Computer Hard Drive Died - We're Back

 I got behind posting things and then the hard drive on my computer died.  Dell sent me a new drive, which sat in New Jersey for a day because of airplane problems.  Then it took over a week to reload 250K files form Carbonite.  After 3 days I hardwired the computer to the router, which tripled the download speed.  The rest of that week was spent re-installing software.

Last week we visited the grand kids, always fun.  I'm finally back writing and will use this post to get caught up to date.

First thing, I have another flight review story.  Four years ago I was at the American WACO Club fly-in at Creve Coeur, Mo. and John Ricciotti offered a ride in his 400 HP, 1934 WACO S3HD.  Of course the answer was yes.  Saturday morning I almost missed my ride because I wanted to drive by the local Catholic church so I would know where I was going, and how long it would take to get there for the 5 pm Mass, at the end of the day.  I made it in the nick of time and got my much cherished ride.

As we were taxing out I told him how much I appreciated it since I had been grounded while I waited for my FAA Medical to be approved, due to a kidney stone New Years Eve.  As it turned out my medical was in the mail the afternoon before I left for the fly-in, yea. He commented that my BFR must have expired.  Yup.  Would you like to do it? YES!  What a wonderful plane to fly, power on & off stalls, lazy 8s and more.  All the way to the first landing I'm thinking any second he's going to change his mind about letting me land this, from this nearly blind rear cockpit.  Actually the view wasn't that much worse than my Cabin WACO, in which I had over 500 landings, and I did fine.

What a treat.  We then did an hour of excellent ground review work for the best BFR ever.  Thanks John!

But that wasn't the end of an amazing day.  At 4:30 I closed my sales tent and jumped in my van heading to 5 pm Mass. As I pulled out of the airport the radio was playing something boring, so I hit the seek button and then got busy driving.  The radio stopped on the Catholic channel.  I knew it existed on cable but had no idea it was on the radio.  I was too busy with traffic to change it when on came the announcer talking with a young fellow who had converted to be a Catholic, and was asking about how to get his family interested in converting.  The announcer went into a story of how he and his whole family were Catholic haters and had all become Catholics, his brother had even become a priest.  

Well, now I'm listening!  I've heard this story dozens of times from his brother who is our parish priest, Father Staples.  At the same moment I'm listening to him help this young convert, my wife was receiving communion from his brother at our parish back in Virginia.  As I pulled into the church parking lot the show ended and yes it was Tim Staples, our priest's brother who lives in California.

The extra couple minutes to locate the church in the morning turned this into one of the most amazing and blessed days ever.  

My Flight Review and the annual Condition Inspection of the airplane both expired at the end of July.  While inspecting the plane I found a cooling air leak from the high pressure area above the cylinders to the low pressure area below.  I'm not sure how I missed it but the hole was about 2 1/2" x 1 1/4" (3 square inches).  When I made the new metal pieces I clearly missed this.  Once the nose bowl was on you couldn't see it.

I made a piece of felt to close the hole.  I split the one edge of it so it would seal better against the crankcase.

I removed the 2 staples holding the seal beside it and fastened both seals with new staples.

I also added some length to some of the seals against the nose bowl to get better sealing there.  

When I made the new baffle pieces I had added a cross baffle below the crankshaft.  From an article in Vintage magazine about Taylorcraft baffles, I learned this piece was blocking flow that was supposed to go over the top of the case into the high pressure plenum. I removed the added baffle.

I finished the inspection Oct 1 and got it back in the air the next day with high hopes of having solved the cooling problem.  It was a gorgeous morning to go flying.  I had fun and the motor did run cooler, but not enough to say I've solved the cooling problem.

I did make a really good landing, so my lessons from my flight review were working.

Mike got a nice picture of me parking back at the hangar, next to his plane

Yesterday I got to fly for almost an hour just at sunset, very nice evening.  The fall colors are just starting to turn.

I did find another corn maze near the other one, west of the airport.  This one was way better.  It's at a pick your own farm.  The maze is titled America The Beautiful.  What a cool maze.