brush off such polite curiosity.

Eh, so, ten things you don't know about me. Probably. Some of you do - The Alaskan Geek, over there on the sidebar, is an old housemate and wonderful friend, the kind that I helped move his library, what, five times after I moved out? And J at A Call to Wings helped me build my plane, and put up with random roadtrips...

1. I like finding 4-leaf clovers. Sitting outside, combing fingers gently through the ground cover and picking 4-leaf clovers is a relaxing activity for me.

2. I went to Space Camp in Huntsville as a teen. In fact, I went right after Christmas, and not only was my "class" not full, it was the only group there at the time. The schedule had lots of slack time built into accommodate shuffling large groups of kids, so we had lots more opportunities to explore the museum, the rocket garden, play on the simulator, and dive in the scuba tank than we were supposed to, as the counselors tried to find a way to keep us busy. To this day, when I think of museum, I first think of large, dark spaces with only a few display lights and emergency lights showing the corners of many fascinating things, running through with flashlights and a few voices in the dimness.

3. I started taking college classes in eighth grade. I absolutely hated my new math teacher, and he hated me right back. My grades took a nose dive, as did my interest in math or in staying in school. My parents put me into college math classes, and not only did I learn the algebra, I enjoyed the people. I completed an associate's in science the summer after my high school graduation, one subreq short of a history degree.

4. That wasn't my last run-in with math. At the engineering college, there was a tenured professor who declared on the first day of school, in freshman calculus, "I do not believe women should be engineers. If you are a woman, you will fail this class. You should leave, now." I still hold a grudge against him and the school that tenured him.

5. As a teen, I worked planting tobaccy and green peppers, topping, sprigging, and staking the tobaccy. One of my first hard lessons on economics occurred when the farmer and I eyed a boggy part of the field too muddy to get a tractor in, half-overtaken by weeds, and he explained with the numbers that by the time he paid me to finish it, it'd cost more than he could recoup. I understood, but it hurt to ride away on the tractor with a section of field still standing and the job not done.

6. I worked very hard for years to remove all traces of southern from my voice. Now that I'm living in Tennesssee, it's taking only a few months for dialect, grammar, and accent to return with a vengeance.

7. I really want to learn to ride a motorcycle, but I'm really wary of getting hurt when I dump it. So far, fear has strangled every opportunity I could take stillborn.

8. Whenever I take off from the runway, it never feels like I'm climbing - it feels like the world is suddenly falling away from me. All my worries, all my cares, all those little thoughts and regrets and to-do's drop out as the world is suddenly shrinking under the tires, and I'm left sitting in the sky with an altimeter merrily winding up the altitude as the VSI and engine temp work out their optimum balance.

9. One of the first guns I ever fired was a muzzleloader. I have no intention of firing one again, but I love them anyway.

10. I still cry when I hear taps.

Patience and progress

2011-03-02T11:04:00.002-06:00

Finding a job requires constantly pushing for results in the form of finding likely jobs, creating cover letters, tweaking the resume, and submitting it over and over. Unfortunately, it also requires patience with the unringing phone. I'm not so good at that.

So, like a masochist, here I go again, finding another avenue requiring lots of hard work and a wait for reward, if any. By the popped blisters on both my thumbs, I have a small flower bed dug and planted to salad greens and beets - cool weather crops that can grow for a month and a half before I should plant the summer garden. I have two egg carton bottoms filled with soil and sitting in the sunlight, hopefully sprouting the seedlings I should start early and transplant.

Now I just need to water the seed bed lightly, and patiently wait. May I have a job before I have a home-grown salad...

Right, I'm going to go start a compost pile, go to the gym, thatch the yard, clean the house, read up on growing in non-subarctic regions, and shoot something. I'll try patience when I'm not busy.

Cooking for Bachelors

2011-02-26T17:38:00.004-06:00

Calmer Half and I have a housemate who is a good friend and confirmed bachelor. Like many bachelors, he's perfectly happy to go reload .44 special and 20 gauge and many other different things, and leave the cooking to us. I really like cooking - I like the challenge, the blend of art and science, history, economics, and tasty delicious reward when it goes on the table. Unfortunately, that means if I cook every day, the leftovers in the fridge and freezer threaten to take over the available space and possibly go bad.

