Well, I was finally able to get some flying in this weekend. The plane was gone for a month, then between lousy weather and some repairs ad modifications I was working on I had it down for a couple more weeks. Finally on Saturday I put it all back together. Pete helped me put the wings back on, and I was able to get out Sunday and do some flying. I made a total of three flights, with some weather delays and checking in between to make sure my oil and coolant levels were OK, etc.
I did a total of nine landings. it was a little gusty, which made it challenging to fly a consistent pattern. Of course having not flown for a while made it even more challenging. Of the nine landings I did, only one was truly crappy – I had a significant gust and some wind shear on very short final that increased the “pucker factor” for a few seconds, and the end result was not entirely graceful. I’m OK with the overall results though. Not entirely satisfied; I’ll be getting more practice in so I can improve on the consistency and accuracy of my landings. I also want to start working on my “spot landing” skills in preparation for flying to Oshkosh for Airventure. I know it just takes practice, and the weather is gradually improving to the point where I’ll be able to get more flying time in.
In the mean time, I’ll be re-entering the customizations that had been made to the Dynon D180 EFIS. The software update that I did to fix an autopilot nav disconnect issue reset everything to factory settings. Seriously, who does that? Everything down to the fuel flow K-factor was wiped. Now I’m getting high fuel flow alarms that won’t go away until I’ve figured out the correction factor to use. I’ll take a look at the laptop I used to do the backup and upgrade, maybe those settings were preserved in the backup and I’ll be able to retrieve them. Maybe. I’m not holding my breath.
I’ve also decided to go ahead and build a new canopy for the Canary. It won’t be cheap, but it will be done right and hopefully will look better as well. On the bright side, once I have the building work done I can put the old one back on the plane while doing the finish work on the new one. I’ll still have the plane out of service for a while, but not a long. And I can replace that horrible rear window while I’m at it.
It’s going to be a busy and expensive Spring.