Rapid fire local flights

Tonight John called to invite me for a ride in the trike. Little did he know that my whole family was in town.

Soon all 6 of us were at the airport. John started giving family members rides in the trike and I gave a few in the Cessna 172. But before I did, I took a flight around the pattern to make sure all was in order after the repairs/inspections.

The vibrations in the airplane seemed reduced and it performed quite well. I taxied back to pick up my Mom for her first ride in a small airplane. We went out to my neighborhood and back, seeing the sites along the way. After dropping her off I took up my sister and her boyfriend for a similar flight that ended at sunset.

John took up my dad, sister, and her boyfriend.

Everyone seemed to have a great time, certainly I did. Everyone got some time in the air except for K, who decided she'd stick to camera duty.

Jen went up in the trike first:



Then Tom went up:

I'm in 388 doing the run-up while John and Tom are landing:

Me flying into the sunset on the "test" flight:


Then Dad and John in the trike:


They had to wait for me to finish my test pattern lap:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A-10C Standby Compass - Sun Shade

Image
 One of the final items to add to this instrument build (besides the text covers for the lower LEDs) was the sun shade for the AR LED box.  I made this out of thin aluminum sheets , cutting it from a template using some metal sheers .    My template was created by tracing some of the actual artwork from the DCS sim, and then scaling it to the proper size. It turned out ok, not perfect but pretty good.  Primed and painted it and then installed it using 2 of the 4 holes that were already on the LED box 3D print.  I used some heat inserts in those holes to give the screws something to bite, but the holes are really too big for my inserts so had to use some glue to help out.  
Read more

A-10C Standby Compass - Hardware Wiring

 Components: Arduino Nano , no headers attached EasyDriver board to run stepper motor 2x 12V power circuits (for LEDs and motor power) - used computer power supply with ATX breakout board IR sensor X27 168 Stepper Motor 3 green LEDs with built-in resistor 3 LEDs for the Ready/Latch/Disconnect box (and resistors if not built in) 3D printed parts from The Warthog Project Wiring 3 green LEDs , in parallel -> power and ground to one 12V circuit Arduino Nano (10 connections, plus USB) D11 to IR Sensor "OUT" D3 to EasyDriver DIR D2 to EasyDriver STEP GND to IR sensor GND GND to EasyDriver control GND (by STEP) 5V PWR to IR Sensor VCC D6 , D7 , D8 and ICSP GND (from the 6-pin cluster) routed out of box to later power the 3 LEDs below this compass unit ("ready", "latch", "disconnect") IR Sensor (3 connections) VCC to Nano 5V GND to Nano GND OUT to Nano D9 Stepper Motor (open it to remove tiny plastic stop tab, for 360 motion - 4 connections) Coil 1/A...
Read more

Updating data on the Garmin Perspective system

Image
After changing from the Avidyne system to the Cirrus Perspective (G1000) system, I had to relearn an important part of owning an airplane: how to update all the data the systems use. There's even more data in the Perspective, including AOPA directory data and more charts. In this walkthrough, I make use of the Jeppesen app for Apple OS X: JDM .  It has worked well for me, though I did need to call Jeppesen when I first set this up to get my subscriptions fixed up.  They gave great customer support when I did. The process starts (optionally) by hooking up a ground power unit (GPU).  In the case of the Cirrus, you can certainly do this without it, but I tend to hook it up just to be sure.  The systems draw about 8-10amps while updating, but you won't generally have the power on for long.  One tip I've read: power up the GPU before plugging it into the plane, at least for the one I bought.  That saves the plane from seeing any power spikes that might hav...
Read more