More flying and fairings
I’ve actually been flying the last two days, a highly unusual event around here in the winter. Yesterday was marginal, but I managed to find a hole in the clouds. Today was absolutely outstanding. I could see all the way from Mount Baker to The Sisters in Oregon. That’s about 150 miles of visibility in each direction. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the camera to take any pictures.
I took off from Renton in the mid-afternoon and headed for Hoquiam out at the coast. I landed there mainly so I could count the cross-country time, and then cruised down the coast at around 1500′. Very scenic.
At Willapa Bay I turned East, went south of Olympia and up the east side of the sound. I didn’t really see many planes around until I got near Renton again. 2.0 hours to the coast and back with 1/2 hour of goofing off while I was out there. The RV is truly a time machine. It’s normally a 2.5-3.0 drive one way to the ocean.
We definitely had a temperature inversion going on today. I was seeing around 55°F near the ground and 58°F up around 3000-4000′. It was even still in the 50’s up at 6500′. Very warm day for Februrary. I’m glad I got out flying in it.
I finally dumped the last 2 months worth of pictures from the camera, so I’ll just post them all at once. This first picture is from a short flight after Christmas when it had obviously snowed recently in the foothills east of Seattle.
This was a trip Julie and I took just around the Seattle area on New Years Eve Day. Unfortunately the mountains are a little blurry in the first pic, but the second one shows you what they would have looked like had the camera cooperated. That’s Mount Rainier with St Helens in the background.
Here are the merry flyers.
Julie wanted to see the Olympics closer up, so we headed over toward the west.
And here’s a couple pics of my intersection fairings in progress.
Those fairings are now complete (except maybe a tiny bit more trimming for size) and installed. I’m seeing around 165 kts at 75% power at 8000′ pressure altitude with all the main gear fairings and the nose wheel fairing installed. I just have the nose gear leg and intersection fairing left to fabricate and install. That should give me a few more knots.
I also made a modification to the SafeAir static ports following Scott Will’s lead. I took 2 engine baffle seal pop rivets (which are identical to what Vans supplies in their static port kit), removed the mandrels, drilled the static port holes out to #30, and JB Welded the pop rivet heads in place. I went up yesterday and did a 3 course GPS run and plugged the numbers into the magic spreadsheet. My airspeed error at cruise went from 4 knots to 1 knot. The static ports certainly don’t look as pretty, but they work much better. I’m happy.