Fortunately, I have another bachelor friend, only a few miles away, who's often focused more on his projects and work than on food. Cooking at his house is often akin to a game - given these random ingredients, these random cooking utensils and pans, and a very interested black cat that will try to steal whatever he thinks is most delicious, what dish can I create? It's a game that requires skill, dexterity, creativity, internet access to search for recipes and substitutions, and situational awareness. (Did I just shut Gremlin in a cupboard?)

Of course, I cheat - I sometimes go grocery shopping with him, or for him, so staples are usually present, and the spices are fairly diverse. Still, there's no telling what I might get up to, from cinnamon-raisin bread from scratch to poached orange roughy with tomatoes and onions in a garlic-mustard sauce on lemon-flavored rice. I like feeding healthy food to him. The best outcome is to come up with a meal that is healthy, tasty, and with at least three extra portions that freeze well.

Today I poked my head in the fridge, saw a half-pack of sad-looking mushrooms, and in the freezer saw a half-bag of shrimp. I should be thinking Scampi, or similar - but for no good reason, the brain is stuck on one of those lots-of-work-for-little-reward dishes... shrimp-stuffed mushrooms!

When asked, yes, I'm up to chaos and mayhem in the kitchen - but it's not murder and mayhem, as the shrimp are already dead. And I'm not quite annoyed enough at furball to cook him into a sauce. Yet. Mayb... Get Out Of That!

There's newer, and then there's better.

2011-02-22T11:38:00.007-06:00

Via Adaptive Curmudgeon, I've just found 365 Days of A - a gentleman who is driving a 1930 Model A Ford as his daily commuter for a year. Quite fun!

Adaptive Curmudgeon has a series himself on working with older technology - specifically, heating his house with wood for a year between the old furnace's death and getting it replaced. Parts: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven.

I have a little knowledge in the same vein, having restored my pre-WWII airplane and having my heart set on 1930's-1950's rag and tube aircraft.

The older machines and ways we keep running are not terrible things that should be abandoned at the first sign of progress - and they can be downright fun! For the negatives, they involve more work, from stacking firewood to soldering a gas tank leak to cutting open every filter at an oil change to inspect the engine health. They involve more care, from making sure the fire is banked each night to inspecting the machine before and after every use. They take more time, and greater knowledge of the thing that you are using.

On the other hand, they teach you a lot more, and by slowing you down, and let you appreciate what you have as you think about what you get for how you work. They also can handle things surprisingly well compared to modern machines, with greater redundancy. When something goes wrong on a system I know well, I can diagnose the problem, take corrective action, or fix it - if my modern computer-controlled econo-car decided to have things go wrong, there are very few fixes I can diagnose, much less do. And then there's the unquantifiable, but very real grin that comes of flying something with the windows open, or doors off, low enough to hear the sound of the creek burbling over the rocks and the laughter of children, smelling the camp smoke and the freshly grilled fish, and waving the wings back at the children as they squeal with glee and wave with both arms as they see you overhead. You can't get that at 35,000 feet and 240 knots. The feeling of work well done, of sitting in a warm house that you split the wood to heat, of flying a plane you restored, of driving a car you just changed the oil and fixed the bumper on, or eating a dish with vegetables you grew, or chowder made with milk you got out of the goat that morning... This is something a credit card cannot buy.

I would rather fly in my plane 1500 miles than drive - I know how to care for my plane, but if my car doesn't turn over, I'm stuck. Which is better?

Relevant Zoological Information

2011-02-20T10:35:00.002-06:00

One of the keys to exercise is to make it fun and interesting. So after days of walking around our block together, Calmer Half and I have started walking at the zoo. This is far more fun than a treadmill or elliptical, and the uphills and downhills are far more rewarding. The sights are far more interesting, too - we get to count how many of the dads herding their kids around are packing heat, and try to figure which kids in the swarm belong to which mothers lagging behind with their strollers.

You'd think taking a real live African man to the zoo might result in more information on the African animals exhibited there. You'd be right - but it's a rather, ah, different viewpoint than the signboards. He notes, in this order:

1. How tasty the animal is.
2. How dangerous the animal is.
3. How fat these examples are.
4. How relaxed these examples are.

