Grumpy

Not much is going on this week. They haven’t pulled the plane in to start the annual yet, but they are working on approval to upgrade the battery to a LiFePO4 model that not only provides more cranking power but also weighs fifteen pounds less than the standard lead acid unit. Since such technology did not exist in 1981, and the feds (spit!) being what they are, permission is required. I’m looking forward to a fifteen-pound increase in useful load, if it can be made to happen.

We had a bit of a breeze on Sunday. If sustained winds near thirty and gusts over forty miles per hour can be called a breeze. I have a 10×17 Harbor Freight shelter housing my backup generator, my backup lawn mower, and during the winter, my Benelli micro-motorcycle. The main part of the cover disintegrated last year, and I chose to replace it with a heavy-duty tarp, hoping both for lower cost and longer life over an original replacement. I used rope through the grommets on each side to secure it to a line attached to anchors in the ground, and it worked well. It weathered high winds many times, so I wasn’t worried about it.

Wife texted me early Sunday afternoon just after church, telling me that the shelter had collapsed. The rope that I had used to secure one side of the tarp was old when I installed it, but it appeared serviceable.  In the months since, it weakened enough that, when the enthusiastic wind ballooned the tarp, it broke. That allowed the tarp to blow across the top of the shelter to the still-attached side. In the process, it caught the last section of the frame and pulled it loose from its clamps and the rest of the shelter, laying it against the tractor that is parked at that end.

I feared major damage but found none on Monday morning when I inspected the situation. The frame sections are only slid together at the top, with a single clamp at the bottom. The original cover incorporates straps that pull everything towards the center, making that an acceptable design. The way I had the tarp attacged did the same. With it loose, it didn’t take much to pull things apart. I reconnected the three pipes together and drilled a small hole in each, through both sections of pipe, and installed a screw in order to improve the situation. Then, I re-tightened the clamps at the bottom.

That was all I had time to do before work on Monday. Yesterday, I pulled the tarp back into place and secured it with individual pieces of paracord at each grommet. This will prevent any single failure in the future from releasing the whole tarp or even one side. The other side still uses a single section of rope for the entire side, so the potential for such a scenario still exists for that side, but at the moment, it is functional. And I ran out of time before I could address that. Everything is back under cover at the moment, so crisis managed, priority lowered.

Yesterday evening, Wife texted while I was at work with another situation. The power blinked momentarily, and a noise began at the same time. She also had no wifi, even after the power came back on. Obviously, it was the UPS. While it usually works as expected, sometimes, depending on the duration of the blink, it can lose its mind and require cycling power to reset. I walked her through locating the unit and how to turn it off and back on. It’s stupid about having to hold the button down for such things rather than a simple press and release.

I thought the issue was resolved, but about twenty minutes later, she texted back and said that it was steady alarming again and the modem and router were off. Odd, as there was no second power blink. She wanted no parts of trying to reset it again, choosing instead to just use her mobile data for anything that would normally use wifi. I figured the UPS was toast and told her that I would look at it when I got home.

When I got home, I reset it and waited for it to do something stupid. While doing so, I came up with an alternative to just plugging the modem and router directly into the power strip and having no battery backup. The plan I came up with was to use the power station formerly reserved for aviation use to power a pure sine-wave inverter, via which I would power the router and modem. Leaving the power station charger plugged in would allow it to float during normal operation and seamlessly switch to battery in the event of a power loss. I couldn’t use the power station’s built-in 110VAC outlet as it will not allow charging when said outlet is in use.

I hit a bit of a snag, though. Whenever I plugged the inverter into the power station’s cigarette lighter outlet, it would disable that output. It was like the connector was shorting out the outlet. I’d used the inverter last week for another purpose using a different power source, so I knew it wasn’t the problem. The inverter was off, so it wasn’t overloading the output capacity, either. The cigarette lighter outlet worked fine for other things, so that wasn’t the issue. I tried different things and eventually got it to work with a portable cigarette lighter socket connection plugged into the power station’s 12V barrel connector output. All this allowed the UPS plenty of time to get stupid again. It never did.

I unplugged the UPS from the wall to test its backup functionality. It immediately went into a full alarm. Probably the battery, maybe the unit itself, but it was almost midnight, and I was done arguing with electronics. I dragged the power station and inverter over, hooked it up, verified operation, and went to bed.

