Guest flight
Julie asked me to take a summer intern from her work on a flight. It was Maggie’s first flight in a small plane. She seemed a bit nervous, but ready for some excitement.
Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t terrific. I was going to try going around Ranier or out to the ocean, but both were pretty cloudy. We ended up just flying around Seattle a bit. She took a few pictures along the way of the Microsoft campus, Seattle, and Bellevue (with Seattle in the background).
Here she is flying the plane.
Right before we landed, she noticed the passenger warning placard and had to have a picture of it. Guess I should have pointed that out in the passenger briefing. Oops.
Back at the hangar, I decided to remove the cowl and check everything out. It’s been a while since I’ve had it off, and I’ve still got a few hours until the next oil change. I checked every fuel line, oil line, electrical wire, control cable, and engine nut I could get my hands on. Everything looks just like it was before first flight with one exception: I’m still getting some wear between an oil cooler line and the prop governor cable. I put some more spiral wrap around the cable, but really need to cover the abrasive stainless braid of the oil line. I found what I thought were some oil leaks, but were actually spilled oil from the oil filter during my prior oil change and/or minor drips from adding oil at the filler tube.
I promised a fellow builder some pictures of the side baffles where they meet the cowl. It’s not a great seal, but I think adequate.
After that, I spent 4-5 hours on the nosewheel fairing. Cutting fiberglass and crawling around on the dirty hangar floor are both unpleasant tasks, made doubly so by the warm, muggy weather. I’m happy it’s done. Can’t wait for the next flight to see if it’ll go faster. The leg fairing should be fairly easy and then I just have the intersection fairings left.