So while the mom next to us is pointing to the Red River Hogs and going "Look! Piggies!", Calmer Half's stomach is growling as he says, "Oooh, look how fat those are - they haven't had to run from any predators in years! Mmmm, mmmm, those would be some damn fine eating!"

Related note: he can eyeball the giraffe baby and estimate its age correctly to within two weeks. He also points out, to the dismay of some mothers and amusement of some fathers, the, ah, current air of randiness of the giraffe male, and the cold shoulder he's getting from the childless female. It certainly is more educational!

Life is Good.

2011-02-14T11:15:00.002-06:00

The snow has melted even from the shadows as the temperature climbs toward the sixties this week, and I woke from a doze beneath warm blankets by the sound of the garbage truck. I dashed outside just to check, and dragged the garbage can to the curb as the truck advanced down the street with two houses to spare before my driveway. The concrete and tar was cool under my bare feet, sun shining, birds singing, and the garbage truck driver honked back to my cheery wave.

It didn't hurt. My knees cooperated, my twisted ankle has healed so sudden use only produces the most minor of ignorable twinges. It didn't hurt from ice underfoot. It didn't hurt to gasp for breath or the slap of ice fog-laden air against my skin sucking moisture away. The old shoulder injuries are so well healed they didn't even think of protesting at jerking the can from its position at rest and hauling it up the driveway.

I've eleven interviews down, and if I am nervously watching the bank account and the phone, hoping for callbacks, if my plane is still stranded far from me - it matters not. I can run when I need to, I can still afford to feed my household, and spring is coming.

I came back inside, and started the tea kettle, called a cheery good morning to my love, and pulled the tea pot that was a lovely present from friends from under the flowers on the kitchen table, and set about spooning in tea leaves. Calmer Half appeared up the stairs to give me a hug, take the teasing about forgetting the garbage in stride, and wish a happy valentines day to me.

My husband loves me. I can run when I want to, and lift and move the things I want. I have tea, a roof over my head, and good friends. It's a wonderful day, and I hope every one of you find joy in it.

Where to Learn More

2011-01-21T16:16:00.003-06:00

By the search paths that lead many of you here, you want to know more about how to repair your airplane, or for information on the plumbing, sheetmetal work, woodworking, or fabric work of building your own plane.

First, go to the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). If you don't already know who EAA is, I cannot recommend them highly enough - this is the repository of over 50 years of homebuilding experience, tens of thousands of aircraft and their designers, builder groups, mechanic and owners who fix 'em, and the pilots who fly them. They're not just experimental aircraft people, either - they help support the classic and antique aircraft, not only coming up with better repairs and help with restoration, but also modern technological modifications and improvements.
Whether you are a member or not, you can watch their Hints For Homebuilders videos on sheetmetal, tube/fabric, and composite planes (including electrical!) Warning: their links do auto-play the first video on the channel. I wish they were on youtube or vimeo, but the proprietary player is worth the hassle: good production values, knowledgeable people, and reliable, handy information. http://eaavideo.org/channel.aspx?ch=ch_hints

Next off, for more in depth instruction still accessible at your home, check out SmartFlix. They're like NetFlix, but for DIY and instructional videos. Check the ratings before renting, as instructional videos in general range from lively and informative to highly informative but insomnia curing (I'm looking at you, Poly-Fiber covering!), to two guys who are banging out a product on a home video camera with little to no explanation and terrible video work. You'll have to check around the site more, as almost nothing's under "aircraft" - but the sheetmetal videos for making a motorcycle fairing work just the same on an aircraft fairing, and fiberglass layups for a boat will teach you how to lay up a Rutan-designed VariEze fuselage and wings. http://smartflix.com/

(Side note - there are people out there currently calling for a boycott of this company because the owner blogs at TJIC, and had the stones to make a "First, kill all the lawyers"-style comment after the latest leftist nutbag went after a nearby congresscritter. These are the same people who are preening about how wonderful it is that the government decided to deny his second amendment rights and seize personal property with no charges and no arrest, because he exercised his first amendment right to offensive speech. I may or may not agree with what he has to say on any given post, but I'll damn well defend his right to say it! He's a good man, and runs a good company.)

