Ahh... What can I say? They were good! For me it was a trip down memory lane this evening. Now a bit of back story. In the 60s and early 70s my Aunt, Uncle and cousins would come out from North Dakota in the middle of August every year.

One of the things we would do is have dinner at Grandma B's home. Grandma B had a small farm with a large garden. So we would spend most of the day of the dinner at Grandma's and us kid's would dig up a couple of potatoe mounds sorting the large and small potatoes. The small potatoes would be washed and readied for cooking. The large one were put in the celler.

Now of course if you are going to dig potatoes and sort them you have to be on your knees in the dirt... Us kids got the garden hose shower most of the time. Of course we knew to bring a change of clothes.

Grandma B and her family came from Iceland shortly after WWI she was rather young at the time. Her brothers were gone before I came around but I did meet her sister a few times. Yes there was bad blood between Grandma and her sister, a story I will not get into.

Anyway Grandma B would fix Salt Potatoes for us kid's... and let me tell you the adults ate their share too, so it wasn't just for us kids.

If you haven't had salt potatoes you are missing out big time!

The best potatoes are thumb size up to chicken egg size. The brine is 1 cup of kosher salt to 5-6 cups of water. If the potatoes just float that's about right.

Bring the brine to a boil add the potatoes when it comes back to a boil in about 5 to 10 minutes you spuds are really. Oh course test the with a fork to make sure they are done. Next drain them do not leave them in the water. As the dry a salt film will form on them leave it! Let them cool a bit and serve with warm butter to dip them in.

Because the potatoes are being cooked in a brine they cook up a bit different because the brine boils at a high temperature than straight water... it is worth doing if just for the novelty.

I hope you enjoy them, I sure did!

Richard and I have been talking and rethinking what to work on design wise. And what do we have on hand. The single largest expense will be the power plant... well I have two rebuildable vw type 1 motors. VW motors don't spin a very large propeller direct drive... so a silo or tandem seat aircraft design will give the best performance.

This leads me right back to a tandem seating Nuthatcher with motorcycle seating to keep the center of gravity shift in the range for the airfoil I'll be using.

With 65 horsepower cruise speed will not be all that hot something around 90 mph... hey that beats walking by a long way.

Now somewhere in my stuff I have the plans for Don Stewart's Maximizer for the VW motor, it's a propeller speed reduction unit that let's you turn the motor faster for more power and the propeller slower so you can use a longer prop for better over all performance. The design is over 40 years old and drive belt technology has come a long way in this time. So we will have to see where things go.

I went back and looked at the Australian ultralight called the Tyro again and honestly this is the flying I like to do. Yes it's short take off and land by definition but it's not extreme like STOL Drags is.

We've had some wonderful sunsets and would love to do sunset flights.

Blessings all be safe out there guys

Well I'm sitting here in the dark because of a power outage... it's no big deal we average 3 to 5 outages a year... this is the third in less than a month.

So my plans got changed... because of planning I have USB power but that doesn't power the desktop. Oh well a gas range is handy at times like this... time for breakfast.

I was thinking of keeping my camping plane about the size of a Piper Tri-Pacer that being 30 foot wingspan and 20 feet long.

But thinking it over and crunching numbers I think going with more wing area is better for low end performance. This will give the design more utility over all for general use, in the end it's all about having a safe and enjoyable flying airplane.

So what tradeoffs am I looking at? The wingspan will grow to 36 feet this will lower the stall speed to 45 mph clean and 32 mph with flaps. What do the changes needed do to the cruise speed? Less than you think. With the added wingspan and longer fuselage the 70 horsepower cruise speed drops from 125 to 120 mph, that's with a calculated fuel burn of 4.5 gallons an hour, but it you push it it will do 135 at 80% power on a 125 horse power plant but the fuel burn is now 6.6 gallons an hour.

Of course if you use a legacy aircraft engine the fuel burn will be higher because they are not as efficient with their fuel as the convention engine I'm looking at using.

