A good day to not fly.

Sure, just a little light green and yellow rain. And only marginal VFR. But it's eleven in the morning. Let's see this map again at 2pm...

Tracking my progress

Jeremy points out that because I have an ADS-B Out transmitter on my plane, you can spy on me as I'm enroute! Here's one site:

https://www.radarbox24.com/flight/N550AR

First cross-country leg: Zephyrhills, Florida (near Tampa) to Meridian, Mississippi

This morning I showed up at the airport and gave Amy Unspecifiedlastname, the person who did the graphics on my plane, a quick Inkscape tutorial. Then Rand met up with me to wrap up some logbook details while I packed the plane.

My plane has two seats and a luggage space behind them, part of which is occupied by the parachute rocket tube and the emergency locator radio. Into those spaces I endeavored to put:

• myself,
• my clothes bag,
• my snack bag,
• my flight bag,
• a little bag of cleaning tools for the plane,
• the plane's documentation pouch,
• the plane's toolkit,
• my computer backpack,
• and the tie-down kit.

I rearranged things several times. I placed the flight bag in the passenger seat, but I couldn't put much there, because the stick needs to be able to move freely. Finally, I had just about everything squeezed in, and Rand pointed out that I hadn't yet packed the short wingtips.

I ended up leaving out an empty hard-sided suitcase, the covers for the long tips, and a pair of Crocs; Rand is going to mail those home for me.

I did some last-minute planning to find a destination and alternate airport with hangar space. Rand topped off the oil, and I'm on my way!

I climbed up above the cloud layer into calm air, and trimmed out at 112 kts. Unfortunately, I ended up battling a 20-25 kt headwind the whole way; my choice was 112 minus headwind above the clouds, or 76 kts in the bumps below.

I made a speedy stop in Cross City, Florida (KCTY) for fluid exchange.

Airports around Tallahassee were showing "marginal IFR" conditions, which was disconcerting, but once I got to that area, it was clear that there were plenty of safe options on my route.

On this route, I was flying 131 mph through the air, getting 44 miles per gallon. It didn't really work out that well over the ground; with the headwinds, I was getting a mere 108 mph and 33 mpg. Still quite a bit better performance than my pickup truck.

I overflew just a corner of Georgia and then Alabama to land in Meridian, Mississippi. Look at the cool planes I shared the ramp with!

The hangar at Meridian turned out to be enormous. The doors weren't even all the way open, and I was able to drag my plane right in with the long wingtips still attached.

Thunderstorms still forecast west of here tomorrow, so Wednesday will be a rest and work day. NOAA willing, I'll be back in the saddle on Thursday!

New graphics

I had ordered the plane with no graphics and no N-number lettering, so we could do my own here. Unfortunately, the factory didn't get the message, and installed generic N-number lettering and the huge SINUS logo that I didn't much care for:

Rand arranged to change them. He had Larry and Amy of Revo Trikes do the work. Larry carefully removed the factory graphics...

and Amy cut and installed these gorgeous new ones!

Sunday in Zephyrhills

More training today. My landings improved substantially; I'm starting to get the muscle memory for this aircraft. We flew to lunch at Tampa North airport, 13 miles west of Zephyrhills:

Usually pilots call this a "$100 hamburger", because you spend $10 on the burger and $90 in aviation gas to get there. The Pipistrel is so efficient (and this cafe so close), I think it cost about $2.14 in gas for the round trip. And besides, I had a salad.

I flew that leg in the right seat, too; I wanted practice having flown both halves of the airplane.

We came back via a couple other airports. Back at KZPH, we picked out colors for the replacement N-number graphics, and then I spent an hour in the pattern practicing solo landings and evading the jump planes whose operations runway intersect with the general aviation runway.

Back at the hotel for rest; it looks like the best weather for starting the long cross-country will be Tuesday.

Being in Florida in February is weirdly exotic, for a Pacific Northwesterner. Tonight I had fried chicken cubes and plantains at a Puerto Rican restaurant, with live music, and then came back to my hotel in balmy 80 degree temps.