Now for the away-from-computer solutions. First, EAA holds workshops around the country, so you can move from theoretical to practical knowledge, hands-on, with tools and guidance. If none of those are taking place near you, or soon enough, check out your local EAA chapter. There's almost always someone who's building something going on, and usually you can learn more, see more, and try more by talking to these folks. If you have your eye on a specific plane, it probably has an owner's group, and that owner's group probably has an email list, a forum, a newsletter, fly-ins, and nearby members who can show you a thing or five.

Most importantly, don't discount your local airport. Years ago, I screwed up my courage and talked to an A&P IA who owns his own shop on the field - and he has become a good friend, and a mentor beyond compare. That man is not just worth his weight in gold, but in gem-grade diamond! He has helped me not only with purchasing a project and restoring it, but with life, with maturing into a better person, with shooting, with coping with my fiance having a heart attack while I was thousands of miles away... Words fail in expressing how much he means to me. Videos and internet opinions can only take you so far - if you find a mentor to work beside, you will be worlds ahead and on your way.

Wings On!

2011-01-19T15:13:00.005-06:00

Ahem.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

...and a certain party is right - it may indeed be less than three years before I feel I have to bring her fuselage and tail feathers up to the standard now set by her wings.

but never mind that; they're on! SQUEE!

Electrolite:de vermis

2011-01-09T17:11:00.001-06:00

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days --
Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

John M. Ford
2003

Calmer Half

2010-12-18T09:22:00.001-06:00

This man is my rock. Sometimes this means he's as stubborn as a rock, immovable object to my unstoppable force. Always, this means he's my shelter against the storm, against the world. When I'm about ready to metaphorically tear my hair out and set the plane on fire after yet another setback, he calmly reminds me that he loves me, and that it's all okay. And then, it is.

When others wonder how he can let me go to be thousands of miles away for months, he calmly reminds them that he does not own his wife. (It's true! He didn't pay my father a bride price for me! [Though he did offer.]) Whether I'm having a good day or a bad one, when we're apart, I can count on at least one phone call a day, regularly and faithfully. He has mastered the art of holding so tightly I shall never feel unsupported, yet so loosely that I shall never feel like my wings have been clipped, or that I cannot fly.

Sometimes he frustrates me, because he does not try to limit me. I tried to tease him by threatening to cut my hair short, and he was fine with it. In fact, he appeared mildly baffled that I expected him to object. "It's your hair, love." Sometimes he is so laid back I almost wonder if I am walking all over him - and then I hit a point he cares about, and I am reassured that he has a spine like a mountain and a will as inexorable.

He never yells, and rarely curses. (Except at "bloody idiots" on the road, for which I tease him.) When I am moved to yell at him, he doesn't yell back - he listens. Sometimes he changes, and sometimes he points out that I have no right or reason to talk to him like that. I have no choice, then, but to listen back. Which is why our arguments usually are short, and end in thoughtful conversation, or sincere apologies.

It's not a smooth road by any means. When we walk down the street, I want to put my good shoulder toward him so it won't hurt when he tugs my arm or bumps into me, but he wants me to walk on the side that leaves his gun hand free. He doesn't put the toilet seat down. I steal covers and grumble at him if he moves in the night. He always wants and expects to drive. I use all the hot water when I shower. He gets cranky and refuses to take help when he's tired. I get petty and snarl when I have low blood sugar.

But all those things are immaterial, and easily dismissed by the steadfast love in his eyes as he smiles and says, "Calm down, love. It's all right; no one's shooting at you."

Home

2010-12-17T05:34:00.002-06:00

When I was younger, I moved a lot. Sometimes by my own choice, sometimes not. One particularly crazy year included a lot of couch-surfing, and I started using the word "home" to mean "wherever I am currently plugging in my computer." It was in jest: that's not what home is.

Home is where the heart is, and for the last months I've been split between the north and the south, between the home for years where my plane is, my friends are, the mountains and sky are etched in memories and heart... and my husband, who is out of state, and the small number of friends near him.

I left my plane in the competent and wise hands of my IA, and left state quietly, dozing and limping through fourteen hours of flights and layovers, only to hobble slowly enough up a terminal that a nice security officer wanted to know if I was going to be all right. I was, I assured him - and when I came around the corner, I was more than fine.

