Saturday was cold, but still the warmest day we’d had for awhile, so I trekked out to the hangar to install the new battery.

Normally, when working in the cold, I use two electric radiant heaters to keep me warm. But, they would be useless when kneeled over in the aft baggage area, to remove and install the battery. I used a length of flexible plastic dryer duct to direct air from the 4800W engine preheater to the baggage area. It worked quite well.

The battery replacement went well. Normally the tricky part is reinstalling the aft baggage floor and back wall, but I got lucky this time and every screw lined up, and no screws escaped into the rear fuselage (which would mean I would have to take everything part to track them down).

Monday was clear, so I took some time off in the afternoon to get the aircraft flying. The first order of business was clearing the snow from Sunday’s storm. There was a four foot high snow drift at the corner of the hangar, and 18 inches of snow on the pavement between the hangar and the taxiway. I know we didn’t get 18 inches of snow from that storm, but the strong winds dumped it all in front of the hangar.

There isn’t a lot of clearance between the left wing and the snow bank on that side hopefully we won’t get too much more snow, or I’ll have to do some snow bank surgery.