Bought My Plane, Reading, Harvests, Tobacco Leaves, Tub Flying

Yesterday morning was the boys' first day of school and I wished them well as they headed out the door. By 9am I had called and was headed down to the valley to pay for my plane. It was an incredible change as soon as I handed David the money, my nerves calmed instantly and my shaking ceased. I was so nervous that something would change or like an Ebay auction it would be sniped. But it all worked out and we filled out the aircraft bills of sale and he gave me a bunch of parts. David has a 16 foot trailer that he is going to let me use to haul my plane home and the hope is that Sunday we will be able to. He has a bunch of cars to work on this week to try and clear out some space and work load to have time. He also has a bunch of trike style ultra lights sitting around that he will be working on selling over the next couple years.

My plane's "license" plate. It was built 3 hours from where I grew up.

It is outstanding to have the entire assembly manual for it. I have 2 planes, the working one and then a spare fuselage with gauges, rear flight surfaces, and one wing. It would only need a motor and a new wing which I spent a good part of my day searching online for. This morning I found http://albatrossflyingsystems.com/flight-star-ii-sc/ which is a company out of India but they have spares for my type of plane. Once I have everything here on the farm I will be contacting them to see if they might have any leads on a wing that would allow me to get the second plane flying. Right now I am most concerned with getting my working one home and then flying it.

My head was awash with flight which is helped by the Cloudbased Mayhem podcast I listen to about paragliding and free flight. I was able to get 40 cucumbers picked with the 4 pounds of Armenian cucumbers. The pole garden cucumber plants are really falling off on production and may get removed if they don't make a turn for the better.

I had to go pick the boys up for the first day which is not horrible because it gives me time to read as I wait. With all my pilot license books out now I have a lot to read up on to refresh myself with everything powered flight. I found as I went through the beginnings of the books that I still remember most of it.

In the later afternoon the sun finally came out a bit as it had been cloudy and cool all day. I went in the greenhouse and clipped a rather large stack of Bel-B tobacco leaves, with some of the leaves really big. The Bel-B is the seeds I got from NASA Ames which is a ozone tolerant variety and has produced more leaves than the other two varieties I have. The Bel-B hasn't even flowered yet while the other two have long ago.

I had exactly the right amount of space on my drying rack for the whole stack of leaves. It's sunny today so it will kick the drying process into gear nicely for the bit of a warming trend the next days.

I had to add a ton of calcium to get the water back right. The ph was stuck super high and wouldn't budge until the calcium level was brought up high enough.

As we sat soaking I closed my eyes and put myself in my plane and I went through every procedure to go from starting up to take off and a loop around the pattern then landing. I could feel some of the motion given I was floating in the water and I made a few landings after. I know where all the controls are and already know I want a different throttle handle. I had a massive surge of excitement when I opened my eyes and realized that I remember so much more than I thought.

I watched the club chats and saw a number of people went to Tekoa yesterday and probably again today. I likely have to wait until Saturday to fly my paraglider at Steptoe Butte state park where we are having the 50th anniversary of free flight at the butte fly-in. There might be okay winds at Saltese tomorrow morning as I have another really small order to deliver to the co-op but will see how it looks in the am.

Today I have to go up to the melon garden again as there is tons ready, pick around the gardens, work on cleanup around the farm, try not to let my dreaming take over my productivity, empty the finished freeze dryer, and pick the boys up mid day from school.