Started first aircraft upgrade from FP to CS. Prop swap done. Still need to add governor and control cable.
 

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Fitting the cowl and trimming baffles. Thanks to Flyboys, I’m winning the battle. The initial plenum top I made using the cowl is helping with the baffles.
 

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Flew over to Richland (KRLD) for lunch from my home base at Arlington (KAWO) on Wednesday. As I was finishing up my jambalaya and red beans w/rice, a friend from my home base just happened to also stop in for lunch with his RV-7. So we had an opportunity to catch up on his Sonex Onex build.

Short clip passing Mt. Stuart (choose 4K):


Flew back via Grant County (KMWH) where Boeing stored several hundred new 737 Max's during COVID. There are still a large number there.

East ramp:

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South ramp:

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Glacier Peak on the way back crossing the Cascades:

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Not quite TODAY but yesterday evening.

Got visited by a queen just before leaving Sun N Fun. She liked my wingtip.
Her protective services agents surrounded her and almost wouldn't let me leave. Three special agents were called in to assist in my escape.

Sometimes .... "it just bees that way!". 😊
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jclark said:
Not quite TODAY but yesterday evening.

Got visited by a queen just before leaving Sun N Fun. She liked my wingtip.
Her protective services agents surrounded her and almost wouldn't let me leave. Three special agents were called in to assist in my escape.

Sometimes .... "it just bees that way!". 😊
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Moderators, if this needs to be moved to a Sun N Fun thread, then please do.

Notice how the "experts" just stick their "nekkid" hands in there to remove bees, They "claim" that if you don't really be aggressive towards the bees, then the bees won't be aggressive towards you. Well, I figured that I would just take their word for it and NOT test that claim. :)
 
jclark said:
Got visited by a queen just before leaving Sun N Fun. She liked my wingtip.
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Wow. That is right out there... completely left of field and easily the most bizarre "modification" I've seen on an RV in an attempt to gain more airspeed. :D


Thanks for sharing that story. So cool.
 
Hard to beat the "Bee Movie - Part 6"...

After getting fogged out of Glentanner last weekend we had unfinished business to attend to, so the team went back to have the coffee we didn't get to have last Saturday. After a smooth flight north via the scenic route (1.0 hours) we got in under the lifting fog and trudged up to the cafe, arriving with wet shoes and socks from the heavy dew on the grass.

The coffee was good (so I'm told, because I drink tea), the staff were friendly and scenery... beautiful. The Lemon Cheesecake was outstanding too - in case you need a reference point.

The flight home was a smooth 0.7 hours. A great trip... great company... good food... and best of all I got to see a Tahr, standing out on a bluff sunning herself and watching the world go by.
 

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He’s getting a shine put on cuz beeswax………

Thank you. I’ll be here all week, try the veal, and don’t forget to tip the waitresses.
 
Got to fly the Path of Totality with my bride (those glasses are hard to fly with ;) ) Amazing thing to experience. Tons of traffic, most of which seemed to behave pretty well. Then flew up for lunch at the Waco Kitchen and a couple of days at the Inn at Bar Harbor. Nice hotel, beautiful location. I love this gift we call Aviation.
 

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GrinchF16 said:
Got to fly the Path of Totality with my bride (those glasses are hard to fly with ;) ) Amazing thing to experience. Tons of traffic, most of which seemed to behave pretty well. Then flew up for lunch at the Waco Kitchen and a couple of days at the Inn at Bar Harbor. Nice hotel, beautiful location. I love this gift we call Aviation.
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Love your vertical graphic!! ♥️ 😊 And the inverted name graphic!!🙃😝
 
On Friday I drilled my 14A lcp replacement HS spar wrong (was in a groove, drilling on the drill press the 4x#12 holes, then moved to 2x1/4" holes, but did the 4x#12 to 1/4" before realizing what I had just done), called Vans 5pm CST on Friday, and have to replace it (don't have the edge clearance for a AN4 (2D=0.5") only enough for the AN3 (2D=3/8"). So that's fun, shipping is going to be crazy for the spar. My guess is about a $1000 mistake.
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We spent last week in Kissimmee Florida and attended a couple days at Sun n Fun. Today we flew out to Exuma Bahamas. Had a great flight out and will spend the week here. On Island time now!
 

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Had a big week/weekend. Watched the eclipse on Monday. Then few to Cedar Key, FL for an overnight, then on to Sun & Fun.

