Maintenance...

We decided to put the plane in for an early annual inspection, to make sure that it's in good shape for the race and other aviation events in May, as well as to fit in with our work and travel schedules. While we've had no issues with the engine and airframe, we have had a number of instrumentation and avionics problems to work out. One is the nav select unit at the top of the King stack; and the other new one is our artificial horizon. This instrument is required for flying in cloud when there's no visible horizon, and shows whether you're climbing, descending or turning. It's a vacuum driven gyroscopic instrument, and a couple weekends ago during instrument approach practice it toppled, indicating that the gyro is failing. Its quite something to see one of these fail, and I'm thankful it didn't occur in actual instrument conditions. We are trained to recognize instrument failure by referencing the others in the pack to figure out which is giving the erroneous indication, but still it would be very distracting in actual conditions to see the horizon indication drop down the instrument then tip over into an apparent steep turn. So yesterday Linda flew the plane over to our wonderful mechanic Kent Heller at Pottstown, who will replace the gyro as well as completing the annual. Looking forward to getting it back in tip top shape!

A new team mate!

Linda and I are very excited because we just asked our friend and fellow air racer Barbara Strachan to join us on the race as a passenger - and she accepted!! We thought of this over President's Day weekend, on the way back from our trip to Clearwater Florida to visit Barbara and Russell. This is the icing on the cake and is going to make it so much fun. None of us have raced three up before, so this will be exciting and interesting. Now we'll have the brain power and flying experience of three of us to draw on, not just two! Not to mention the laughs we're going to have.