This morning, the power station was fat, dumb and happy at 100% charge and 11.9 volts on the output while powering the modem and router. Just like it was when I left it. At least that is reliable as a backup. I removed the battery from the UPS and put a meter on it. It measured 9.0 volts. It’s a normal 12V sealed lead acid battery, so it should’ve been at least 12.5 volts. The battery was ancient, so that was no surprise. The surprise was that nine volts was enough to power the alarm buzzer.

Off I went to Amazon to search for a new battery. It’s a tiny UPS, 350Va, and the battery is likewise very small. I couldn’t find one with the correct dimensions, and the closest cost more than I wanted to spend. Then I remembered a possible solution.

Back in 2019, I bought a marine deep cycle battery for the trailer that I used for the tractor when I took side jobs. I wanted something to directly power the winch that I installed on it rather than trying to pull that much amperage through the trailer lighting harness. I’d removed it a year or two ago when I quit the side jobs, and it had just been sitting ever since. I put a charger on it a few times a year to keep it charged but never used it again. I figured it was dead, given its age and lack of use, but I hooked the charger up to it.

I then went about fabricating wiring to connect it to the UPS, just in case it was still serviceable. The UPS’s charging circuit is probably in the milliamps, given the size battery it is designed to use, and is unlikely to do much for such a large battery. Also, despite the successful charge (according to the charger), I doubt that there’s very much capacity remaining in the geriatric battery. Even so, I hooked it all up, reconnected the electronics to the UPS, and let everything boot up. Shortly after, I unplugged the UPS from the wall to see what would happen. It immediately switched to battery power and did the short beep every minute to indicate that it was running on battery, just like it’s supposed to do.

Since the pull for both units is only about fifteen watts total, I estimate that I can get a week or more of constant use out of that battery, even given its age and likely diminished capacity. The tiny trickle of charging current that the UPS is able to deliver should keep it close to fully charged since we typically only lose power a few times per year. One more problem solved. 

And that is how I’ve managed to avoid boredom this week.

…as Wife calls it. I call it a mental victory. It’s been four days since I recorded a body weight in the 200s. After spending eleven weeks between 200 and 210, I think I’ve finally broken into the 100s for good. I wasn’t sure if last Friday’s result would be the true beginning of this chapter, as I’ve had a couple of dips under 200, only to climb back up.

It’s a brain thing, nothing more. I know this. It’s only a number, and I could just as easily celebrate being under 213 pounds or any other arbitrary weight. But there’s something about seeing a 1 as the first number on the scale that feels so very good.

Now, if I can just make it into the 180s in less than eleven weeks, that’ll be great.

For any number/data nerds out there, here is the length of time that I spent in each “decade” during my journey thus far. 

• 240-250 – 29 days
• 230-240 – 67 days
• 220-230 – 83 days
• 210-220 – 27 days
• 200-210 – 76 days

In my last post, I mentioned the “power station” that I use to keep my electronics operating and charged during flight. One of the reasons why I chose the size/model that I did was to back up the avionics briefly in the event of another alternator/electrical failure. I found it incapable of this task shortly after purchasing it, as I will explain further shortly. In addition to a 110VAC outlet and USB ports, it has what is advertised as a 12V output via either standard automotive cigarette lighter socket or a 2.1/2.5mm barrel connector.  It’s not really 12V, and it certainly won’t supply the rated 10A/120W from that output, as I learned too late.

I built/bought cables to tie the 12V output into one of the aircraft accessory outlets. Wire is wire, and will allow current to flow in any direction absent components to prevent such. When connecting the power station’s “12V” output via these cables, the main bus becomes energized, just as if the Master were switched on and feeding power from the aircraft battery. Doing this while the Master is off keeps said battery isolated.

This powers all of the toggle switches (avionics sub-bus, nav lights, landing light, strobes, pitot heat, and fuel pump) as well as the knob for the panel lights.  It also connects to the engine monitor, the electronic attitude indicator, and the gyro inside of the turn coordinator, all of which are wired to come on immediately, without the need to flip a switch.

Those three pull the initial 12 (actually 11.9) volts down to about 11 volts. Turn on the strobes and nav lights (which also turns on the ADSB transmitter), and it drops to 10.5V. Flip on the avionics, and the electronic directional indicator, GPS, transponder, nav/comm, and nav indicator all power up. All are necessary for IFR flight. This additional load, while still less than 75 watts total and well below the rated 120 watts, pulls the voltage below 10V, which is so low that the nav/comm won’t power up fully. The display shows an undervoltage error and doesn’t allow any functionality.

Backup fail. One hundred fifty federal reserve notes essentially wasted.

