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I had planned to fly to Yarmouth, NS this weekend to visit my parents - flying down on Friday afternoon and back on Monday. But, a very active but slow moving weather system was plodding through the area, and there was a pretty solid line of significant thunderstorms running N-S from Vermont into Quebec on Friday afternoon, stretching well north and south of the planned route, with new cells popping up regularly, so I didn’t go. I took another look at things Saturday morning, and while the system had moved a bit further east, there was still a huge area of very bad weather covering much of Maine, so I gave up.

There weather wasn’t that nice here most of the weekend, with fairly low ceilings, so I didn’t try to go flying. I do have Monday off, and the weather guessers are predicting a nice day, so I plan to do a firewall forward inspection then do a short flight.

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On Saturday RV-7A builder Patrick V. and I flew down to Brantford to check out the Aircraft Spruce Canada Fly-In and Sale. I bought some oil and oil filters - it would of been much cheaper to just have them shipped, but it was an excuse to go flying.

Kevin & Odile Rablat at BrantfordWhile we were there, I was surprised to see Odile Rablat, a very adventurous lady from France who has spent every summer since 2009 touring Canada in a DTA Voyageur II S trike ultralight. I ran into her about a year ago in Yarmouth, NS - she was in the midst of her tour of eastern Canada, and my Dad and I helped her while she was in Yarmouth waiting for better weather. It turns out that her son lives not too far from Brantford, and she had just flown back to Canada a few days ago to start this year’s tour - she hopes to fly all the way up to the Yukon and see the Beaufort Sea. She is a lot braver than I am.

It is amazing that I once again ran into Odile Rablat, who lives in France, in a completely different part of Canada from where I ran into her last year. It sure is a small world.

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I have a bunch of banked time off I need to burn sometime, so I decided to take the day off and fly Terry to Toronto for lunch. Toronto has a very nice little airport on an island right next to downtown - Toronto City Centre Airport. It took 65 minutes to fly there (vs a five hour drive), and 79 minutes to fly back (including the time for an instrument approach, as the ceiling was about 900 ft).

This photo shows the view as we were on an extended base leg to runway 33. You can see the east edge of the airport on the left side of the picture.

 

Here is the aircraft parked right in front of the Porter FBO.

 

I wanted the meal to be worth the flight, so I did some research yesterday and found Le Select Bistro, which gets rave reviews, and is only about a 15 minute walk once you get off the ferry from the island to downtown. It was perfect. The menu was extensive and interesting, the staff was friendly and both our meals were superb. And lunch for both of us was less than $30 before taxes and tip. My only regret was that I couldn’t have a beer, as they had some very interesting ones on their menu.

 

The view as we taxied for departure.

 

The main ramp, seen shortly after take-off from runway 26.

 

The airport and downtown, seen after we had turned towards the east.

 

On the way home we were still in cloud at 9,000 ft and it was quite bumpy, so I climbed to 11,000 hoping to be in clear air. But, we were still going through a few cloud tops at 11,000 ft, and we picked up a bit of ice as we went through each one.

 

Ice was collecting on the wing leading edges too, except for the inboard 80% of each fuel tank where the warm fuel kept the skin temperature above freezing. I waited a few minutes, but it was clear that the situation was not improving so we had to go back down to 9,000 ft. The ice disappeared very quickly as we descended through 10,300 ft and the air temperature warmed above freezing.

 

All in all, it was a great day. Next time though, we may stay the night and catch a play. That way I can try out one of the beers on the lunch menu.

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This week’s planned 4.5 day long meeting got done in 3.5 days, so I took some time off Thursday afternoon to get a quick flight in as the weekend weather forecast was not so good. A cold front was going through, and I had high hopes for a strong crosswind so I could open up the envelope a bit more, but the actual crosswind never got over 15 kt. It was still good to get flying. My RV-8 landings hadn’t been completely satisfactory lately, and there was no other traffic at the airport, so I banged off six very quick touch and goes and a full stop, flying military style very tight closed patterns (stay low after lift off to build speed to the end of the runway, then a hard turning pull up to downwind, followed by a tight continuous turn to a short final).

Today Terry and I had hoped to fly to Owen Sound for their annual Wings and Wheels event. My brother lives not too far from there, and we were going to meet him. But, a low pressure system was passing through, and the ceilings were very low all morning. So, we had to cancel.

This afternoon the weather improved, so I got an instrument approach practice flight in. I did a practice Localizer Back-course approach on runway 25 at Ottawa, followed by an ILS approach to runway 32, then an RNAV approach to runway 24 at Smiths Falls.

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It’s been too many weeks since I updated this blog.

The weather has generally need quite terrible, with lots of rain and low ceilings for much of the last four weeks. I discussed my intermittent radio issue on the AeroElectric List, and the general consensus was that I likely either had a bad crimp on the problematic Fast-On connector, or perhaps that connector was not up to spec somehow. So, I cut the connector off, spliced the wire (it was too short once I cut the old connector off) and crimped on a new connector. Hopefully this will be the end of this issue, but I’ll be on the edge of my seat for the next few flights to see if the problem reoccurs.

I also rerouted the antenna coax for both radios into the cockpit by my left knee and added inline connectors so I can easily sway antennas between radios, or hook my handheld com up to the external antenna. If my COM 1 transmission problem happens again I will be able to connect COM 2 to the much better external antenna, rather than its normal short range internal antenna.

The weather did pick up a bit this week, but the weekend forecast was not so good. This prompted me to take a half day off Friday morning so I could get a much needed RV-8 proficiency flight in. The radio worked well, and there is no sign of a brake leak yet.

The annual Smiths Falls Flying Club Fly-In breakfast was this morning. The day started off OK with a ceiling of about 3000 ft, but the ceiling dropped significantly after many aircraft were enroute, and some of them had quite some fun getting to the airport. But, we had about 60 aircraft show up plus a very good number of drive in attendees.

The weather picked up a bit in the late morning, so I got a short local flight in.

Hopefully the weather will be better next weekend, as Terry and I are getting antsy to fly somewhere for lunch. We’re hoping to fly down to the Owen Sound Wings and Wheels event on Sunday.

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This weekend I attacked leaking brake master cylinders. Both were weeping around the shaft, so I replaced all the O-rings in the master cylinders then bled the brakes. I cut short the test flight when I felt my feet slipping on the floor, looked down and saw a large pool of brake fluid. The system appeared to not be leaking when I had applied brake pressure before the flight, but I must have missed the significant leak.

I discovered a piece of a DEL Seal stuck inside the flexible tube end that was keeping the fitting from sealing. I fished it out, installed a new DEL seal, and now I think it is OK.

The COM 1 radio transmission problem returned - no one heard it during the test flight. After landing I fired up the handheld COM, and it confirmed that COM 1 transmissions were very garbled. I reseated the same power connector that had apparently been the cause last time, and now the transmissions appear to be fine. I’ll replace that connector the next time I’m at the hangar.

I’m also going to fabricate a coax patch panel so I can switch COM 2 to the external antenna in flight if need be, or hook the handheld COM to the external antenna. As it sits now, COM 2 is connected to the internal wingtip antenna, which has much worse performance than the external antenna. The ability to hook COM 2 up to the external antenna on the fly in flight will be useful if COM 1 acts up again.