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'Mema Microsoft Mission'

9/27/07 - Thursday was supposed to start with an early morning flight down to Waco and back to deliver a new computer to my mother-in-law.  You know how you grab an old computer from your day job (with permission) to refurbish for a relative?  My wife's Mom had been using an old dinosaur computer from that vintage for many years (4GB hard disk, 2MB RAM).  Barely strong enough to run Windows and attach to the Internet.  It's amazing what you can buy for about $350 now from Dell, and Mema hasn't been able to see the pictures we had been taking lately, and the sound didn't work, and the printer didn't work, etc......it was time for an upgrade.

Like any good son-in-law, I had it shipped to our house so I could get it all configured and set up like she would need it (Google Earth installed, email client configured, all the current MS patches installed, etc).  I had hoped to be wheels up at 0700.  Instead, I rose to the following text message on my phone:

 
BTW, what is Kahuna doing up at 0540?

Sigh.  I remote'd into the server and found a disk was full.  A quick call up to the tech guys in St. Louis solved the problem - a folder that was supposed to be auto-deleting wasn't.  One more thing to check on after the next major upgrade.  Deleting those files freed up 60GB of disk space - that'll hold it for awhile.  Now, off to the airport and Waco (20 minutes behind schedule).  Pulled Flash out of the hangar and loaded the cargo.  The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon as I pulled up to the pump at the Blue Hangar Cafe.  Gas was $3.69 today.

You can click on any of the images below for a 1,024 pixel-wide enlargement...

Survival vest on.  Climb out from runway 17 at 52F brought me into a really pretty sunrise.  I flew straight to the Ranger VOR at 1,900' to keep below the inner shelf of DFW's class B and then direct to KACT at 3,500'.  As I crossed I-30 I looked to the West and saw a setting Moon over Ft. Worth.  The pocket camera didn't do it justice.

While enroute I got to play with my recently-mounted 496 with XM weather.  There was an outflow boundary passing through DFW that the weather folks were all atwitter about, so there were some light showers to deal with.  Having the NEXRAD returns right there in front of me made the trip that much more of a 'no sweat' event.  Note in the picture below the WX is 4 minutes old, and that I got a pretty good shot in 'macro' mode of the screen.  For those not familiar...you can animate the weather if you would like to see its movement.  Ironflight is right....XM weather changes everything.

Pretty much immediately after I left DFW class B I went to 119.3 (Waco tower) and simultaneously monitored 121.5 on standby.  No need to be surprised by the President visiting the ranch - even though no TFRs were forecast or shown listed on the web, they've been known to pop up without warning.  The little blue circle just to the right of KACT on the GPS screen below is P-49 (the Crawford ranch).  The little upside down blue triangles indicate VFR conditions (XM WX).

Got on the ground at Waco and loaded the PC into Mema's car, then it was off to Cracker Barrel for breakfast.  I had the Pecan Pancakes with warm maple syrup, a side order of extra crispy bacon and a Dr. Pepper.  Breakfast of champions.  Engine run time down to Waco was 40 minutes, including run up and taxiing.

We got the computer all squared away easily - it's pretty much plug and play these days.  I had to download a print driver from HP.com (the disk she had didn't include the Vista driver).  Loaded the old computer into her car to take to Goodwill.  What do you think of her calendar?

She drove me back to the airport (8 minutes) and dropped me off for the return flight.  As we were saying goodbye I told her that I didn't use the credit card number she insisted on giving me days earlier.  Susie and I bought it for her as an early Christmas present.  Good deed of the day <g>.

Got back in the RV, got ATIS, ground clearance to taxi and launched for home.  I took off from rwy 19 in about 5 seconds and climbed like a RV does, then did a crisp 180 for Dallas after using about a third of the runway.  I got a 'Nice!' from the tower, which was....well......nice.  There were some returns in the DFW area still (turns out it was just virga, but it's good to know about these anyway).

 

While still about 15 minutes out from 52F I heard Walt's voice on 22.9, so I checked in with him.  About ten minutes out, while watching a slugger pass diagonally over me about two thousand feet up, I glanced down at a flock of pelicans flying about 500' below me.  There must have been 150 of them and they were all the size of my backpack.  If you hit these square on I'd be surprised if you'd keep flying, so I was extra vigilant on my scan for the rest of the trip.  I called 10 miles out, then 3 miles out on the 45 for downwind.  As I was on left downwind for 17, literally mid-field, a Spammer crossed over in front of me from the west side of the runway.  I had him in sight the whole time and did radio as he was crossing over the runway, 'hey Cessna, you got me at your 2 o'clock?'.  He said 'yeah' and then proceeded to turn right in front of me.  Unbelievable.  I pulled power to idle, prop forward, flaps full and did a 180* turn to final and was over the numbers before he started his base turn.  Geez.

After wipe down I went down to visit Walt for a bit, and of course stopped in at Grady's paint shop next door (www.GLOcustom.com).  The -10 that they have in there now is 99% done - they were putting it back together.  The lady in the photo is Grady's wife, and we all thought the shirt advertising opportunity was a good idea <g>.  Check out the louvers in the lower cowl half.

A four and a half hour round trip drive was converted into 1.2hrs in the RV.  A good trade any day.

Doug 1.  Pelicans and Sluggers 0.

A good day.  A great plane.  Thanks again, Van.

 

Doug Reeves