Flying, now Repairing . . .

Finally got an airplane to cooperate, flew three times Saturday,  but banged up the airplane.  Basically, I am rusty, did a stupid thing,  Tried to take off without refueling.  I guess I thought I had done that but did not.  So the engine did not get enough fuel for take and I did some damage to the airplane.

I do like to repair airplanes and have often said, "It is not a good model until it has been repaired at least once.   The damages usually reveal the weakness in the structure, so that the next time the airplane does a better job of survival."  This one was on its second go round.  The wing had the major repair last time and it sustained no damage at all.

The upfront repairs on the fuselage held up well.  Ripped out the landing gear but that was easy to put back in and re-glue.  Yes, I will have some recovering to do, but I am getting good at that.  Put a little lightweight spackling in the cracks and will sand that down smooth.

The back, the empanage (that is a French term for  the tail feathers, the combined rudder and elevator structure) did not survive so well.  It had breaks before and did not break at the repair points but it did tear up the elevator.  Fortunately, I had a salvaged elevator so that is not a big deal to install.  But the structure holding the elevator took a severe hit.  And then I managed to drop the fuselage so that the vertical took a good hit.  That finished off the weak spots.  I will glue those back quickly with CA glue.  That will hold structure in place and then I will (and have started to) cover over the area with a fibreglass patch. 

I have tons of fibreglass picked up at Radio Control swap meet.  I got about 10 yards of the stuff.  It is like any fabric one would buy at a sewing store, comes about a yard wide.  Since I am using pieces about a half a square inch here and there, maybe a patch on the wing splice that is 3 or 4 square inches in area.  That means I have maybe 7 or 8 years of supply.  And I also picked at a swap meet the epoxy for doing that kind of work.  My last buy of that kind of epoxy is almost running out.  So I am set up for repairs for quite a while.

I am also getting good at those kinds of patches too.  Put a tad bit of epoxy under the area to be patched, lay the fibreglass cloth on top, and spread the remainder of the epoxy the top.  Now depending on the bonding of the epoxy to the balsa the patch will be stronger than a glue joint.  Sand it a little bit and recover with Monokote.  Good as new, well maybe a bit stronger and not so pretty as new.

So I will have this bird back into the air by the weekend.  I may put a bigger gas tank in it.  I have a host of those from former aircraft. 

The engine in this bird is a Magnum four stroke .91 cubic inch engine.  It swings a 14 inch prop with a 6 inch pitch.  That is referred to as a 14 X 6 prop.  That is pretty much the standard for that engine.  I may go down to a 13 X 8 prop, roughly the same thrust but gives me more ground clearance for the prop.  The engine will turn a bit faster but not much as prop loading is about the same.  It has a lot of power.

Now back to work.

Flying Or the Lack Of It . . .

Not getting much Radio Control flying in now days.  First it is hot outside and second most of the spring was to windy for me.

Now the air plane will not cooperate.  I have some kind of fuel supply problem.  I found a bunch of holes in the fuel lines so have replaced them.  Next I bought some clips to put over the ends of the fuel lines as they slip on the fuel tank feeders.  The feeders are usually brass or aluminum tubes about an eight of an inch in diameter that go through the stopper.  The stopper is compressed by a central screw that keeps the tank from leaking.

The set up is fairly simple.  There are two lines.  One line to feed the engine carburettor and the other is a pressure input line from the muffler.  As the engine runs, the pressure tap keeps positive pressure on the fuel in the tank which enhances fuel feed.  This pressure line is also the vent line when you pump fuel into the tank, it is the over flow line. 

The over flow line is set up so that  it is at the highest vertical spot inside the tank.  One usually bends the tube to do this.  Sometimes I add a piece of fuel line to the end and it rests on the very inside top of the tank.  In this case I have done so.

The fuel feed line extends in the tank almost to the rear of the tank and has a weight on it.  The weight is called a clunck.  It clunks around in the tank and uses gravity to be always at the bottom of the tank where the fuel is.

The fuel feed lines out of the tank are supposed to be set about the height of the carburettor input nipple, if to high, the fuel will siphon out and the engine will be rich.  If to low then one has a fuel feed problem.  Some engines have no problem sucking up the fuel with the privided tank pressure but newer high performance engines do not have carburettors that have good draft characteristics.  They are large diameter carbs for increased performance.  So one scarifces the performance of the engine for fuel feed.

I have that problem.  The tank is to low.  So I have resulted in using a modified pressure system.  I put a check valve in the muffler pressure feed line.  So only pressure goes in and it builds up in the tank and pushes the fuel up to the engine.  That works but it makes the adjustment of the engine very sensitive.  So I am going through the cycle of adjusting the engine.

It ain't cooperating.  Runs well at idle.   Accelerates well in the chocks (actually a table that restrains the airplane).  Place on the runway, and start the take off and it gets about a hundred feet and the engine stops running.  My thinking is the pressure is too high and I need to crank the high speed needle in some more.

