Today was spent sightseeing.  The first stop was Elizabeth Park with my sister.  It is located on the Detroit River close to where my plane is parked.  There are some beautiful arched concrete bridges in need of repair.   Beautiful

The park is also hosting tunnel boat races this weekend. “Roar on the River” it is called.   The boats are powered by standard (unmodified) outboard motors with a number of classes.  When I talked to an owner, he said the race boats are all mostly the same and it really comes down to the drivers.  At the end of the race the boat is weighted and you are disqualified if your boat weighs under 700 lbs.  So it takes careful fuel planing to ensure you are not disqualified after winning a race.    It will be fun to see them in the water tomorrow….

Very cool looking and inexpensive too.

While driving around with my nephew today, it was crazy to see beautifully restored homes right next to

homes that need to be “upgraded” just a little bit.  There is a LOT of blight in this city.

While walking around my sister’s condo complex I saw these need yard sculptures made out of bowling balls, golf balls, golf clubs and bowling pins.  Dont you just have to have one in your yard?

Dinner at home with family… nice

Today it was a quick flight to Walterboro, SC for the annual EAA event. Bob and Marie are on the way home after a great visit here.

Wings and Wheels is great for the locals. A local car club shows up and about 30 planes of all types.

Jack and Bob showed up for lunch.

I did a quick fly by for the crowd and it was home to CHS before the rain started.

Sighting was fun this week… Bob and Marie love charleston and the weather here.

I made this short video of them for fun after our visit to the beach.

Tonight was tragic for me… I lost the grease car.

As I was traveling down the interstate in the high speed lane at 60 mph, a car entering from an on ramp traveled across three lanes of traffic into my lane without even coming up to speed. I had slowed down to almost 35 mph from 60 and she all of a sudden slammed on her brakes. I asked her why and she said “I don’t know”. WTF???

Of coarse I hit her from the back and a third car hit me. It was crazy that she didn’t use the merge lane (3 lanes in that location) to accelerate. The wild thing is the cop determined that I was the cause of the accident, because she was “established” in the lane. Apparently it doesn’t matter that she crossed 2 lanes at almost a 45 deg angle right into the lane of higher speed traffic… Apparently failure to yield to oncoming traffic doesn’t matter either.

I did some measurements and calculations and figured I was doing 35 mph or less when I hit her. The car seems to support the low speed of the impact.

Both I and the guy who hit me told the officer she hit her brakes first and I had no where to go, but alas it didn’t matter. The officer told me he only saw my skid marks and I skidded 105 ft. and there was no evidence of her skidding. It was dark by the time the officer arrived so it made visual identification of the skid a bit difficult.

I went to the scene today, and sure enough I measure my skids as 70 ft and her skid at 91 ft. Skid length indicates the my car was doing approximate 35 mph or less as skid friction is less than static friction.

Tomorrow I am going to the Highway Patrol Office to ask for a senior investigator to go to the site with me to check the evidence hopefully to get the veridic changed, but if nothing else to correct the record of events….

The only thing is the insurance company will probably total the car due to its age. I can’t see them paying $4000 for repairs if the car is only worth $4000. The car was in pristine shape, with a rebuilt engine. I was planning to sell it anyway, but hate to see our time together come to an end like this.

Last week I went to Sun N Fun in at Lakeland Florida and stayed with my buddy Ed and his wife Sue.   Ed has a airport home which is a joy to fly into.  He even has an wireless door system so he can open the hangar door and taxi in without getting wet when it is raining.   What a great time!  Here is a quick video of the show and my flight back to Charleston.  The city you will see from the air is Jacksonville Fl, and finally my airport in Charleston, SC.   Enjoy

I left Charleston as planned for the flight to PA. What a nice trip.

After the piston upgrade, the plane was flown 3 times for successively longer periods to make sure I had no oil leaks or issues.