Calmer Half was waiting for me, standing patiently there, and I was home.

Modifications vs. stock

2010-12-09T17:08:00.001-06:00

Once upon a time in a land far, far away called Alaska, the agency who thinks they are in charge of flying held a "supercub seminar." Their bright idea was to have a social gathering right before the pilots switched from skis back to wheels or floats, and as the winter hibernators were coming back up from sunnier climes, or starting to drive to the airport again and check in their plane in anticipation of the coming summer flying. They would gather some locals who were well-respected to talk about various safety and sanity-inducing aspects of flying, refresh those who didn't fly all winter on awareness of weather and airspace, and let everyone know what the latest regulation and rule changes were. Free coffee and cookies, Saturday morning, some elementary school.

A few local organizations and businesses decided this was an awesome chance to remind pilots about their goods for sale, or their organization, and set up booths and displays along with the tables full of friendly agency's pamphlets and paperwork. (In the case of Atlee Dodge, an entire brand-newly welded extended baggage extra-wide reinforced lightweight fuselage sat in a hallway for pilots drool and start asking their wives about next Christmas.) The idea took hold, and people came.

Our local friendly agency agents are, for the most part, a practical sort who recognize that innovation is better than stagnation, and people who want to modify their aircraft are usually doing it because they want a better plane for their purpose. While there are certainly pilots who put big tires on aircraft that rarely leave asphalt (akin to the lifted pickups around town that have never been offroad), tundra tires make landing on gravel and soft surfaces safer (in many cases, replace safer with possible at all). They sign off on replacing stiff, fracture-prone metal hydraulic lines with flexible hoses familiar to every car and dune buggy, replacing solid copper wiring wrapped in varnished silk with modern wiring, old 25-hour-life landing lights with thousands-of-hours life LED landing lights, installing inertial reel harnesses where there were no seat belts before... our airplanes are practical working vehicles, and we make them better, stronger, and safer. But outside, in the blasted aviation ruins of the Lower 48, the agency is not so friendly and resents the changes and challenges of innovation to their domineering static statism.

Worst of all are the agents of Mordor, also called Oklahoma City. I don't know why the unfriendly agency chose to base there and not the pit of DC, but I know from whence the squamous and rugose shadows with their lashing tentacles of strangling red tape come. And I could tell that this one that stepped upon the stage had a fresh whiff of that foul place man should not mention about him. His suit stood as a shout against the creeping informality of the friendly agents' polar fleece vests and polo shirts over jeans, in polar opposition to the battered carhartts, beards, and baseball caps eying him with distrust and disfavor. He glared at us with the self-righteous disdain and fury of a Brady Campaigner at Knob Creek (an apt simile, as most of the people in the room were armed), and imperiously clicked his powerpoint remote to batter us all with the overwhelming power of fine print.

Taking a deep breath, he stared us all down and said to the Alaskan pilots, "There is no reason any airplane should be anything other than stock!"

A humming silence met his remark, as pilots stopped chatting about the wife and kids, and turned to stare at him. Half-awake pilots woke up, looked at him, and looked at each other to confirm they heard correctly. Next to me, a gentleman who stopped logging hours years ago, as he figured there was no point past 40,000 hours in the bush, snorted and leaned back to watch the fireworks. I took another drink of bad coffee, trying to wake up and wondering what he was going to come up with for a speech after that lead-in.

He was serious. He continued haranguing us with powerpoint slide after slide, stating that we were deviants and degenerates tampering with designs created by our betters, and should not presume to try to improve upon what the unfriendly agency had decreed the airplane should be, coming off the production line. I looked at his superiors from our friendly agency, and saw the highest one there leaning back, arms folded, letting the unfriendly agent from Mordor dig his own grave.

Finally, with the spit-flecked fervor of PETA members assaulting a little old lady in a fur coat, he clicked to his penultimate example of everything that is bad and wrong with Alaskan aviation. "This! This! Can anyone even tell me what kind of airplane this is?"

I didn't recognize it. It had nice big tundra tires, long high wings, kinda like a...but nah, the fuselage wasn't right... the room was silent as he glared at us, looking enraged at our temerity and satisfied that he had browbeaten us into submission.

