| ||
Wed 2024-11-20
Tue 2024-11-19
Mon 2024-11-18
Sun 2024-11-17
Love, Acceptance, and Screeching Modems Sat 2024-11-16
Fri 2024-11-15
Search
Archives
2023
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
One good site
MDN
Nelson Minar
Blog licensed under a Creative Commons License
|
I'm sitting in St. Louis waiting for our plane to be fixed. This
repair is the third required on our trip to Boston and back. The first
was replacing a vacuum pump in Santa Fe; that only delayed us
a few hours. The second was replacing a gear indicator switch in
Poughkeepsie where we were stopped for a few days anyway. Failure #3 is bad
luck, the attitude indicator failed on Saturday morning.
Mechanics generally don't work weekends and you have to have parts
shipped anyway, so now it's Tuesday and they just installed a new one
and it doesn't work, something else is wrong.
The good news is none of these failures was anything serious; the plane flies fine even without fixing them (albeit it's not legal nor smart). The bad news is repairs are delays, multiple days of delay, and it gets a bit tiresome. The other big slowdown in a little plane is winds. Generally you expect a 10-15kt wind from the west across the US, so you get a tailwind going east and a headwind coming home. But winds change a lot down low and we've had terrible luck. We haven't seen a tailwind yet and half our days have had 25kt+ headwinds, making us travel 20% slower. Between headwinds and other weather our 3 day trip to Boston ended up taking 4.5. At least we're stuck in St. Louis and not somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It's a nice city. |
|
