Spring has definitely sprung in Ottawa. We’ve had a week of quite warm temperatures, and much of the snow has melted.

I took advantage of the warm morning yesterday to do some work on the aircraft. I chased down a pesky small static system leak. It turned out to be at a quick disconnect fitting on the VSI. The tube to the VSI was a bit shorter than it should have been, and the strain on the tubing had pulled it so it was entering the fitting at an angle. I proved that was the source of the leak by pulling the tubing out of the fitting and blocking it off - zero leak. I replaced the section of tubing with a longer one that entered the fitting straight, and did another test which showed absolutely zero leak.

I decided to replace the brake pads. I wasn’t sure whether they would make it through the summer or not, and I didn’t want to be worrying about them. In retrospect, after measuring the removed pads I’m pretty sure they would have been fine, but pads are cheap, and its not possible to monitor them with the wheel pants on, so I’m glad the job is done.

I put the wheel pants back on, as we seem to be at the end of winter. I then cleaned the worst of the winter grime off the aircraft. Quite a bit of water had sprayed from the wheels during landings on my last flight, and there were dirt spots all over the wings and tail.

Then, I rewarded myself with lunch in Lindsay. It was the first time I had actually gone further than Ottawa since our lunch trip to Lake Placid in October.