Then a voice spoke, from the audience. "Well, actually, that's my plane." Heads whipped around to the source, and the unfriendly agent's jaw dropped open, eyes bulging in disbelief.

"Really? What'd you do?" Someone asked, and the owner stood up, coffee cup in one hand, other one tucked into a pocket in a defensive slouch.

"Well, I was going into..." And he named a rather treacherous area well-known down on the peninsula. "And I ground-looped her. The only wings available were off a... so I flew her out, but really she performs better with them, so I left those on, and I got an Atlee Dodge landing gear and bigger tires to help with the potholes on this strip, and..." And he was off, standing up straight with pride as he told the story of how much work, effort, and thought he'd put into his baby. Questions flew fast and furious, opinions and debates sprung up about the effects of various modifications upon other modifications, the usefulness and relative merit of variations given the wildly different terrains these pilots operated on, and the room was alive, awake, and trading information.

I looked up at the stage, where the head of the friendly agency had a hand on the unfriendly agent, and was quietly leading him back to their chairs on the side, talking too quietly to be heard over the debate on 31" vs. 26" vs. 8:50 tires, powerflow exhausts, and so on.

What is the moral of this fairy tale?

For me, it's "Don't post identifying information about your airplane or yourself on the internet when doing modifications, for the agents of Mordor desire to crush and drown all beneath their sea of writhing red tape."

I hope there are better agents, even perhaps some last holdouts of sanity, in the blasted wastelands of the Lower 48, but the news we get here is not encouraging. I hear all the other FSDOs have been corrupted within, forsaking field approvals and one-time STCs for the ichorous hisses of "suspected unapproved parts are our highest priority!"

Wings & ankles

2010-12-06T02:28:00.006-06:00

Over two years ago, I started pulling parts out of twelve totes and two bundles, and sorting them out into what I roughly knew went where on a wing.

This isn't the beginning - the ribs here are mostly cleaned of corrosion, repaired, and some are already primed. But it's close enough.

Turns out that the shop with the wings has great customer service on everything except their deadlines, and came in under budget while making my wings look as beautiful on the outside as they are inside.

I still need to put the gas tanks back in and get them on, but the end is in sight.

On the other hand, yesterday I only made it successfully down five out of six stairs to the laundry, and my left ankle was stressed past specs. Unlike the plane, I won't have to put a lot of effort and research into figuring out how to repair it - rest, ice, compression, and elevation are pretty straightforward, if annoying and providing very few external indications of healing progress.

I hope I can get back to the plane soon - I'd far rather be twisted in some uncomfortable position while scrapes on my arms weep blood and itch around splinters, muttering words my father wouldn't approve of me saying while trying to hold a flashlight, a mirror, and use a tool than be tucked on this comfy couch with tea, sandwiches, internet, and comfy blankets.

Progress Post - Odds and Brakes

2010-12-04T13:58:00.008-06:00

One of my biggest frustrations lately has been the parking brake - the housing for the old cable was a solid metal tube that fractured and splintered at a bend. It's a very simple system - the locking handle connects to the cable, which loops around a cable that attaches to both brakes. Thus, pulling on the handle simply engages both brakes fully. After removing the petrified friction tape and housing, I got the old cable out, and got a new one with a Bowden cable instead of a solid tube. (The old style hasn't been available for decades, and this is better anyway.)

The handle locks by engaging a sort of set screw in the handle. Which I lost when installing. After cleaning, and cleaning, and muttering unkind words, I found that the replacement set screw is not sold singly - I had to buy the whole parking brake assembly. So I did, uninstalled the old new one, and installed the new new one. See the brass thing in the center of the tube the handle goes in? Yeah, you don't want to know how much that little bit of brass cost me in time, money, and aggravation.

Along the way, dealing with the brakes and dealing with firewall cover patch, I finally got to the point that it was just easier to remove the floor to continue work.

These are the old MicroVG's, on top of the repaint kit to replace the entire plane's VG's. The pink stuff on the bottom is dope that came off when I popped them off with a putty knife - they're bonded on well! I may fly the airplane without VG's first, to get a good feel for her original handling characteristics.