I also balanced the engine with the new ACES dynamic balance I purchased at OSH this year. What a nice unit. It only took me one run to get the engine from 1.7 ips to .06 ips. It computes the angle and how much weight to put on the engine unlike the Dynavibe system which requires multiple runs and you must figure out how much weight to add. The cost is about the same for both units!

The trees are starting to turn up here.

Of coarse I was a bit nervous at the beginning of the flight with every engine hiccup (there were a few of them) but it might have just been my hyper sensitivity to the new installation. Tweedy ran smooth as can be (thanks ACES) and climb out is fantastic with the added HP. The old prop still gives me the same speed, but that will change when I replace it with the new Hertzler.

The new Bose A20 headsets are fantastic! I have flown with the Bose series 1, 2 and the 10 and the A20 gives a noticeable improvement in the noise reduction over the series 10. The sound quality is very good too, and the music sounds as good as the series 2 (my favorite for music) with nice deep bass and clear highs. It has blue tooth which makes calling ATC on the ground very convenient. Overall, you cant go wrong with the A20. Klaus suggested them to me (he wanted me to buy his old series 10) and he said that they allowed him to comfortably fly his extremely loud and outrageously fast 240 hp, 900 lb LongEZ he is now flying.

The trip to mom’s was fast and very pleasant with a nice tail wind. She was blown away when I showed up as it was a complete surprise to her. Everyone knew I was flying up except her… what fun.

Mom wanted to go to a all you could eat buffet in Lancaster. After an hour drive we arrived at the biggest buffet I have ever seen. It was like eating in a super walmart! It must have sat 1000 people. Nice idea, but the food was ….ok….

Mom and my sister Paulette enjoying a nice afternoon after desert.

My wish has come true …  I have always wanted a phone with a freaking good camera.  Is that too much to ask?

I love to take pictures of my day, as I can’t remember shit BUT if I see a picture of something I did on the day in question, I can recall everything.  You see, part of the index file which puts time stamps on the nightly daily events upload to my brain is crapped up…. hence the need for image stimulation to facilitate full recall.

I usually carry my trusty camera (when it is not being run over by a car) everywhere and snap at least a few pix per day.  For years, I have REALLY wanted a cell phone with a good camera so I could ditch my Casio EX-H5, 12.1 mp camera.  I tried the HTC EVO.  Supposed to have an 8 mp camera…. shit the 5 mp camera on the Apple iPhone took a slightly better picture.   In either case the photos were not up to my minimal standards.  Too much grain, color slightly off and lack of good focus.   Emergency phono only please.

The EVO I picked up lasted for less than a year, and Sprint gave me an EVO Slide when I was at Oshkosh this year.  I was desperate for any phone as I had to have something for the airshow.  I had to walk back and forth from the to town to get it. The first Slide lasted one day, and I had to get a replacement.   The HTC Slide is a 4G phone was supposed to be top of the line.   After 4 months of use it to started crapping out.   Crap, 4G…4 months.  It was jumpy and would sometimes lock up..  I need another new phone and Sprint.   I knew was now offering the iPhone.   The timing could be right.

When I was in Salt Lake City I watched a video on the Apple website with Ric Lee showing just how wonderful the iPhone 4S camera was.   It also had a bunch of other cool features such as iCloud and Siri which appealed to me.  I am trying to go Apple with all my equipment so an iPhone was the next step

The contract with Sprint was up for renew so the iPhone 4S was ordered.  It is supposed to have as much computing power as the iPad 2 (dual core processor) but running at a slightly lower clock rate to conserve the battery,  It also had the upgraded 8 mp camera in it.

While flying Tweedy, I took these pictures….  I was blown away.  Great color saturation, minimal grain, and the camera was QUICK.  You could shoot off a number of pictures almost as fast as you can compose and shoot.  Sweet.

The are untouched pictures.   I only used the software in the phone to crop and work with the pictures.  I haven’t figured out how to find the file size yet (dam Apple computer) but they are fairly big as WordPress takes a while to upload and crunch them.