With the 36 foot wingspan and 21-22 foot long fuselage it will be about the same size as a Piper Super Cub with about the same low speed performance, but will have better cruise performance on the same fuel burn as the Super Cub. I see myself flying this more by fuel burn than by the actual cruise speed.

With any design spreadsheet the spreadsheet make assumptions about the design in the calculations, so this design could do better than what the spreadsheet is saying. With the fuselage being a 4 foot wide lifting body the speeds may be better than what we see.

Anyway enjoy your day and have a safe weekend. Oh keep a bit of craziness in your heart... it helps with dealing with the mundane world around you!

Over the last 4 or 5 days I've been working at getting over the china crud that hit me over three weeks ago. I tire quickly and brain seems to become mush about the same time I become tired.

Myron is very understanding of this, he was dealing with this in May... so I'm doing short days.

One of many beautiful aircraft that have been designed here in the Pacific Northwest is the Sorrell SNS-7 HiperBipe. Back in the 80s I came close to going to work for the Sorrell's as a welder and metal fabricator.

Anyway Hobie's HiperBipe is the design that's inspiring a high wing design of the aircraft on my drawing board. My idea is to develop the fuselage so two can sleep in it if needed...

Taking a few clues from Steve Whitman's Tailwind I think I can get a fair tuen of speed on not a lot of horsepower. My worksheets say a 125 mph cruise speed on a 4.5 gallon an hour fuel burn. I could get a higher cruise speed if I narrowed the fuselage but I would loose the room to sleep in it and some of the utility the 48 inch wide fuselage offers.

I'm working on getting the low speed characteristics to be similar to the Cessna 150/152 so it's a good low time pilot aircraft but the cruise speed will be about 30 miles an hour faster on less fuel. If the numbers I'm seeing hold true this aircraft will work well on turf runway.

Today I got a line drawing of the HiperBipe printed so I can scale the profile. I'm looking at designing the aircraft so it can use either tricycle or conventional landing gear...

So go do something and enjoy the evening.

I'm on my 2nd week of dealing with the coof... last week all I did was sleep. My lungs and chest are clearing out, still have joint and muscle aches to deal with but I'm feeling better slowly.

Have been thinking of what I would like to have in a first aircraft... so I dug out my drawing for Cal Parker Tinwind or Tiny Three. The design was inspired by Steve Whittmen's Tailwind. The Tinwind is a small design with a 20 foot wingspan and 16 feet long. It is a speedy little thing with a 160ish cruise on 125 horsepower.

So I started loading the design's parameters into my design spreadsheet to see what could be done with the design to make it more low time pilot friendly.

So what design parameters would be acceptable? How about the same landing parameters as a Cessna 150? That's doable. How about having better flight characteristics than a Cessna 150? That's doable.

So I started number crunching... how about a two place design that handles like a 150 but 50 miles an hour faster at cruise speed?

As most of my watchers know my hobby is aviation... and I have been playing with different aircraft designs over the many years.

The problem I've been having is to develop an airframe that is adaptable for the builder. Someone wants tandem seating another wants side by side...

Over the weekend I worked out a way to do that with a central spine that everything attaches to. And it could be flown with no sides panels on at all.

Looking at the price of steel and aluminum tubing and aluminum sheet tells me I want to use as little of it as possible.

So the spine will be made of wood, foam, fiberglass and epoxy. The spine will be six inches wide. It will run from the forward most bulkhead to the tail and from the wing spar attach fitting down to the bottom of the fuselage where the landing gear attaches.

The side panels will be paper-glass so it should be fast to build.

It's going to be about the size of a Piper J-3 Cub and carry about the same load of people gass and gear.

In the background of my mind is a larger one that is a four place aircraft using the same spine concept for the most part.

Rich is very intrigued with this build idea.

Be safe out there guys the crazies are out there.
Blessings fem

The last week has been really nice weather wise, the local got their hay mowed and bailed... Of course with them haying my allergies have been running amuck, taking the antihistamine can knock me in the dirt depending on how badly my body is reacting.