That’s when the power station got demoted to two important but nonessential flight functions, and availability for non-flight operations such as CPAP while traveling or during power outages at home when I’m not inclined to go outside and fire up the whole-house genny.

First, preflight. Even with the voltage loss, it will power up the nav lights (LED), strobes (LED), landing light (LED), and panel lights sufficiently to verify operation without using the aircraft starting battery, allowing me to take my time with these items without worrying about draining the onboard battery. After checking those, I switch them off and activate the electric fuel pump to make sure it builds pressure. Once that is done, I isolate the power station output from the aircraft and perform the remainder of the preflight.

The second function is powering and charging my portable electronics during flight. As previously mentioned, I connect all the USB-powered equipment to the power station and plug in the accessory output from the aircraft to the power station’s charging port. The unit will allow the operation of the DC outputs while charging, letting the system essentially float during flight, keeping it nearly 100% charged during operation. Were I to lose aircraft power, the power station would easily supply all of my portable electronics for at least three times the duration of my total fuel capacity. I bought a much larger unit than needed for the job it got demoted into, expecting full backup capability.

That left me without an in-flight backup for the panel-mounted avionics should I lose  battery power. I have a handheld radio, and while it has limited power and range, it is better than nothing. I could probably navigate to an airport and shoot an approach well enough to survive just using my portable electronics if the weather isn’t horrible, but that’s not a good situation to be in. If it’s at night, the landing airport will have to be one with lights on all the time, as the handheld might or might not activate the runway lights much before short final, if it ever did. That means a major airport. I can only imagine the aftermath if I were to come into Charlotte, or even Raleigh with no clearance, no comms until only a couple of miles out, if at all, and no lights or transponder, at night, in IMC when tower light signals would be useless. They’d see me on radar as an unidentified target with no altitude data and would be diverting jets out of my way left and right while trying to figure out who/what I was, why I was in their airspace, and what I was doing.

Such is a very unlikely scenario, especially since I have a new(ish) alternator and voltage regulator, and I am about to have a new battery. It’s still possible, though. To mitigate that risk, I purchased a 20Ah lithium (iron, not cobalt – much more stable) 12V battery. I will set it up to backfeed through the same cables and accessory port that I use for the power station. I will then test it and make sure it will power the full panel and all the lights for at least thirty minutes. It should, since everything in there all together shouldn’t exceed ten amps when the radio isn’t transmitting. That should give me at least two hours if the battery rating is accurate. Another indication that it should be more than enough is that there is a purpose-built system made for GA aircraft with big MFDs that uses a 6Ah battery. It sells for over five hundred dollars, which is why I didn’t buy it. It includes a charger and a higher quality battery, but Ohm’s Law still applies.

I’m pretty confident that my plan will work. I spent $45 on the battery and another $20 on a 10A home charger certified for the battery chemistry – both paid for with the proceeds from my last bleed-in-a-bag bribe. I already had the cables that I’ll use for the tie-in. I’ll charge the battery periodically on the ground, at home, and only connect it in the airplane in the event of an emergency.

I’ll let you know how the test goes after I get the plane back from the annual.

I’d hoped to welcome the new year under two hundred pounds.  I didn’t make it.  I weighed 202.4 on the morning of January 1st. In spite of the disappointment, I’m much happier this  year than last year, seeing as I rang in 2025 at 252.8 pounds. I’ve not been above 205 since 12 December, but I’ve yet to break through 200 consistently.  It will come. The carnivore journey shall continue.

I’m still eating as much as I want, although I’ve had to decrease the size of some of my “standard” meals in order to stay in the sweet spot. For example, from the beginning, I would have a pound of sausage and eight or nine scrambled eggs. I found myself full with a good bit left on my plate (which I did eat, probably to my detriment) the last two times I had that, though. The most recent time I had that particular combination, I cut it to four eggs and was comfortably full when the food was gone. It’s not a hardship when I don’t feel deprived. I’m convinced that I’ll reach and maintain my goal weight without major adjustments to my current nutritional lifestyle.  It just might take a while.

My little bird is sitting at FRR waiting in line for its annual inspection and a bit of additional work. After several flight cancelations last week due to weather, I finally got a decent day on Sunday. The headwind was less than forecast, and instead of the usual routing over towards Richmond, I got direct CSN as soon as I cleared RDU’s approach corridor.  Then, about ten miles south of GVE, Potomac Approach came on the radio and said, “November 26045, you can go direct Front Royal if you want.”