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Friday morning did KLAL-KFLO-KIAD to pick the wife up from a business trip. Then we flew KIAD-KBCB to see my two younger daughters at Va Tech and watch a spring football game. It was smooth above 8000’ and KIAD let me land runway 30 into the prevailing winds. Crazy windy all along the east coast.
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Today we flew home with a nice headwind.
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Helped my wife's cousin bring his newly purchased RV-9A home. From northern Minnesota, we chose a route that goes down the east side of the Rockies to the Kansas/Oklahoma border and then west toward California. He's still getting used to the ways in which the RVs are different from other aircraft. I think the high winds and mountain waves don't help, but such is spring weather in the midwest.

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crabandy said:
Good time and we are one mule richer……..I mean poorer….
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Good on you. We all want a bigger donkey under the hood... :D

That said, do you have too much? (NEVER!!!) Your screen is saying you're burning 9.3 gal/hr at 14,500'. I would have thought that was a little high but I admit I never get to cruise at 14,000' to be able to compare. I'm typically burning 7.5 gal/hr when in the cruise at 9,000' for similar numbers so would have expected you to be much less than 9.3 gal at that altitude. Honestly curious...
 
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After our last trip to Courchevel, my wife thought it would be nice if we had some folding skies that fit in our RV14… Turns out the slovenian company Elan offers them 😉 so we bought two pairs of skis and flew to Courchevel again to end the ski season. After another 50 minutes flight we finished the day at the italian riviera ☺️

I made a short video:
 
Smoke On hit the news today ahead of the big local airshow/firework show.

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planenutz said:
Good on you. We all want a bigger donkey under the hood... :D

That said, do you have too much? (NEVER!!!) Your screen is saying you're burning 9.3 gal/hr at 14,500'. I would have thought that was a little high but I admit I never get to cruise at 14,000' to be able to compare. I'm typically burning 7.5 gal/hr when in the cruise at 9,000' for similar numbers so would have expected you to be much less than 9.3 gal at that altitude. Honestly curious...
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At fuel burn less than 9 GPH my FF jumps around. I usually run a smidge LOP but was ROP here high 6-low7 GPH. Did 1.8 on the 14,500 flight than .7 at 6500, so 2.5 with 2 takeoffs and put in 17 gallons ($4.25 at KGzL) so average 6.8 GPH.
 
crabandy said:
At fuel burn less than 9 GPH my FF jumps around. I usually run a smidge LOP but was ROP here high 6-low7 GPH. Did 1.8 on the 14,500 flight than .7 at 6500, so 2.5 with 2 takeoffs and put in 17 gallons ($4.25 at KGzL) so average 6.8 GPH.
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6.8 gal/hr is an excellent number for an average fuel burn. Gosh, that's some very economical motoring right there.
 
Swiss14A said:
After our last trip to Courchevel, my wife thought it would be nice if we had some folding skies that fit in our RV14… Turns out the slovenian company Elan offers them 😉 so we bought two pairs of skis and flew to Courchevel again to end the ski season. After another 50 minutes flight we finished the day at the italian riviera ☺️

I made a short video:
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Wow that was awesome! much respect to that days adjenture
 
My wife and I flew to Flagstaff/Sedona for the three day weekend. If I add up all the tailwind that I have had in my flying years, God will still owe me after this trip for long time to come. We had strong headwind both ways, much of the way back we encountered 45-50k headwind and a diversion to another airport to wait out the bad weather. But we arrived home all in one piece and safe, although super tired.
 
planenutz said:
6.8 gal/hr is an excellent number for an average fuel burn. Gosh, that's some very economical motoring right there.
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It is for 160KTAS +\- 5, I try to go above 8000 if the wind makes sense. Lower alts I’m burning 8.5-9. Most Cessna/Piper drivers think I’m embellishing or downright lying. Bump into quite a few light sport guys talking about “sipping” 5-6 GPH at 100ish knts, tell them if I go that slow it drinks more and I’m under 5 GPH at 125 KTAS.
When I was getting ready to fly I wondered how I was gonna afford gas for it, turns out that’s the least of the worries. It’s cheaper to fly than drive!
 
crabandy said:
When I was getting ready to fly I wondered how I was gonna afford gas for it, turns out that’s the least of the worries. It’s cheaper to fly than drive!
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I felt the same way - with Avgas now at $14.36/gal here I was cringing at the thought of the monthly fuel invoices however this thing is cheaper to run than my daughters Toyota Corolla when it comes to cross-country trips. Well, maybe not quite THAT cheap, but not far from it - and waaaay faster.
 
Running a bit slow, but it's been a busy week since my return.

