I'm Baaaack

Dear Readers I apologize for not posting for so long. I wanted to end the fly-in season with a big note at GED, but I got sick. I hope this winter to do some gen av flying. I will also relate some old tales of the Airmail. So stay tuned and send me remarks.

wrestling with politics

Well here it is the end of October and I haven't posted in seven weeks. No excuse. Actually I wanted to say a lot. But it wasn't about aviation. With the elections coming up, politics has been on my mind. But politics is like religion. It's what you feel and what you wish and what you want. So of course people can't agree. It's too subjective. I wanted to find a candidate who was for gun bearing rights who was not a whacko Christian. This is impossible of course, because you can not run for president in this country without being a Christian. But I found a politician I can get behind. He's not running for anything right now, but I'm going to buy his recent book. His name is Jesse Ventura.

GPS Talk

Today is October 29th. A Thursday. It's blustery outside. Both of my airplanes sit safely tucked in the hanger. They both got their annuals done. They have no squawks on them. Anyone who owns an airplane knows there is no such thing as "no squawks". Every time I get everything fixed, something else breaks. This time it was the GPS unit in the Cher OH kee. It just stopped being able to compute. It was acquiring the space vehicles, but couldn't go from there. This is an old, but nice, panel mounted, Apollo 800 with data card. It doesn't have a moving map. Everyone says you simply must have a moving map. I really like the old Apollo, and I don't give a damn that it doesn't have a map. I have a portable Garman 196 which has a moving map, and I never use the map feature. The 196 by the way is a great unit. Most people have the 296 or the 396 or something better. But the 196 is cheap. I paid $700 new. It's monochrome. But it's great because it's portable and I can use it in the Cadet as my primary nav and in the Cher OH kee as a second GPS which makes navigation great. Unfortunately, the old Apollo isn't worth repairing. How could it be when I can buy a brand new 196 portable for $700?. If I were to take the Apollo to an avionics shop, they could charge me 2 or 3 hundred just to tell me it aint worth fixing. So, mechanic Dan advised me to get a used unit and slide it in. So I told my wife, who is the E-Bay expert. She started bidding on them, and we kept getting outbid. But the other day we got the bid on one. It arrived today. Will it slide in and work? I hope so. First nice day we'll find out. I've got to dig through my allen wrench collection and find that really tiny tool that is the key to swapping units. Now, as long as nothin' else breaks...