Evening flight
Julie was kind enough to let me pop down to the airport after work. Looking at the right brake, the only problem was that the fitting was loose. I could have just tightened it. However, I wanted to make the line shorter and figured making a new flare would be a good idea since it had been fretting around for a while. It took about an hour to drain the line, cut it shorter, re-flare, re-attach, and re-fill. That brought me to 7:30pm. Plenty of time to fly before sunset.
I checked out the brake on the way over to the fuel pump. It was working great with no more squawking. Hurray!
Then I got to the fuel pump and found it closed for scheduled maintenance. Bummer. But the fuel truck guy was just finishing filling a helicopter. He swung over, filled up the tanks, and gave me the same price as the self serve pump. Hurray! I got a little back story on the fuel prices. There’s a bit of a price war going on at Renton. AirO is trying to encourage people to use the self serve pump, so they’ve been pricing it pretty low. It’s been the cheapest 100LL in the Seattle area for the last few months. That’s been especially nice for me since I’ve been burning a lot of it lately.
The flight was great. I just flew around my usual loop up to Monroe, east to Index, back south toward North Bend and on to Enumclaw. I did some stalls while I was out over the farmland. The AOA warning is working perfectly giving me about a 5 knot cushion before the buffet and then the eventual break.
I was heading back in, but still had 15 minutes before sunset. It was plenty light out still. I turned back east and just farted around a while. The sun was setting in the west just as a full moon was rising on the other side of the planet. Mount Rainier was bathed in the orange light. It was an incredible sight. Too bad for you that I forgot the camera.
Once the sun dropped behind the low clouds/haze, it started getting dark quickly. Time to head in. Renton tower was just shutting down for the night as I reached the class D airspace. It was strange to make radio calls like I was at a dinky uncontrolled airport. No one else was in the pattern, so I just made a straight-in approach to the runway.
I landed, shut down, and checked the Hobbs. 39.56 hours. So close. One more short flight will do it.