I was part of a group of 4 airplanes leaving Midland TX last week, down to east Texas to watch the eclipse, then eventually down to Sun 'n Fun for a day, and then down into the Bahamas for 3 nights of "high speed neutral" play time.

I got socked in with legitimate real-world work stuff and had to skip the eclipse and sun 'n fun part, and my uncle and I flew from our home port 73XA down to Winter Haven Florida on Wednesday and met up with the rest of the group there after their day at Sun 'n Fun. 6 am wakeup call and we saddled up for Fort Lauderdale to clear customs into the Bahamas, time to put on the life jackets and check survival equipment, and across the water we went landing in Nassau Bahamas MYES to clear customs into the Bahamas. That was super easy, and we launched again into Staniel Cay MYES where we would all spend 3 nights and all kind of did our own thing there. I went on a group boat trip the first day seeing some of the islands by water, we saw "Iguana Island" populated only by iguanas, another "Pig Island" populated only by pigs (you get to swim with them and feed them - very friendly, but hey, they are still just pigs), and then went snorkeling in the "Thunderbolt" film grotto (James Bond fans) and then finally up to the high-dollar yacht docks where you can swim with semi-tame nurse sharks and feed them by hand - if you are careful. I let my right hand get a little too close into the "don't put your hand here" zone, and I got tasted by a 9-foot nurse shark. All good, I'll heal with a little scar tissue, not a big deal.

Second full day, I saddled up with my uncle Carl and we flew the islands, just sight-seeing all the wrecks and houses and boats - talk about beautiful! We landed in Stella Maris MYLS with the intent to catch a cab or Uber or something into town for lunch, but the FBO guy told us "Uh, yeah, you probably don't wanna wait for that, might want to do something else, that might not happen today..." so we just stood around for a bit and BS'd with some people waiting for a flight out of the islands back to the mainland before departing again for Staniel Cay. We spent the rest of the day exploring some truly amazing gorgeous (and very unpopulated!) beaches before retiring to the swimming pool back at the Embrace resort on Staniel Cay and absolutely making a mess of a couple bottles of Tito's and some sprite with some of the locals.

All too soon it came time to go back to the real world, gotta earn a living and pay taxes, there's 80 million broke Americans counting on us after all - we departed Staniel Cay about 7:50 in the morning in order to hit Nassau when their customs guys arrive for work at 9am, cleared out of the Bahamas in about 10 minutes and then onto Fort Lauderdale to clear back into the US (where they were VERY grumpy - apparently this is where government workers go to die when they completely hate their jobs), and then we hit the gas and made almost 5 hours to a fuel stop on the Texas/Louisiana border (5R8) before the final push home. We took off at Staniel Cay, Bahamas at 7:50 am, and landed back home 73XA at 7:55 pm (one time zone diference) with 11.8 air hours enroute.

Awesome trip, loved every bit of it, and VERY easy on the paperwork and wallet. Next time I'm pushing down to Turks/Caicos or maybe even Antigua.

Apparently my pics are not "allowed" here on VAF due to a file extension issue - I-phones take a file format called "HEIC" now that VAF does not like. Sorry about that, there were some very good pictures. Maybe Doug can get his people to make nice-nice with Apple and I can post them.
 
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airguy said:
Apparently my pics are not "allowed" here on VAF due to a file extension issue - I-phones take a file format called "HEIC" now that VAF does not like. Sorry about that, there were some very good pictures. Maybe Doug can get his people to make nice-nice with Apple and I can post them.
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Love to see a few pictures, especially of swimming with pigs. There are free converters out on the web. Just Google.
 
Emerald Isle and back. Nice getaway with perfect early summer temps in early spring. Great staff at KMRH Crystal Coast Aviation. Soul batteries recharged 😇
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airguy said:
.....

Apparently my pics are not "allowed" here on VAF due to a file extension issue - I-phones take a file format called "HEIC" now that VAF does not like. Sorry about that, there were some very good pictures. Maybe Doug can get his people to make nice-nice with Apple and I can post them.
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I have found that when I drag and drop photos to the Home Screen on my Mac, they convert from HEIC to JPEG automatically. From there it's a cinch to shift tiles around enough to do a photo drag-n-drop into VAF.
 
airguy said:
down into the Bahamas for 3 nights of "high speed neutral" play time...
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Dang! Would love to see some of those pictures.

I solve the HEIC problem by going into the Apple Photos app and exporting each selected picture as a JPEG. Then you'll be able to upload them here.

Cheers!
 
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