Cooper River Bridges

I had WordPress insert  a higher resolution picture of Mount Pleasant and the USS Yorktown.  Cropping was done in the camera.  Click on the pictures for close up detail.

This picture of the end of Sullivan’s Island was cropped and I added the phone “Magic Enhancement” effect.  It added a little sharpness (and grain) and richened the colors some.  Darker greens and blues sort of thing.

FINALLY, after years of waiting, I have what I REALLY wanted.  Just ONE piece of electronics to carry around.  It is a phone, internet, gps, game station, educational device and a truly ACCEPTABLE camera to document my existence.  I’ll still use the Casio from time to time for special occasions where I really want a high rez pictures, but the Apple iPhone 4S takes really good pictures to use on a day to day basis..

Oh, went to Sprint to transfer my old numbers off the EVO Slide…. the Slide  wouldn’t talk to their equipment.  Bad Android…

The rep also said there may have been a bad software push that messed up the operating system since others have complained of erratic operating system behavior the last few weeks.   Bad Android….

He said they would or may have sent out new code.  He wasn’t really sure.    Bad Android…

Hum think about it my EVO didn’t seem to be acting so freaky on me since I made it back to Charleston.  I just thought it might be happy to be home too.  Maybe it was pushed and updated with some good stuff.     Maybe the EVO fully functional again?  Did I really need to buy the iPhone 4S at this time?

Well, after playing with it for the last few days, running memory intensive applications such as ForeFlight with no slowdown and now seeing the quality of the picture output, I can say the iPhone 4S rocks.   Apples makes VERY nice products with software that just works.  Now I can finally ditch my camera.  Good Apple ISO 5….

The bird back is the hangar in her favorite spot right next to the door in front of the spam cans, grazing on concrete….

Bon appetit  Tweedy.

The last few days have been remarkable for me.  I thoroughly enjoy being back.  The weather is good, my cat Cosm0 (for Cosmo Kramer) remembers and seems genuinely pleased to have me back again…..

AND I get to sleep in my own bed again.   I am happy.

After a busy week, with doctor visits, grocery shopping, washing, cleaning and visiting friends (who very pleased to see me again), I  made plans on Saturday to visit an old friend I have been ignoring as of late.

After an easy morning with breakfast, news paper and a visit from Jack Wilhelmson (eznoselift.com) ,  I finally headed out to the airport to see Tweedy.

She was sitting in the back of the hanger buried behind a number of Spam Cans looking totally out of place..  A thick coating of dust was on her. We hadn’t been together since September 21 st….  YIKES could how could I have ignored her this long?

Will I be able to warm her up?  Or, will she be pissed at me and require massive  maintenance on her for hours due to my lack of attention?  Something always seems to cranky and cause me issues IF I don’t work the old bird  out regularly.   Finicky she can be…

After installing the Trio Pilot Pro which has been upgrade by Chuck to the latest and greatest software upgrade, we headed out.

You know, I have flown N123LE for total 55.6 hrs and Tweedy for 2570 hours, and while the new gal who came life 2.5 years ago, I couldnt stop thinking of Tweedy.  N123LE is fun, racy, FAST, brilliantly intelligent and sweet bird as one could ever hope to fly……..bit yet, there is just a wonderful feeling when you’re reunited with a bird you spent 14 years with and just love to fly.  We have been though everything Mother Nature could throw at us.  She is as dependable an easy going as one could hope for.

Tweedy just started without a fuss, purred like a kitten, and off we went to fly down the Ashely river at 600 ft listening to wonderful music to  overfly the city.  Rusty said he would be somewhere on the Ashely River, I am going to be over the river looking down at….well everyone, and no one cares.

