Please, while you are stuffing your Pie-Hole with Pie and Turkey and stuffing and taters and gravy and bean casserole and bread or rolls and all the other stuff we eat on this day….plus desserts afterwards…

and while you are enjoying (or not) the company of family and friends.

Please, do these two things for me:

Take a moment and reflect on why we have this holiday. Appreciate the fact that we are so rich…so wealthy…that we have such a holiday, where the abundance in our lives lets us eat and have a celebration of thanks for all that is good in them.

And take a moment, and think of a serviceman away from his family, out on a post somewhere, his very presence on that post helping to protect that life I discussed in the paragraph above this one. Remember him or her. Perhaps they got a turkey dinner at a mess hall on land or on a ship , or perhaps they got MRE’s on the line or on patrol. 

Either way, they ain’t where they’d prefer to be. But they are there. Say thanks for them, as well. 

That, as a whole, there is a more inept organization that the folks at Wells Fargo Bank.

It could be that I have just not encountered said organization.

Then again, if there were a group more inept, they would probably not be able to breathe or eat on their own, use dangerous objects such as forks and blunt scissors without hurting themselves or use machinery more complicated to operate than elevators or doorknobs…. much less do any sort of business.

I, the previous owners, and the title company are still trying to get the title to the plane fully cleared. It will happen, but demonstrably not with any sense of urgency nor any demonstration of competency on the part of Wells Fargo Bank employees.

One would think they would understand the process and the verbage needed on such a simple document as a lien release…especially one this old and with a zero balance for years. 

Got the new plane, and since then, the weather pretty much has been MVFR and IFR either at my home airport or at any destination I would like to travel to.

I think Murphy and Mother Nature are cooperating to jam it to me here.

Hopefully, they will smile upon me this afternoon. 

So I left the house for a while yesterday….several hours…

and when I came home, I found a TERRIBLE mess.

Seems that a mouse had gotten into the house (It happens every year, after the first frost or two…I’ve never been able to find out where they get in and I only get one or maybe two in the fall….and, having cats in the house, it is usually not a problem: I find a small, cold, mouse corpse on the floor, pick it up and dispose of it, and that is that…).

This time, as per usual, the cats had found the mouse and had dispatched it.

Sadly for me and the floor, they apparently punctured an artery on the mouse before playing with it unto death.

There were bloody trails across the kitchen floor…ALL ACROSS THE FLOOR. I mopped, and I scrubbed, and I mopped some more.

Then I got out the floor scrubber.

Used it twice.

Finally, the floor stopped looking like the killing floor in a slaughterhouse.

Cats, just doing their job, and being cats. 

But Lord, what a mess.

Ain’t it the truth?

Here

ETA: This is true as well.

And, HERE

Aesop has a good one.  Even small actions, in concert, will have a great deal of effect.

The hard part is doing so without getting caught….. or, in planning, not giving the government notice when someone informs.
Easy to plan, much more difficult to execute on a meaningful scale.

The comments, however, are priceless.

2 hours of learning.

Flew for 2 hours. The strobe control box came in (finally) at 10:30, they had the plane ready at 1.

Pulled it out, fired it up and taxied to 27 for a left turnout departure. Flew around south of the field and got a feel for the AC. Then I climbed from 2500 to 10,500 MSL and flew west for about 20 minutes. No wind to speak of and had a ground speed (according to both the 430 and ForeFlight) of 137 knots.

Turned and descended to 5K, and had a GS of 128.

Banked and turned and played with pitch, power and airspeeds leaned and played with cowl flap settings. (I did stay out of the approach path to Midway airport, which was about 10 miles from my “play” area….those SouthWest 737’s are often overflying at 5500 feet).

Turned towards home and did a downwind midfield entry to the pattern for 27. First approach was too fast, but it worked. Winds were calm to 5 220-300 variable. extended my downwind for inbound straight- in traffic.

Second one was better and the landing was a greaser. So was the third.

I can’t seem to find the point wherein people claim that the 182 series is nose heavy on landing though. Flare was easy and touching on the mains first seems to be normal. I don’t understand how folks bang the nose/damage the firewall. My worst landing might have been a little flat, but it wasn’t hard.

Taxied back and topped up the tanks (44 gallons) with 100LL avgas and put it away. The POH says I can use as low as 80/87 or 100LL. I might try the UL94 available at nearby airports just to see how well it works (it ain’t much cheaper, but no lead to contaminate the oil….)

Tomorrow, weather permitting, it’s gonna be touch and goes at a few close-by airports and me and the STec-55X are gonna get acquainted. If not, then the day after that. Gonna do a short cross country on Sunday if the weather folks don’t change the forecast again, so I gotta gain some confidence in the aircraft first.

This plane flies like a Cadillac after the Warriors, Arrows and 172’s. Not a screamer or a truck, but a good, solid, comfortable sedan. Smooth flier, fairly light on the controls. Easy to fly well.

130 knots will take me where I need to go at a decent rate, even if not as fast as I would wish….all at 12.3 gallons per hour.

As I expected, the new plane is costing me money. (this was negotiated OUT of the purchase price.)  Like a boat, a plane is a hole in the air which one tosses money into….

Flap limit switches, New strobe power supply, throttle control cable.

But, it’s fixed, and as soon as the weather is VFR (Wed, supposedly, according to the “expert”prognosticators) I am gonna go do touch and goes at all the nearby airports to wring it out and see what else is wrong, if anything. Plus burn some of that old avgas.

I’ve got most of the manuals read, and have spent enough time on the ground working with the assorted (non-obsolete) avionics that I am comfortable.

More later as it happens. 

Exactly how many ballots will “suddenly be found” in Arizona and Florida?

I mean, this is like Chicago in the ’70’s.

Will the citizens allow it?

Will the Feds allow it?

Can the Republicans beat the “Margin of Fraud”? 

The Insurance company wanted a 1 hour checkride and endorsement with a Flight Instructor before solo flight in my new plane.

My instructor had an opening (student cancelled) on Saturday. So I dropped everything and went to the airport and preflighted so I would be ready when she was.

I had no flaps, but she (and I) did not seem to be bothered by that fact.

So we flew.

Steep turns, climbing turns, spiral descents, slow flight (harder without flaps), straight and level flight, etc.

Kinda like any other checkride.

3 landings. (Still no flaps though)

I am signed off for the aircraft. Plus High Performance endorsement.

Yeah. Now I can fly it whenever (VFR conditions permitting, of course) I choose.