I'll get there - sooner or later.

Summer Quarters . . .

Fritz has moved out of the shoes.  Not really sure just where she is staying but pretty sure it is in one of the flower pots nearby.  There is a pretty crowded pot up on the bakers rack but may be tough to get in and out of.  Though we have seen evidence she may be using it.  The evidence is a torn leaf.

This AM I saw her on the edge of the carpet adjacent to a flower pot that is on the patio floor.  It is not as densely potted and may provide a better location for her.  It has a Begonia in it.

No matter, she is always somewhere around the baskers rack in the AM.  So she stays in the neighborhood for sure.

Amazing little animals.  Right at our feet sometimes and we do not even know it.  We do now know she does not hunt at night, she is daylight animal.  That sort of makes sense in that she beomes vulnerable at night because she is so vision dependent.  So she holes up at night in a safe out of the way spot.

She must be good at it since this is here second or third year with us.  She is a surviver.

Fritz . . .

Well Fritz has returned to using the shoe at night.  She has about the same hours as I do.  That is she is in her shoe no later than 8:30 to 9:00 PM.  She gets way into the toe of the shoe curls around the so that unless you know she is in there you would not know it at all.  Like I said it is a safe place to spend the night.

I see her head sticking up looking around in the morning.  As always she is very patient.  She does not move her head back and forth. She is very still.  I am sure her eyes are moving around.  She is very attuned to any kind of movement in her hunting.  So I am sure she is looking for predators.  She starts looking around about 6:30 AM and by 7:00 AM she is out and about.  Often see her on the patio carpet, an 8 by 8 rug of sorts.

She spends the day scouring the patio and outer patio that is not a solid white concrete but decorative pebble surfaced more closely matching her coloring.  She scoots back and forth after her prey.  Most of the prey are too small for us to see unless we are up very close.  Of course, she does not tolerate us being up close.  She does allow us to be with say five feet of her. 

I have seen her charge off the patio into the side flower bed after an insect of sorts.  She devours small butterflies and loves crickets.  We rarely see crickets anymore.  And if one of those little butterflys lites within 18 inches of her, they are done for.  She is fast.

So we often sit and watch her.  She scoots this way and then that way.  She rests in the shade under the wood pile or under the furniture.  Every once in a while she goes up in the tree, a Hackberry that shades the Southeast corner of the house.  It is about 7 or 8 feet from the patio and a like distance from the house.  We think it is at once cooler up there and probably more insects to boot.

They are pretty savvy little creatures.  Fritz is fairly tolerant of us but all the others are not.  They run and hide very quickly if we approach.    Hard to sneak up on them.  In Fritz's case we are sure she knows us and thus we have become non-enemies.  There must be five or six of them in the yard.

And so goes life at our feet.

Rough Night, Last Night

As predicted thunderstorms blew into the area.  About midnight, I heard a great deal thunder and goings on but we did not get any rain or hail.   It sounded pretty violent and close by but not over us.

I am guessing the upper winds cut the tops out of the storms and they broke up before doing any harm to us.

That brings me to Fritzina, she spent the night in a shoe again.  She has been using the flower pot on the top shelve of the Baker's Rack but last night I guess the elements drove her into the protective shoe.  It was not particularly cool, in the mid 70s or so, so it was not the temperature that drove her to the shoe. 
This shows that they have a little intelligence after all.  They are smart enough to take cover in bad situations.  I am impressed with these lizards.

If only life was as that simple for us.

The Green Spring . . .

We have had a green spring, lots of rain spaced out so it does the best job.  The lakes remain full.  The country side has remained green and we had the best Blue Bonnet crops since we have live here some 11 odd years.  The aquifer is full too.

Our problem remains the wild life, principally the deer.  Along with the deer is a goat.  The deer eat different things, the goat eats everything.  We have given up on Day Lilies, but have one volunteer growing out front in a cage.  Even then the deer lean in to get at the leaves and flowers.  They leave Irises alone for the most part.  And they leave aromatic herbs alone too.  They have been known to clip the green tops of Daffodils, though they are supposed to be toxic to them.  Maybe it is just the flowers.

We have one rose bush that takes a beating.  They love to eat the tops out of the rose bushes.  The old fashioned country roses at the other end of the yard have so far escaped the deer and are doing very well.  These bushes are tolerant of local conditions and do not suffer from black spot and other rose bush ills.  Their blooms are smaller but since they can do well here, they are the bush of choice.

All the water has kept the lawn looking good.  And all the fertilizer the lawn service puts on along with the pre-emergents has taken care of 98% of the Dandelions.  They are getting rare now days.  The ones that do make it up are easily taken care of.  And of course, the St Augustine grass laps up the water and is spreading everywhere.

