And oh ya, that hangar that I said we put the airplane into? It didn't end up doing much. The wind ended up blowing in the right direction to send the snow right into the hangar door opening and our poor airplane was covered in snow despite being under a roof. It took me the better part of an hour of brushing and scraping and washing the remaining ice off, but I finally got it cleaned up enough to go flying for a test flight. That was a couple days ago. Its been fantastic weather since. My only complaint is that the temperature is hovering around the threshold that requires the winter fronts be either installed or not installed. The winter fronts are basically sheets of metal with slits in them that you screw onto the engine cowl intake to impede airflow into the engine cowl.
The engine is cooled by the air that flows into the front of the engine, but on cold winter days the air can actually be cold enough to do too good of a job cooling the engine so that the engine can't properly warm up. In aviation fashion the high-tech solution (yes that is sarcasm) is to screw some sheet metal onto the front of the engine intake to block a good portion of the intake air and thus impede cooling. I dislike installing and removing winter fronts. There are two pieces (one for each side of the engine) and each piece requires 10 machine screws to fasten it to the engine cowl. That's a lot of screwing and unscrewing by hand. We generally don't like to use power drills on airplanes because they have the ability to cross-thread the screws and then mangle them, in case anyone was wondering.
Today we finally completed a successful FOM (calibration) flight in the morning and then we went back and flew survey lines in the afternoon for a good 2 and a half hours. We're almost halfway done the job now, and provided the equipment behaves we should finish up tomorrow in either one long flight or two shorter ones, depending on how we feel. I love surveying in this area. We were in almost this exact spot back in the fall, and we're back again doing a block that is directly adjacent to the one we did then. Its very hilly, and keeps my interest even though it makes for very fatiguing flying. The hills add a dimension (literally) to the number of variables I have to manage to stay on-line and at the proper height. Actually two new dimensions. In addition to staying within horizontal limits, I am constantly pitching the airplane to follow the contour of the hills as best I can. The pitch changes introduce the second variable, which is maintaining a relatively constant speed which we do with power adjustments. Its constant roll, pitch, and throttle adjustments for the entire flight, and its draining! I haven't had to focus this hard in a while! Up until now this particular contract has mainly composed of fighting off boredom in between short test flights/attempts. The time of boredom is over.
After we finished the flight I got back to the hotel room and sent off my daily reports back to the office and then ended up passing out on the bed. I woke up sprawled face-down with my phone ringing (my operator wanted to go to dinner). I will neither confirm nor deny that I may or may not have been drooling...
We'll go for an early start tomorrow, finish the second half of our survey block, and then we're off to the next destination on the list.
Good to hear that you are up and flying. Funny I've always been intrigued by physical manifestations of mental fatigue. Drool on, my son.
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