While working around the tail feathers, I noted that the last person put flat drain grommets on the tail instead of seaplane scoops, and didn't put a cloth patch on top. That's perfectly fine from an airworthiness standpoint. From a practical one, all but two had since been knocked off by dirt, rocks, weeds, sand, or something. So, I put seaplane grommets on to promote pulling moisture out of the area, and covered them with dollar patches to keep them there. My IA, believing that overkill is always better than barely enough, took the time to point out that I should really put some on the bottom of the rudder to pull moisture out of that as well.

When I bought the plane, the end of one of the placards in the cockpit was held on with duct tape as it had curled away from the instrument panel. As I worked around the cockpit, I bumped into it several times after removing the ossified duct tape, and it finished coming off. Here, it's being properly glued down.

Going over my inspection covers, roughly half of them had been painted without primer, and the paint was peeling off in large flakes or almost entirely gone (Like my fairings). The human eye can see thousands of shades of yellow - matching would be time-consuming and likely fruitless. The only easy-to-get yellow in the shop is a rather awful shade (at least, to my eyes), so I went with the other color on the airplane - flat black.

For another small but good step, the nicely repainted steps are now being wrapped with no-slip tread. Wet paint is slick, and I am sometimes clumsy - this should help prevent bruises and leaking blood. The tape is to keep the tread on securely until the glue cures tightly to the peg.

While none of the projects above move directly toward getting the engine run or wings on, they're things that were very good to get done. I'm not spinning my wheels, no matter what it feel like, and the punch list of things left to do on the plane is growing smaller and smaller.

Patching the Firewall & Custom Tools

2010-12-02T22:22:00.001-06:00

As noted in the prior post, the new lower fuel valve needed a new lower fuel fitting. Unfortunately, the spot picked to drill a hole in the firewall proved to be a little too off, and a little too awkward to make the right bend in the fuel line. Solution: move the hole in the firewall.

This left two holes in the firewall to cover instead of one.

So, I made a rather thick steel plate to fit over both, with the holes pre-drilled, and set about installing it.

The first hole went rather well, if time-consuming. The second hole took hours to drill, and I got it done by drilling two pilot holes in succession. The third hole took even longer, and I finally broke down and went to my IA, saying "I think it might not be me - it might be the drill bit."

He looked at it with a jeweler's loupe, and said "This bit isn't dull... it's rounded!"

Now I know a lot more about drills, bits, and how to sharpen them. The third hole then took a couple minutes to finish. The fourth hole, however, was in an awkward position between the valve from the tank, the fitting already clamped down in the center to hold it tights, and various cables, wiring, and structure in the way. (Not that the others were a breeze.)
Enter the "aircraft drill bits" - perfect for reaching those awkward spots!

With the holes drilled, it was time to put one person on the engine side of the firewall with a screwdriver to hold the screws in place, and one person on the inside to tighten the locking nuts. Unfortunately, the alternator is so close to the firewall that even my stubbiest screwdriver was still too long by several inches.

Enter custom "nubby" screwdrivers, made by my IA from broken vacuum pump flanges.

As the shaft usually breaks first (broken yellow piece, top left), the rest can be put in the lathe, and the flanges trimmed off (see the various amounts of trimming between the three screwdrivers). Then the small hole in the center is enlarged, and a screwdriver bit pressed into the handle.

Best of all - the handle fits perfectly into that racheting wrench at the bottom, making it easy to turn in spaces so tight a hand can't hold and grip it easily!

On things I shouldn't wear

2010-11-26T15:28:00.004-06:00

Working on airplanes isn't an activity that encourages concealed carry - between trying to fit into very small, crowded spaces and lying on your back and side to upside down, anything that adds bulk and presses crushingly against soft squishy organs and hard bruisable bone is highly uncomfortable. So I don't.

Working on installing the new parking brake cable (which is not done yet; I'm taking a break and nursing my scrapes and fresh bruises), I'm about ready to ditch all hard objects. I have key-shaped bruises on my right hip, scrapes on my arms from retrieving the 3/8th socket that slipped out of a pocket, and brand new bruises on two fingers due to the incompressibility of my wedding ring.

There may be a reason my Calmer Half's wedding ring still looks shiny and new, and mine looks like it's been through the wars, and is about to get stashed in the tool drawer right next to the sockets and wrenches. File that under things to keep in mind when looking for a holster - will it protect the gun, and will it protect me from my gun?