The phrasing was odd, but the frequency wasn’t busy, and everyone tends to relax a bit when things are slow. That includes comms. I accepted, was given the official clearance, and turned twenty degrees left. A bit later, I figured out a possible reason for the addition of if you want. My filed final leg, CSN to FRR, would’ve taken me north of the tallest peaks in the area, the highest being 2909′, about two miles south of my route, and my time above anything resembling a mountain would have been very brief. From the position where I was offered direct destination, I passed over almost thirty miles of wildly varying terrain, some over 4,000′ just off my left wing.

The air had been smooth to that point, but crossing mountain ridges in winter at only about one thousand feet above ground level is begging for turbulence. I got said moderate turbulence the entire way from the first peak to the last. I was also nervously watching the Distance to Destination display on the GPS. I’d told them I’d take a visual approach, even though I’d never been there before and had no idea how difficult it would be to locate, because the only instrument approach in is a circling approach coming in from the northeast.

I was coming in on the perfect heading to enter left downwind for 28, but I still had one final peak between me and the valley where the airport is located when I hit eleven miles out. This was going to be fun. Clear that last peak, find the field, cancel IFR, and dump altitude from 5,000 to pattern altitude of 1,700 quick, fast, and in a hurry. Once over the peak, I saw two open areas in the direction that the GPS was pointing, at what I estimated was the now nine miles out that the GPS indicated.

I called up Potomac, canceled IFR, went rich on the mixture, flipped on the fuel pump, yanked power out, shoved the nose over, and made my first CTAF call. I still wasn’t sure where exactly the airport was. My plan was to keep flying straight towards where the GPS said it was until two miles out, be at pattern altitude at that point, and then turn to 010 for downwind 28. It would definitely be off my left wing and visible by that point. Or so I hoped. I actually positively identified the threshold at about three miles out, just before I started the turn to downwind.

According to flightaware, my descent rate hit 1,050 feet per minute at one point. Standard for small GA aircraft is 500. Don’t misunderstand, 1,000 – 1,250 is completely safe if a bit aggressive, as long as managed properly.  I did fine. Airspeed hit the yellow arc, and power was back around 2,000 RPM in order to get it to fall out of the sky at that rate, but the air had smoothed out by then so all was well. The seventy-five foot wide runway compared to the one hundred foot wide runways at TTA and HWY messed with my brain a little, and on the landing I rounded off a few feet higher than normal. Once I realized what I’d done, I added a touch of power back in to soften the drop. As it is prone to do, the right side settled first, side-loading the gear a little, but it was mild. 

I did learn a few things about my equipment during the flight. I’d left everything that wasn’t critical to the flight home, so there would be nothing extra to possibly get lost during the scheduled work. This included my power supply. I have a 230Wh power station that I use to power my Sentry ADSB receiver and the cooling fans on my iPad mount, and to keep my phone and secondary iPad charged during flight. It will provide DC power (USB and 12V) while charging, so I hook everything up and let the plane charge it as it powers everything. Normally, it keeps up, with the battery level being at ~98% after doing all that for a two plus hour flight. I left it at home, wanting as little to put in my flight bag for the drive home as possible.

Instead, I used my tertiary backup, a pair of (supposedly) 20Ah portable chargers to power things. They are over three and a half years old, and new were probably rated double their actual capacity, but I figured they would suffice for the expected three-hour flight. I didn’t connect the cooling fans, hooked one charger up to the iPad and the second one to the Sentry and my phone. That last part was the mistake. I forgot that the phone loses signal in the air and goes into a search/roam mode that burns power. Under normal circumstances, starting out fully charged, display off, it doesn’t need much to stay charged.

The Sentry doesn’t pull much power either. I figured one charger would easily cover that and keep my phone charged. I knew that the second one wouldn’t keep up with the iPad usage with the display at full brightness, but figured it would keep the onboard battery from dropping too much. About two hours in, the iPads popped up an alert, saying that the Sentry had disconnected. I glanced over and saw that the lights were indeed off. I grabbed an ancient charger/backup that I’d forgotten was even my flight bag (I know, I am obsessive about multiple layers of backups – you would be, too, if you’d lost your alternator on a night flight over an hour from your destination) and plugged the Sentry into it. It powered back up and stayed on for the remainder of the flight. I did notice at the time the Sentry failed that the iPad had stopped charging and was at 58% battery remaining. 

