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I was on the road all week, for three days of meetings in Long Beach, CA. It was quite a let down to come back to cold and snow Friday night.

Winter Day at Smiths FallsI went out to the airport this afternoon to clear the snow from in front of the hangar and get a short flight off. But, despite a lengthy preheat, the engine did not crank strongly, and I never got it started before the battery expired. I fear that I have once again been afflicted by the recent woes that have caused many RV owners with Odyssey batteries to complain. The older Odysseys had a very good service record, with most users getting many good years of service. The newer ones seem to work for a year or so, then suddenly lose most of their capacity.

I don’t have time now to research other options, so I’ve ordered another Odyssey, which should arrive this week. I’ll look into other batteries that are physically compatible, and have good reviews, in case this happens again.

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I was scheduled to be on standby all day Saturday, which meant I would need to stick close to home. The weather was quite nice on Friday, so I took that day off to do the things I wouldn’t be able to do while on standby, such as go to the airport.

I had a great IFR practice flight in the RV–8 in the morning, then made more progress on the annual inspection. I found a couple of loose fasteners, and the tail navigation light is unserviceable. I only require that light if I’m night flying, which I avoid like the plague, given the difficulty of executing a successful forced landing at night, so I’ll defer sorting out that nav light until the weather is warmer. Hopefully it is just a burned out light bulb.

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I’m owed several days of compensatory leave to make up for overtime I’ve worked in the past year, and yesterday was forecast to be unseasonably warm, so I used one of those days. I got the repaired plenum chamber mounting flange reinstalled. I had hoped at one point to also get a flight off yesterday, but it snowed off and on all day, so that was not possible.

Today was forecast to be clear and cold, with very light winds, so I took another day off. The runway is almost 100% ice covered, from the freezing rain we got a couple of weeks ago, so I only dare fly when there is minimal crosswind. They were still clearing yesterday’s snow off the runway when I arrived, so I had to wait until after lunch. The first trick was getting the Mooney that was by the door of the hangar out of the way, which means pulling it out onto the taxiway.

Sitting Pretty in the Snow and Sun

 The Mooney is too heavy for me to push it around by hand, so I used the gas powered PowerTow tug that connects to the nose wheel. It usually works very well, but the combination of a bit of crown on the taxiway plus the ice was more than it could handle. All it would do was spin its wheel. James and Floyd spotted my struggle from the club house, and graciously drove down to lend a hand. The three of us pushing were just enough to get the Mooney in and out, so the RV–8 could escape the hangar. Thanks guys!

The delay while the runway was cleared and I fought with the ice meant that the engine had been preheated a lot longer than I anticipated. I failed to appreciate the implications as I attempted a start, and I primed the engine as if it was quite cold. I didn’t fire, so I primed it some more. I realize now that I had almost certainly overprimed it and flooded it, but I didn’t figure this out until I had ran the battery down. Back in the hangar for two hours on the battery charger, then it started right up (with a lot less priming). It was great to finally get flying.

The wind stayed down while I was flying, which was a relief. It slid around a bit during the landing roll, but a quick touch of rudder got the nose pointed back in the right direction again, and I was very happy when it finally rolled to a stop, still on the runway.

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We took Porter Airlines to Halifax, NS, then rented a car and drove to Yarmouth, NS for a week over Christmas. It was great to see my parents and sister again.

Broken Plenum Chamber Mounting Flange EndJust before leaving for Yarmouth, I started the annual inspection on the aircraft, starting ahead of the firewall. I found a cracked flange that supports the plenum chamber top on the right side at the cowl air inlet. The left side had the same failure a couple of years ago. I reinforced that area on the left side when I repaired it, but I didn’t make any changes on the right side, as I couldn’t get good enough access to do the work in situ, and it is a pain to remove the parts. I rolled the dice that the right side would be OK, and I lost that bet.

 

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The web site has moved to yet another web host, Arvixe. I had been on the same host since the web site was created in 1997, but that host had become unreliable. In retrospect, I didn’t do as much research as I should have before moving to the second host, and that host quickly proved unsuitable. Arvixe seems to be the best host yet - hopefully they’ll stand the test of time.

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Winter definitely arrived last week, with several days of snow, with roughly 20 cm of total snow fall. I headed out to the hangar Saturday AM to get the snow blower going and clear the snow. I had started it about three weeks ago, to make sure that it had survived its summer of hibernation - that first start was a definite struggle, so I wasn’t sure what to expect this time. I got lucky - it started right up. It took about an hour to blow the snow off the entry to the hangar, chip a few big ice ridges from where the airport snow plow had turned around, and clean up with a shovel.

The ceiling was low when I arrived at the airport, but it had cleared out nicely by the time I was done clearing snow, so I rewarded myself by going flying.

Many of the lakes have frozen over, but the ice is still way too thin for any intrepid ice fishermen to set up camp.

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