This morning about 6 a.m. we had a lightning strike my guess within a few hundred feet from us from the sound of it. Bella Dogga first did the Mom protect me thing, after a few more local strikes she relaxed. The cell must have been just about over the top of us when things started. We has strikes around us for about 15 minutes before the cell moved off. The last flash I saw it's report was a bit over three seconds later so that would put it at 3/4 of a mile away.

Went back to snoozing... when we got up,looking outside we have rain and fog. Bella is doing her 'It's pee O'clock!' thing. I can't blame her I was going the same.

This morning's walk had to be the fastest she has done. We didn't get 50 feet from the house and she was headed back... it was raining, it was foggy and it was chilly, no reason to stay out any longer than needed for her. Over the last couple weeks she has been blowing her coat so she gets cold easy. Getting back inside the first thing after she is off the leash... she made a beeline for the bedroom. She is sprawled out on the bed facing the door asleep.

The last two days I've been chasing electrical gremlins one on a dump truck the other a D 5 dozer... that's 13 hours of chasing my tail and racking my brain!

The truck came down to someone doing a bastarddizion installation and really mucking things up and a bad switch.

The D 5 came down to corroded off positive side pins in two power plugs... that got disturbed while the machine was bring power washed... let's see 300 to 400 dollars for a new harness and three to four weeks wait or 6 dollars of crimp connector and wire we had on hand... she starts right up.

The last two days I've felt like I didn't get a lot done because there isn't much to show for two days work. But things are working as they should when they should.

I'm officially a gray muzzle... just kidding I've been one for a while. But I am now 65 and that's thirteen times longer than the doctors gave me in 1957. It seems I've proven a fair number of people wrong over the years... I look forward to doing that for many more years to come.

The years of working on a shop floor or boat deck are showing up... so body is telling me to slow down or you are going to hurt now. Hey that's not new.

Enough about me... Lady Mouse is healing well and is looking forward to getting through this stuff with her shoulder replacement so she can get out of Seattle. I don't blame her.

Anyway you'll have a good day and do what you can to stay upbeat and positive... yes there are entities that feed on negative energy... so stay positive to keep them at bay!

Lady Mouse asked me to thank all of you for the well wishes and encouragement, it means a lot to her and me as well. Your well wishes were very much appreciated by both of us. In this world with much indifference around us, it is very heart warming, thank you from us.

Blessings all be safe out there, the crazies are going to get worse... just give them time.

Mouse is in recovery, the surgery went well I was told. They removed her gall bladder and some of her liver because the gall bladder was enlarged that it and the liver has grown together. The bigger concern was possible cancers... they tested and no cancer was found, but they are doing a more detailed test in the lab.

Texted with her and she says the have her wired and plumbed with three IVs.

So the next surgery will be her shoulder replacement. Then comes getting her back up here home.

On the way to the Roche Harbor Store I spotted two black and silver fox kits there by one of the hangers by the road. On the way back one of them was curled up under the edge of a blackberry bush.

This was a most enjoyable surprise for me.

As of late my writing muse seems to be teasing me with ideas for a story but when I slow down to do writing she steps out of the building... I don't know how many of you would be interesting in a lesbian werewolf story...

My design muses have been running amuck a fair bit of the time... I have the working sketches for a couple of home layouts and floor plans.

I was playing with a couple of aircraft designs that looked like a PZL Wilga in different sizes and seating configurations... then it dawned on me what i was playing with was much like my Nuthatcher only upside down. But it wouldn't really be what I want to build.

So I went back to my Nuthatcher design and played with the design more. I also asked myself what was the mission for the design? It came down to, a simple to build and fly off airport aircraft. Construction and operation costs played in there. So it was back to the spreadsheets to work out how to get better proforamance with less power.

Some pilots like tandem seating for off airport flying and others like side by side seating... the solution develop a common wing platform and change the fuselage to fit the builders seating preference. Rich really likes this idea.

