Mount Saint Helens
Adele had no school on Friday and our arrangements for her day fell through, so I took the day off. Weather was perfect, so might as well go flying. She had been asking to go down to Mount Saint Helens for a while, so that’s where we went. This is the mountain that blew it’s top back in 1980. From the air it’s still easy to see all the timber that was blown down. It all points away from the mountain. This is Spirit Lake that was partially filled in by the mud slide.
Here’s a bunch of pictures that Adele took as we flew around the mountain. You can see the dome in the middle of crater was steaming and/or smoking.
Mount Rainier and Adams were visible in the distance. You can also see Mount Hood in the background of some of the pics above. Really super clear day, obviously.
On the way back, we stopped in at Chehalis KCLS. I thought there was supposed to be a restaurant on the airport, but couldn’t find one. While filling up at the pump ($.30 cheaper than at Renton), one of the locals pointed us toward the golf course across the street from the airport. Turns out the guy makes the engine mounts, gear mounts, and nosewheel forks for Vans. Super nice guy, but I forgot his name.
Adele took a few pictures of me taxing over to the tie downs.
We walked over to the golf course and were pleasantly surprised by a nice little restaurant, burgers, fish and chips, salads, etc.
Adele flew most of the way home from there. I had her fly various altitudes and headings. I also slowed the plane down to let her feel how the controls get less sensitive at lower speeds. She’s a great little pilot.
Saturday I did some more tinkering on the plane. While leaning at high altitudes, I noticed I couldn’t lean as far as at lower altitudes without the engine running rough. Turns out when I sent the P-mags back, they reset all my settings. I had the advance set to 0 degrees, and they set it back to 4.something degrees. While doing that, I noticed the left mag was just slightly off in its timing–only 2 degrees, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to fix it. I used the blow-in-the-tube method to set it right. I also set the advance on both P-mags to 2.4 degrees.
With that done, I taxied out to the run-up area for a flight around the patch. During the run-up, the engine was really running rough, missing and sputtering, while on the left P-mag. I decided to go back to the hangar and double check my changes. Everything looked fine, and I tried the run-up again. Still too rough. By then I had other obligations, so I just hangared the plane and left frustrated.
Next day (Sunday), I went back down to the hangar. I decided to set everything back to where I knew it should work. I cleared the timing I put on the left mag, double-checked that the right timing was cleared and correct, and set both advance angles to zero. While I was at it, I decided to change to new plugs. I’m not sure what the recommended interval is for the plugs, but I’ve been running the same ones since day 1. Since they’re only $20 for a set of 8, I figured it was a good idea to swap them out.
Out to the run-up area again, and success. The engine ran silky smooth on either mag. She took off like a champ. I climbed up to 7,000′ to see if I could lean out the engine, but that was still unsuccessful. At 23″ and 2400 RPM, I couldn’t lean more than about 20 degrees lean of peak before the engine starting running really rough. Strange. Time to write to Emagair.
I still had a great flight. I practiced some zero G maneuvers in anticipation of finally calibrating the AOA. It’s pretty darn fun pushing over to zero G and then pulling back to 2 G. It’s a super fun roller coaster in the air.
That’s all for now.