Monday, September 17, 2018

2018 Volvo meet at OHTM

On Saturday we got an early start and made the two hour run up to the Owls Head Transportation Museum for the Foreign Auto Festival .  And we are glad we did as it was a great event and a good bunch of like minded folks several of whom knew dad and his old Volvo .
Volvo Club of Maine president Joe Kendall puts in a big effort to get the marque to make a strong showing at the event . . . .
And since as of dad's passing last November we now are accidental owners of his old 1962 PV544 we got to be part of the festivities  .
P1800s had a strong presence
Dave Burnham's 140 series was there
 Looking very tidy under the hood
 Ron Lockwood with his immaculate P1800 was there
 And a Mustang Cobra five liter V8 mated to a T5 trannie . . .
 . . . . stuffed in David Moore's 940 series wagon
 Indomitable Joe Kendall's pristine 142
  With a surgically clean engine compartment you could eat out of . . .
 A nicely restored 1958? PV445 Duet . . .
 . . .  that Quasimodo got parked next to
 Head of the lineup too .
 A sweet P1800 wagon
 And a nineteen seventies vintage Marco
 Plywood and fiberglass construction
 With a Volvo B30 engine
 The B30 is a six cylinder three liter variant from the 160 series Volvos .
 Not a Volvo but a Swedish cousin also snuck in , a late sixties , I think , Saab 99
 After the meet at the museum we were all invited to Duncan and Naomi's house in Spruce Head for a big lobster feed .
Here in Maine you'll never see so many rust free Volvos together .
 Quasimodo got the center stage spot again
 A sweet view of the cove
 More Volvos than you can shake a stick at .
 The old and the new bling
 Some definitely a bit more Loco than others
 I think dad would be happy to see his PV keeping company with his old friends .
 David Moore's red hot mustang powered 940 wagon has to be my favorite
We were even blessed with a visit by iconic Maine radio personalty THE  "Humble Farmer".
I took a whole lot more photos of the other cars at the Foreign Auto Festival but this post is long enough for today .

Monday, September 3, 2018

A little bit of Saturday flying

It had been over a year since my friend Clint and I had been able to coordinate some flying together . But I got the call from him on Friday and my weekend to-do list was taken care off so I had the day to go play .
 The Bonanza had a new electronic magneto put on it and we needed to do some testing to check our power setting versus engine temperatures .
 For those not familiar with aviation , piston engine airplanes have two sources of ignition and two spark plugs per cylinder to not only provide more efficient combustion , but a redundancy factor should one ignition decide to quit at an inopportune moment . When the big fan in the front of the plane stops spinning it gets awful hot in the cockpit . And that is never a good thing .Traditionally the source of ignition is a self contained magneto . A gear driven mechanical device that produces its own electricity and times the spark to the plugs . That device is the black thing in the middle of the above photo on the white baffle just below the cowl hinge .
 New advances in technology have provided us with the wonders of electronic ignition . Traditionally general aviation has been reluctant to mess with new systems if the old system works . Issues with legal liability are imperative and often surpass practical application . But advances do come however glacially . The Continental engine in the Bonanza has now been approved so that one of the old magnetos can be replaced with newfangled electronic ignition system . This now provides the engine with a 70K volt spark as opposed to the old 12K volt one . It gives us better and more complete combustion , easier starting , and no mechanical wear implicit in the old dynamo and breaker points of the traditional magneto . The new ignition system can be seen in the photo above as the two black boxes , one on the white baffle and one on the firewall and associated red plug leads .
Parked in the hangar next to the Bonanza was this Bell Jet ranger
 Belonging to Windham Weaponry .
 After a quick departure clearance out of PWM we are soon over South Portland at a thousand feet .
 The Portland harbor view looking north east towards the islands of Casco Bay
  Passing through forty two hundred feet
 Over Willard Beach in South Portland looking north east
The islands in Casco bay with Peaks island in the top right corner of the photo
Passing over Fort Gorges
 Climbing through ten thousand feet . . .
 . . . we don oxygen cannulas so our brains continue to retain some reasonable measure of function , some of us need all the help we can get .
 Leveling of at thirteen thousand five hundred feet , we do some air-work and play with the throttle and mixture settings while keeping a close eye on the engine monitor for about ten minutes to see how the engine behaves .
 Once done with that we shoot a practice instrument approach in to Augusta
 Short final into Augusta
 The Flight-Aware mapping of our movement from Portland to Augusta
(click on the pix to "embigen" and see the details)
 After a quick lunch stop in Augusta we head out and shoot an approach into Brunswick
 Final into Brunswick , with Topsham and the Androscoggin river off the right wing
 Then it's back to Portland where we shoot another practice instrument approach
 Short final to runway 18
And a smooth touch down......
 The flight aware track of our ride from Augusta , low approach in to Brunswick and back to PWM