Picking up my motorglider

I arrived in Zephyrhills, Florida last night, and this morning woke up to meet my new Pipistrel motorglider. Aerodynamically it's a fine airplane and glider. It's equipped with a really nice Dynon panel.

I flew a couple hours with the dealer/instructor Rand today, including ten minutes or so with the engine off. I landed about ten times, improving from really bouncy to a bit smoother. The big wings take a fair amount of planning to get sloshed around, yet the controls are pretty responsive. I'm getting the feel of it.

The only photo I took is of the weight and balance form. :v)  I'll rectify that tomorrow.

The Most Adequate Probes a Modest Amount of Money Can Buy

I needed some test probes for my electronics lab: things like banana plugs with alligator clips for the power supply, and minigrabbers for the multimeters. I ordered a bunch from ebay, $1-$1.50 each:

When I finally got around to using them, I was testing a 12V, 2A light circuit from my power supply. For some reason the circuit was seeing only 10V! I guess because ... those lousy test leads were 1Ω! Ridiculous. Probably 60-gauge wire.

So, not wanting to repeat that debacle, I picked up a Pomona set for $16:

Ten times the price, but at least they work! But I'd like to have a few of these things around; you never know when you need them. Can I find something cheaper but adequate? Amazon suggested Elenco TL-5 and TL-12 leads, and they showed up today.

I put them all to the test by running 3A through each, and measuring the voltage drop. I also compared against my homemade test leads: alligator clips crimped to speaker wire. Here are the results:

lead	length	mV/3A	Ω through both leads	Ω/ft
Elenco TL-5 banana alligator	3'	400	0.1 Ω	0.033 Ω/ft
Elenco TL-12 banana minigrabber	3'	300	0.133 Ω	0.044 Ω/ft
Pomona Minigrabber	2'	180	0.06 Ω	0.030 Ω/ft
Howell lampcord alligator	1.5'	240	0.08 Ω	0.058 Ω/ft

So the Pomonas win by a little, but the Elencos are less than half the price, and pretty adequate. I wish they offered a shorter length.

Screen Printing Reel

Today, I geared up for mass production and made ... 14 tee shirts!

The jig worked out really well. It was nice to pivot the screen into place knowing it wouldn't slide and smear in the wrong places. It was easy to hold the screen down with one thumb while running the squeegee with the other.

Using cheap, smooth extruded polystyrene foam platen blocks worked out nicely too. I made six blocks, and loaded the tee shirts first (timelapse below). Once I poured the ink, I could work quickly without worrying about drying up the ink.

Here are some timelapses of making the actual prints:

Things I learned:

• There were a couple gaps in the emulsion on my screen, around the edges and in one spot where it was spread a little too thin. I made a few stray marks before catching these and covering them up with masking tape.
• My placement of the tees on the foam platens wasn't always spot on. A few leaning houses, one house whose gutter disappeared, and a couple houses whose peaks poke into the neckband. I should put more care into loading the shirts on the platen blocks.
• Ironing 17 shirts (three more from my first "limited edition" run, before I tried photoemulsion) is really boring. I had to place the iron four times to cover the design, and I let it cook for three minutes at each spot. That's about three and a half hours.

Here are  bunch of finished shirts, drying before they get heat-set with the iron.

Screen Printing Jig for Shaper Origin

The first project I've completed with my new Shaper Origin, this screen printing jig, took me about 1:40 to design, 1:15 to cut, and another 30 minutes to sand and assemble:

Materials:

• 15x28" of 3/4" plywood
• Speedball 10x14" screen printing frame
• 1" extruded polystyrene foam, cut to 10x14". Make a few so you can have several T-shirts mounted and ready to print.
• 1 1/4" #8 screws, qty 4
• 2" screws, qty 4
• Wood glue

Here is the SVG cut file you can load into your shaper.

Here are some spacers stacked on the long legs, fresh out of the Origin router:

Below, I'm driving 1 1/4" screws through the arms into the screen printing frame. They only protrude 1/2" into the frame, but I'm still careful to put them in the top half of the frame so they don't damage the screen mounting.

I stapled a thin slice of soft foam to one of the legs to help the foam "platen" ride at just the right height and have a positive pressure against the screen.