Back for Maintenance

I flew down south again for maintenance. The 100 hr inspection is now due. It doesn’t seem like very long ago since I last had the airplane down here for its last inspection - that’s because it hasn’t been very long. Last time we put the extension onto the inspection which allowed us to fly an extra 10 hrs before the inspection was due, but that means this inspection was due 10 hrs earlier then usual to make up the time.

I was up early this morning at 0530 to get an early start so the AME’s would have a chance to get it all done in a day, providing there’s no snags. By 0645 we were out to the airplane and by 0700 I was ready to start up and be gone. Wait I forgot one thing. I took the Twin Comanche flying yesterday and I left my GPS mount in that airplane, so I hopped down off the wing and walked across the ramp to retrieve it and suction cup it onto the window of the Cherokee. I climbed in, mixture rich, throttle in a bit, primed it, and Master Switch ON - oh crap! I must have left the Master Switch on overnight, and the battery is good and dead… IDIOT! This is the first time I’ve ever forgotten to switch off the Master, and go figure its on the day that we’re trying to get away early. The owner was there waiting to make sure I got away alright, so I sheepishly climbed back out and told him I left the Master On and the battery was dead. He kind of laughed and said we’d have to go back across town to the hangar and get some jumper cables. The owner is old-school, he mentioned that the Cherokee hand-starts ok, but it probably wasn’t a good idea since he’s got a bad knee (arthritis - he limps everywhere) so it wouldn’t be a great idea cause he’s not mobile enough to get out of the way of the prop once it starts. So we drove back to the hangar at the house, grabbed some cables and drove back to the airport. Half an hour later we’re back. The owner good-naturedly remarked how I could have been halfway there by now, but this was a regular occurrence for the pilot here last year, so I feel a little better.

So finally by 0740 I was underway. It was smooth air, and I packed a book to read to kill the time for the day, so I pulled that out. It’s a collection of all of C.S. Lewis’ books. Right now I’m reading “Mere Christianity”, which is a philosophical look at Christianity completely apart from the Bible. Quite fascinating. Lewis was himself an atheist who set out to genuinely disprove Christianity, but found himself unable to do so. Anyways this is an aviation blog.
So I was humming along, reading my book, every now and then looking up to make sure I wasn’t careening to the earth or hopelessly off-course, when the radio squelch started acting up. I would get static, and then it would turn stop, static again, turn off. Hmm, stupid thing. Sometimes you can turn the unit off and then back on again and the squelch will fix itself, so I tried that. Unfortunately, when I tried to turn the radio back on, the display stayed off. Uh oh. I could still here the static when the radio was on, but I couldn’t see which frequency I was on. I tried recycling the ON/OFF switch again, no luck. Bummer. Its not a big deal, I’m pretty sure I’m still on 126.7, the en-route frequency, but I don’t really have any way of changing the frequency cause I can’t see what I’m changing it to. For now its not a huge safety concern, I wasn't in the process of communicating with anyone, and I’m landing at a private airstrip so I don’t really need a radio for that either. Hopefully the AME’s can fix it for my trip back up though, cause I need it then.

I’m also supposed to fly to North Bay either tonight or tomorrow morning after the maintenance is finished, and pick up the Chief Pilot’s daughter, who’s going to school there, but is finished today so she’s coming home for the summer. She’s in school to be an AME. North Bay is actually WAY south for me, so I was looking forward to it, hopefully the broken radio doesn’t throw a wrench into things.

Anyways as for now I’m sitting around killing time for the day. I stopped at Canadian Tire and picked up a few things; one of them being a resistance strap for working out, those stretchy latex bands. I thought there was a weight room in the town I’m living, but it turns out there’s not, so hopefully this will provide me with a somewhat half decent substitute. It doesn’t look like they can really provide much resistance to give me a good workout though, but we’ll see I guess.
I also picked up one of those blue foam sleeping pads for camping to put on my bed. The bed I have been provided with has seen better days. You can feel the mattress springs through the mattress. It quite literally feels like I’m sleeping on a bunch of wire springs. I’m the kind of guy who’s not terribly picky about where I can sleep, I can fall asleep just about anywhere, so up until now I’ve found a way to fit the pressure points of my body into between the springs so I’m comfortable, but this foam mat should make things better anyways.

Well lucky for me I've managed to find an internet signal to borrow so I can upload this blog. I also took some video of the landing at the strip this time, and I'll get it uploaded onto here when able.