After crunching numbers the tandem seating will be a little better proformer and will fly well with a type 1 VW motor. Side-by-side seating suffers with a type 1 VW motor. Both do better with more power.

We are designing for the Light Sport category of 1300 pounds gross weight but Rich and I agree to a design gross weight of 1500 pounds... just because some builders are not very bright and do stupid things when building from plans!

Next week Mouse is going in for a minor surgery then the next one is shoulder replacement. So I'm going to be a bit distracted with that on my mind... she is in good spirits and looking forward to getting through this stuff.

Blessings all, be safe out there guys. The crazies are just getting started!

It is the season for the local foxes and fox kits to be around... sadly I haven't heard any fox calls or seen any kits in the normal places.

Bella Dogga has started being playful and a goofball. This tells me she is relaxing, feeling comfortable here. I started playing grab the tail when we are out for walks and calling her a silly dog. She has also taken to cuddling up to me when I'm sleeping and laying on my foot when I'm at the computer. Over all she is doing good.

Got the word Mouse has a shoulder surgery date of the 16th. The plan is to replace the shoulder joint. Let's hope things go well this time!

Blessings all.

Last night Mouse and I chatted over the phone and I shared your well wishes with her, she appreciated them and asked me to thank all of you for them. I could tell she wasn't expecting the well wishes.

I thank you too.

Blessings all, be safe out there guys.
femm

Mouse was released yesterday from the hospital to return to the apartment in Ballard. This means she is stable and she sees the doctor Monday about her shoulder replacement.

She is back to eating normal meals and feeling good about life as a whole. Talked with her this evening and she sounds good and is upbeat this is a good change.

Not much more to add.

Myself I've been working on different things at work. Been playing with house designs for an inexpensive home. Something that has me thinking is a 18 foot wide by 48 foot gothic arch house. It could easy be a three bedroom home with two bedrooms in the loft.

With an 8 inch thick wall you could get an R 30 in the wall and roof. I worked out the rough cost of making the wall/roof trusses at thirty-five hundred dollars for a 60 foot long home. For insulation I would use styrocreat because it doesn't burn... granted you have to make it... but at about ten dollars a cubic yard that beats fiberglass. Myself I like the idea of steel roofing but you could stucco the whole outside of the home. Then apply a polymer elastic coating over that for sealing everything.

The layout would work for a nice shop space too it would be easy to heat and cool. Some would say it's too narrow. Maybe, maybe not. It all comes down to what you are doing in the space. For working on a car or truck it's lots of room. Building airplane parts again lots of room for what you will be doing. You will just need to plan out your work space.

Blessings all be safe out there guys, the crazies are out there!

I've been a bit num on Lady Mouse... she has been having some big issues the last couple of weeks. But they think they have one of the issues worked out.

Some of you may know some internal organs do multiple functions at controlling bodily functions. This is one of the problems Mouse is dealing with. They have traced things to her gallbladder that is not functioning at all, this is one of the reasons her blood sugar levels were all over the place.

Mouse is not telling me much at this time, likely because she is not being told a lot. So we just deal with things as they come to us.

Myself with the change in meds I'm feeling better over all, I still tire easy but no chest pain or discomfort and that's great.

On the 16th I took Bella for a morning walk... I ran out of breath and started feeling pressure in my chest... so I headed back to the house... after sitting for a bit the discomfort didn't go away.

So I called EMS and waited for them. I figured they would just hook me up do an EKG and call it good. I was wrong they had me grab my fannypack, my ID, cain and lock up my place then loaded me in the ambulance. They strapped me in and hooked up the EKG and we were headed to the Emergency Room. This was about 9:30 in the morning.

I was wired for sound in the ER and monitored four hours. The doctor wanted to send me off island for evaluation because my heart didn't settle down till they gave me some Nitroglycerin. It wasn't 100% but it was better. So Lifeflight was called and I was put on the schedule.

