LancairTalk

Flying has been great lately. Since the little incident with the EGTs in
cylinder 1 has been fixed the airplane has been in top shape except for some
slight imbalance in ground running. When I’m in the air everything is great, but
the ground idle is adjusted a little too low and the fuel flows don’t seem even
(the EGTs are all over). Every time I consider having someone mess with it I
remind myself that in-flight is more important and the last thing I want to do
is have that be out of tune again. The only serious issue it causes is that I
need to run the RPMs higher than I would like when I start or the engine will
die and I need to be careful after landing to not stall the engine.

There are a number of service bulletins that have come out lately and I’m mostly updated.
I’m waiting on the torque tube and
the baffle thing my mechanics at Galvin say they are still working out with the
factory how to get it installed correctly. Luckily they are figuring it out on
another airplane. So mostly I’ve just been flying- a trip to Vegas, one to Palm
Springs (non-stop on the way down, nice!), an Angel Flight to Spokane and
Portland,
and a trip down to McMinnville this week. Speaking of which, if you haven’t been
there to see the Evergreen Aviation Museum, I’d highly recommend it. Maybe we
can make that the fun event during the Bend fly-in this fall.

The only issue through all this flying has been the lack of pressurization. On
the way down to Palm Springs at FL230, Kat got sick, and to make matters worse,
if you are actively being sick, its hard to keep the mask on so her O2 levels
dropped into the scary-passing-out zone. We went down to FL190 and I was happy
that a pilot friend Eric was with me so he could “fly” (watch the autopilot)
while I attended to Kat, but it still sucked. I love being up in the flight
levels for the speed, lack of traffic, lack of turbulence (usually its a good
place to avoid the mountain effects), and weather avoidance, but its just
becoming a pain without a pressurized airplane. It occurs to me that the key
breakthrough here needs to be an airplane company that can deliver a pressurized
airplane that doesn’t scare the insurance companies and mechanics. Whomever does
that will have a huge winner on their hands.

Yesterday on the way back from Portland I flew over Mount Saint Helens which has
been very active building up a new cinder-cone lately-

]]>