Flying for Fun and for Money

I finally took my 140 up again yesterday after not flying it for nearly a month.

Why the downtime? Aside from getting busy with work and school, my plane was in the shop for a couple weeks.

It all started when I decided to upgrade my electrical system and convert all the fuses over to circuit breakers. I had had problems of blowing a fuse if I turned on my beacon, strobes, nav lights, panel lights, and comm radio simultaneously. Obviously it was too much for the fuse to handle, so this essentially prevented me from flying to towered airports after dark, and honestly, there were enough other little gremlins that I simply didn’t trust it to fly after dark, in general.

My shop split the four fuses in to nine circuit breakers which makes a world of difference. Now I can safely run everything simultaneously, and even if a breaker pops, I only lose one or two components, rather than a quarter of the entire electrical system!

In addition to the circuit breakers, the shop installed a 12 volt auxillary power outlet so I can plug in things like a portable GPS. They also did a rheostat (dimmer switch) for the panel lights, so flying at night is a lot easier on my eyes now. Finally, I can safely and comfortably fly at night!

Here is what the new panel looks like. I’m very pleased with how they matched the “look and feel” of the rest of the panel:

I couldn’t wait to take it up for a test flight! Everything worked well, except for the frigid temperature outside. Remember that I bought this plane in April, so this is the first time I’ve flown it in cold weather. My oil temp never showed anything higher than 110 degrees. My heater kept my feet from freezing, but I definitely kept my jacket on. I could see my breath in the cockpit, even with the heat at full blast. The outside air temperature showed 15 degrees F at 3500 feet MSL:

I’d been wanting to visit a little private strip to the east of Lincoln, near Weeping Water, Nebraska, for a long time now, so that’s where I headed. The airport is called Browns Airport (NE69) and it’s the home base for the Lincoln Sport Parachute Club. I know the chief pilot for the drop zone, so he gave me permission to fly in whenever I want:

There is a 2200 foot long north/south grass runway, along with a 1400 foot long southeast/northwest grass/dirt runway/taxiway. I couldn’t figure out what the heck that second strip of land was considered, if it’s actually used as a runway or not, although Airnav lists it officially as a runway. I wasn’t willing to use it as more than a taxiway.

Both runways are noticeably sloped with obstacles all around, so I ended up going around twice before setting up a decent approach and putting it down right where I wanted it, on runway 35. Like I said, it had been a month since I flew my plane last and I forgot just how long I can keep it in the air. I kept coming in high and fast until I got it right the third time around. Sloppy flying is not acceptable at this airport!

Here I am, parked in front of the main buildings:

Since it’s the off season and late in the day, nobody was around, as far as I could tell. All the buildings were locked up and the parking lot was empty. So I took some pictures and headed back out:

Taxiing on the southeast bound runway/taxiway:

Lined up and ready to depart runway 35. This is an upsloping runway, but the winds were calm, the air was cold, and I was lightweight. I got off the ground in the first 1000 feet and crossed the departure end at least 100 feet in the air:

That’s all for now. Hopefully I’ll have some more adventures to post later.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.