And I saw Fritz this AM.  She always stays somewhere near the bakers rack near the back door.  She seems to know us and tolerate us.  The younger lizard run at the drop of hat.  She just looks on.  So we feel fairly sure she has grown to allow us to live in our house and she will take care of the crickets for us.

The beat goes on . . .

Leave False River Alone . . .

Once again I read in the Morning Advocate that tax money is going to be spent to "improve" False River - again.  Improve what?  Well they say make it a "Trophy Lake Again." 
For those of you that do not know, False River is an ox-bow lake formed from the Mississippi River in the year 1700.  Ox-bow lakes occur up and down the winding Mississippi, indeed there is yet another in Pointe Coupee Parish that is known as Old River.  There is Lake St John, Lake Providence and others up the river from New Roads.  New Roads, the county seat of Pointe Coupee Parish is located on the north end of False River.

Some years ago Florida Bass were introduced into the lake.  They did well and a lot of big bass were caught while fishing in False River. So were huge Cat fish but they were not from Florida.  And for a while they introduced Striped Bass to the lake.  Stripe Bass are sterile and will not reproduce but they are fish devouring machines and probably did more damage to the fish population than anything else.  Ask the biological experts about that issue.

I can recall as youngster growing up in New Roads and living on the lake a lot of things.  While learning how to swim, there was no grass in the lake.  None, nada, nothing.  That was the era when detergents were introduced that had a lot of phosphates in them.  So a  lot of what might be called "grey water" today, was discharged into the lake.  It was not contamination per se.  But that enriched the lake so to speak along with random discharges of raw sewage from out houses and the like from the cabins along the lake side and yes from farms along the lake.

The lake is also part and parcel of the drainage system of a great part of Pointe Coupee Parish.  Water from New Roads streets goes into False River.  So does water from the fields, etc. drain into the huge body of water that comprises the lake.

I can recall back in the early 1950s where we had a 14 inch rainfall.  It occurred over the weekend.  Monday, it was  bright and sunny and then it happened.  Slowly but surely False River rose about six feet in about eight hours.  Places no longer in existence like Tropical Gardens were a wash in water.  It did not deter the drinking crowd, they just waded in and kept at it.  And it did not hurt the "Trops" either.  The venerable Trops burned down years later.  But that shows how the natural drainage system functions, excess water not absorbed by the fields runs into False River or otherwise we would have been flooded.  And that is a good thing.

The "Rougon Canal" was dug to allow the excess water to run out of False River.  The canal runs from the old light house (an old watering hole and restaurant, to Bayou Black (locally referred to as Bayou Gros Tete)).  Takes a while to pull a lot of water of a lake that is roughly 12 miles long and mile wide especially when the bayou is also struggling to take care of its normal water load from such a rain.  Took more than a week to bring False River back to its normal everyday level but by then hundreds of piers and camps had been damaged by the high water.

In the late 1950s grasses started showing up in False River.  I do not mean Water Hyacinths (pretty but choking water lillies), I mean grasses like Horn Wort.  Grass that grows in the water not on the water like Water Hyacinths.  I can remember great mats of the stuff out on the "flats."  The flats is the area at the ends of the lake where over time sediment has filled in the lake.  The flats were famous for catching Blue Gill fish - limit 50 a day.  Blue Gill were also called perch or Chinquiapen.
The grasses did not help those fish at all and more or less destroyed fishing on the flats.

They even sprayed the lake to kill the grasses in the 1960s.  I wonder how many of the do gooders recall that disaster.  Killing grasses also killed fish.  And it did not work.  Way too much grass and way too little areas sprayed.

Then modernization has kicked in.  No longer are there allowed septic systems along False River.  We had such a septic system with a drain field etc. at our camp.  Now we have a connection to the sewer system.  There is a capture tank, a pump and the sewage is lifted up to the main sewer and taken off to be treated.  No more discharge into the lake.

The grasses have disappeared.  Why?  I can tell you why.  The enrichment of the lake has stopped.  The lake does not have the minerals to sustain grass growth like it used to do.  We have cleaned up the lake.  Now that is not a bad thing but it does nothing to help the biologicals that live in the lake.  The so called protective grass beds are gone.  Well we did not have them when I was kid and fishing was just jim dandy.  So somebody is stretching the truth regarding the need for grass in the lake.

So I say to the experts leave my lake alone.  False River is mecca to sports boating now days.  Children do not have have Typhoid shots to swim in the lake as we did as kids.  Water skiing, Skidoos, power boats and even a few sail boats abound.  More problems with wake control than fishing control.  More problems with alcoholic consumption than fishing.  The lake is cleaner.

And yes, while I live in Texas we do maintain a camp on False River.  So we own a piece of the pie.

While visiting there a while back I noted Mullet jumping.  Mullet had sort of disappeared in the days of the grasses.  Mullet are food fish for the likes of Bass.  They are back.  That is a good sign.

Again, leave False River alone.