A south end of  Sullivan’s Island

and the Cooper River Bridges

The new code on the Trio Pro is fantastic.   I have been a beta tester for their equipment since the pre-deveopment of the EZ-1 altitude hold.  Beta testers have the fun of finding issues with pre-release software and making recommendations to the developers.   I’ll tell you what the Trio products are really good and you can ask for a better company to deal with.    Chuck developed the product and wrote the software code and was extremely supportive of my crazy suggestions and recommendations.  The new code he has in the A/P really works well and produces a much more stable ride than any I have used so far.

Thanks Trio for your fantastic support when I needed to get the A/P sent out to me overnight in Greeley, CO.

Back in the hangar, put the good old gal back to bed.  Off spend a nice quite night at home writing….

Today , Pat and I are  planning to disassemble the plane, move it to two shops.  I also needed to fit in dental visits, and move to  my new hotel closer to LAX.

8:15 Left hotel

9 AM    Arrive Dentist….  14 miles

10:30  Left Dentist to Fullerton airport… 9 miles

Pat and I met up at Fullerton, we made some ramps for the plane and the wings, canard, cowls were taken off.

and the Pat helped me load the bird was loaded on to the trailer and off we went.

12:30 Left Fullerton to  Chino.. about 30 miles

We took the bird to Pat friend , Aaron who will be doing some engine work.   Aaron will build a new exhaust system to better fit the cowl and a new intake system to allow installation of a B&C starter.   The old starter was a car type conversion which really didn’t have the right stuff to quickly spin the engine.

Aaron runs a neat and tidy show for metal work (like what you would see on a TV show) does great metal work restoring vintage cars.  The sump welding was done by Arron and I would consider the work outstanding.

I needed to take off the oil pan so Arron can make  the mods to the intake system.  In about an about 1 hour it was free it is time to go.

4 PM  Leave Chino for Fullerton … about 30 miles

After leaving Chino, it was a quick dash to the airport to load the wings.  Pat drove them down to his work shop I headed to the dentist.

5:30  Leave Fullerton to Dentist… 9 miles

6:30 Left Dentist to Huntington Beach… about 25 miles

The wings were moved into Pat’s shop, I took all the control surfaces off, to help prep the wings for painting.  Packed up my tools and clothing to ship FEDEX to the house.

Left Huntington Beach

10:30  Arrive LAX  hotel… 25 miles

Finally cheeked in.  I am totally exhausted from the day and not eating much.  Bed time as I have a 3:15 am appt.

We met up at Fullerton about 11 am for Pat’s solo flight.  A quick 6 minute flight to Chino and after about 6 or 7 practice landing from the back seat felt Pat was ready for his first fight.

Needless to say I was probably more nervous than he was.  Whenever you flight a new bird the first time, it can be a bit scary.  This one is quite a handful as the avionics are so advanced it can be a bit overwhelming.  It took wiring the plane, studying the manuals for hours to just touch the surface of what this bird can do.

As Pat was getting comfortable with the plane on the ground my first thought was the plane was going to overheat.  He must have spent at least 10 to 15 minutes on the ground with an already heat soaked engine.  Normally canards are notorious bad for overheating due to the fact they have no cooling air over the cylinders like tractor planes.  I became very alarmed with length of time he just sat there…and sat there.  Yikes.

Finally after what seemed like an eternity on the ground, Pat took off and made about 3 or 4 tough and goes.  He was flying!

The bird looked really fast from the ground and it was great fun for me to see her flying with the characteristic sound that a canard makes.

Finally Pat taxi’s up with the grin of success on his face.  Peace of cake he claims.

Strangely, when I asked him about the cylinder head temps, he said NONE of them were over 400 f while sitting idling on the ground.  I was in shock!  I had hoped the educators would work well, but I didn’t realize just how well they helped ground operations.   My bird only seems to get up to about 375F but I had never tried to sit on the ground idling with a heat soaked engine like he did.  I guess I’ll have try my bird out to see what happens.   I do know this, I am going to rebuild my cowls to look like Pats as I think not only to they look good but function much better than Tweedy’s.