FALL 2011 · · PAGE 350.

October 2, 2011:  This weekend has seen cool temperatures down into the 40's here in the Chattanooga area.  I have switched off the air conditioner here in the townhouse.  The Smoky Mountains are showing some fall colors in the forests.  The weather is absolutely beautiful due to the cold front that passed through here yesterday.  I will get out of the house today to get some fresh air and take a short walk on a nearby mountain.   I should have some photos to post this evening from Signal Mountain.  It has most of the local television and FM radio transmitters on the top and has a good view of the city and Moccasin Bend on the Tennessee River.

I will probably get to the hangar later today to clean the wings and the fuselage of dust and dirt.  There have not been any Saturday hangar meetings since Wendell has been away on a vacation with his wife in his motor home.  I did see Wendell at the heart institute when I went for my one-hour physical rehab sessions this past Wednesday and Friday mornings.  He was not home on Saturday morning when I stopped by to check the battery minder and turned on the avionics master switch to confirm the battery voltage was in the normal range.

Here are a couple of photos taken from Signal Mountain.  Lookout Mountain and the Moccasin Bend portion of the Tennessee River dominate the view looking south.

The Chickamauga Dam is northeast of the city with its hydroelectric power plant and locks providing access upstream to Knoxville.

The Sequoyah nuclear power plant is upstream on the banks of Chickamauga Lake.   The image below is taken from 16 miles away at Wilder Point on Signal Mountain.   It appears that only one of the reactors is online this day.

I went for a ride into the Sequatchie Valley west of Signal Mountain.  I went by the Matthews glider port but did not stop since I did not see any activity there.   I came back to Chattanooga on a route I have never traveled before.  I went by the hangar before heading home and found this dust and debris on the airplane.    I gave it a good cleaning before leaving.

The dust on the floor around the tow bar and the cobwebs tell a story of a grounded airplane and pilot.

Clean again until next time.  Pledge works very well to shine my airplane.

November 20, 2011:   Sunday is a good day to update the web site for the readers and builders out there visiting here.  I got an email this morning asking me to update this site.  All of the usual crowd at this end are doing fine.  I am still grounded until the six-month anniversary of my "event" back in June.  After that date, I will be filing all the paperwork to get my medical renewed and then the flying will resume.   Until then, this place will not have anything to report from the air.  

December 18, 2011:  Today marks six months since I had my CABG surgery and all is well.  I had my appointment with my cardiologist in Tennessee on November 30, then my primary care physician on December 2, 2011.  The result was some minor changes to my medications and review of recent lab tests.  I also finished my phase two cardiac rehab sessions on December 1.   I drove down to Florida on Saturday, December 3, 2011 to spend the holidays with relatives.  The weather is looking good for this part of Florida through the Christmas weekend.  My trip back to Tennessee will be on Friday, December 30 with a stop to have dinner with my son and his family who have come from Texas to the Atlanta area.  For now, it is office hours and customer phone calls as usual for my day job.

On the aviation side, my primary care doctor is also my aviation medical examiner.  When I was in his office, we reviewed the documents I will need to get my medical restored to active status.  I have almost 50 pages of docs for the FAA showing the treatment history and rehab.  Now that I am passing the six-month date after treatment, I will get an echocardiogram test for the FAA.  The one I had in September is not suitable for them.  I also plan to take a flight with my favorite flight instructor with him as pilot in command.  I will be taking data on my pulse, blood pressure, and blood oxygen saturation at various altitude up to 12,500 MSL on the test flight I have to do after performing the annual inspection on my RV-9A.  All that will be January as time and weather permit in the Chattanooga area.

February 5, 2012: It is Sunday and time to update the web site again.  Wow, look at the date for the entry above.   January was a dull month with nothing much going on.  I did change the oil in my airplane and cleaned the spark plugs.  When I get back from the current road trip, I will pull the airplane out of the hangar and run the engine to get it warmed up for cylinder compression tests.  I will also complete the annual inspection and get the airplane ready to fly again, as I am fit and able again.  I have been talking with my doctor to get the last things I need for my FAA medical to be re-instated and get all my flight privileges restored.

I began this road trip on Friday and made a stop in Virginia to pick up an optical spectrum analyzer I will need for my work this week in New York City.  I spent Friday night at a motel north of Roanoke and headed for Pennsylvania on Saturday morning.  The GPS was telling me I was going to arrive at my destination way too early since my son and his family were spending all day at a gymnastic meet where the girls were competing.  I punched in the waypoint for the new Air & Space Museum at Dulles Airport and realized I could spend the three extra hours there.  I had taken a lot of photos and posted them here on my first visit to the museum.  Today, I wanted to see some of the exhibits I missed on my first visit.   I also got into one of the guided tours that overlooked the restoration area.   They have a twin-engine Sikorsky flying boat that survived the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941.  It should be restored and on display sometime next year.   The guide told us of a similar airplane that is still in private service. 

There were three of us pilots talking with the guide after the tour was completed.  We were on the elevated walkway near the commercial  airplane exhibits and the discussion turned to the first flight of a single-engine airplane over the north pole.  The airplane was a P-51 Mustang that had been specially adapted with long-range fuel tanks in the wings instead of the drop tanks used during World War II.   That bright red airplane is hung directly in front of the elevated walkway above the Boeing factory prototype for the KC-135 and Boeing 707.  I mentioned that one of the last single-engine airplanes to fly over the north pole from Canada to Scotland was an RV-4 flown by John Johanson.  I have a page about John I created after my driving trip to Oshkosh in 2004.  There are web links on that page that will take you to the stories about his flights around the world going East and West, plus this polar trips.

Today I am in York, Pennsylvania visiting my son and his family before heading over toward New York City for my day job this week.  I have designed a fiber optic network for a major television network.  It will bring all the signals from a satellite antenna farm into the master control center for the network in the city.   With all the high-rise buildings, getting an unobstructed view of the entire satellite orbital arc is not possible.  On this job, I get to mix my satellite experience from 1977 to 1989 with my fiber optic skills gained over the past six years.