The flight almost didn’t happen, though. Despite temperatures in the low 40s and the fact that I’d flown less than two weeks prior, the battery was barely up to the task. It turned over slowly, and while five strokes is usually perfect for that temperature, I didn’t seem to be able to get the amount of prime for the carburetor right. It caught but wouldn’t stay running. I refreshed the prime and tried again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Finally, it got to the point that it wouldn’t turn over at all. I set the parking brake, primed it yet again, and started to climb out to hand prop it. I was halfway out when something told me to try it one more time. I did, and that time, although it turned over very slowly, it caught and stayed running for about fifteen seconds before coughing and dying again. The battery got just enough from the alternator during that little bit of runtime to s-l-o-w-l-y turn it over again. Fortunately, it caught quickly and stayed alive that time. I added battery replacement to my squawk list. 

I usually eat three pounds (uncooked weight) of bacon every week, minus however much Wife scarfs down nibbles on while she cooks it and sees to putting it away. Which is probably in the neighborhood of four to six ounces. Pan frying is slow and tedious, so we have been cooking it on foil-lined baking sheets in the oven since before my carnivore journey began. Most of the time, she cooks it in the evening while I’m at work.

I’ve seen lots of videos recently about cooking it in an air fryer. We own an air fryer, so tonight I decided to give that a try. I took the entire twenty-four ounce package, cut the slices into 1½” pieces, and dropped them into the pan. The most common recommendation is to cook at 400° and stir/check every five minutes until it is cooked to the desired level of firmness. I did this, and approximately thirty minutes later, I had a most delicious plate of salty pig fat.

I repeated the process with the second package while Wife inspected and performed quality checks on a few lots of the crispier pieces. You see, she prefers her bacon charred into elemental carbon and little else, while I like mine still a tiny bit bendy. The result contained a range between the two, to which she gave her seal of approval.

Cook time was similar, but cleanup was easier and faster than the baking sheet method. Pour the grease directly into a waiting jar or other collection container for future use, separate the inner and outer pans, use a spatula to collect the tiny bits that didn’t pour out, and then wash normally.

… has repercussions. This is the result of my birthday indiscretion.

Normal fluctuations of a couple of pounds.  Then, a starch-induced spike that took two weeks to recover from. I’m finally making progress again, and while not yet consistently below 200, I have seen numbers starting with a 1 a couple more times since last week’s report. I hope to leave the 200s completely behind in the new year. Which is right around the corner, in case you hadn’t noticed. 

Last night’s flight took me over 400 hours total time. Of that, 250 (okay, 249.2, so almost 250) is in my airplane. Despite weather and maintenance issues, particularly the six weeks of downtime for the fuel tank resealing, and the fact that it wasn’t returned to service following the engine overhaul until late January, I’ve still flown it 85 hours this year. 

First time under 200 since 2008. It was a much-needed psychological victory, but it’s not real. I mean, the reading really happened, but it was Monday morning, after zero food and less than eight ounces of water during the preceding twenty-four hours.

Sundays are normally fast days, often dry fasts. Even when I don’t intentionally go zero water, I never do full, normal hydration. I prefer to avoid the urge to void my bladder during my trip home.

As of today (Wednesday), my weight is 201.2. I hope that I’ll be reliably and consistently under 200 by the new year. 

If my memory is operating properly, forty-three to forty-five years ago, I was in middle school. In either seventh or eighth grade, I took band class. My instrument of choice was the trumpet. I wasn’t very good, mostly because, like with every class, I didn’t do homework. For band class, homework was practice, and I avoided it as fervently as I did all homework. I was second or third trumpet for the single concert that we put on at the end of the year.

Fast forward to Mom’s death last year. One of the items found in with her books and paperwork was my old trumpet music book. I enjoyed a few moments of nostalgia upon finding it, and promptly forgot about it. That was it, or so I thought.

The past month or so, the instrument crossed my mind again a few times. I got to wondering if I could still play. Last week, I found a cheap horn on Craigslist, supposedly new, with an asking price of sixty-five federal reserve notes. I drove up to the Containment Area for Retired Yankees (Cary) just outside of Raleigh and made the purchase.  I’ve since been able to make it make noise resembling musical notes if one is generous with the definition of musical notes.

I’ve been hitting YubTub for tips and lessons, and I am trying to see if I can regain my prowess ineptitude from nearly half a century ago. 

… but still productive and useful. That statement doesn’t apply only to humans. It seems that chicken guts get wrinkled with age, just like human skin. Here is the last two days’ effort of one of my geriatric tiny dinosaurs. 

Fully intact, a bit of a thin shell, but still delicious.