On the 16th I got my first ride in a turbine powered aircraft it was a Pilatus PC-12. Myself I would have enjoyed riding up front in the right-hand seat... that didn't happen, I was strapped to the gurnny in the back of the plane. This was about Six P.M. the flight from Friday Harbor over to BLI oops Bellingham was about 15 minutes. Then another ambulance ride to the Cardiovascular Center in Bellingham. Before the evening was over I was feeling like a Pin cushion and had two IVs in me...

Over the two days I was in Bellingham they did a stress test on my heart... all images look good for the most part but there are somethings that did concerned the cardiologist that being one of the chambers is smaller than the other side this suggests pulmonary issues. The big thing, no signs of a heart attack!

This is a possibility of pulmonary issues because I came into this world about three weeks too soon... the lungs develop the most in the last six weeks of a pregnancy. I had low lung capacity compaired to others of the same age and size when it was tested 30 some years ago...

The cardiologist changed some of my daily meds and gave me a new one just for the heart, lungs and kidneys.

So there will be more testing in the future for me. I have a good outlook on life and we hope and plan for the best.

While I was away Bella made a bit of a mess in the trailer, she wouldn't let Rich in so he couldn't walk her. It's all good as far as I'm concerned.

Now it's clean-up mess time

I saw part of Jessie's sentencing today... I found it interesting how he went on about not being suicidal and if he dies somebody did it to him. At first I thought Drama Queen... then I remembered, oh wait he is a drama queen or likes to cause drama around him and others.

Then I started to wonder what inside information was Jessie privilege to? Does he see himself a threat to his aunt Kamala Harris that someone would bump him off?

I think there could be a connection between Jessie's staged hate crime and his aunt Kamala's push for an anti-linching bill that was being pushed just about the same time... things to ponder on when you have time.

Oh Jessie got 150 days in lockup and 30 months probation, sounds rather lax for the garbage Jessie put this country through with his lies that were echoed by mainstream media. Say nothing of the laws he violated...

Have a good one, be safe out there.

Took Mouse in this morning to see the surgeon who did the shoulder surgery... the bone where the plates were placed has denigrated that was why her shoulder was feeling rather crunchy for a while.

So they plan on doing a MRI of her shoulder to see how bad things are, then they are going to keep her in the hospital so they can get her blood sugar levels under control before they open her up again to replace the shoulder.

They are also talking about the using a borescope to see what's going on in the area for things like infection and other issues. There is a chance they may just open up the shoulder to have a look at what's going on, it will depend on what the MRI shows.

Friends are looking after the cat, Bella and I are headed back to the island so I can get some hours in to pay the bills.

Blessings all be safe out there.
Femm

Mouse has been out of the hospital for a few days now. She is still recovering from health issues that have gone unchecked for a while now...

Today we had an uneventful anniversary... That's a good thing right now. This was our first anniversary together in many years... due to the way things have been for us over the years. For the record anniversary number twenty-three is in the books!

We were going to go out for dinner to celebrate our anniversary, but because of the place we were planning on going requiring masks and vaccination cards we stayed home and said screw it. So we had baked potatoes, T-bone steaks and chocolate covered strawberries for dessert... and no-one to bother us as we enjoyed our meal together.

Blessings all, be safe out there.

Lady Mouse checked herself out of the care facility because of the lack of care, I went and got her brought her back to Ballard. I was caring for her, was having a hard time getting her to eat anything... well on a trip back from the bathroom she blacked out and fell to the floor. Long story short she is back in the hospital and they are actually trying to figure out what's going on like why her blood pressure drops like a rock. When EMS took her BP it was 68 over 43 that's about half of what it should be.

Anyway they are working on getting to the cause of the issues, they have her taking a lot of vitamins and minerals that her body needs, she is feeling better and is getting stronger. She is doing what she can to get back on her feet... I think she has realised she wasn't taking care of herself and this scared her.

I'm back on the island getting some hours in at work. Bella is also settling on here as well... being out in the country is new for her she was a city dog.

Myself and Rich talked about the Nuthatcher and Sleeper designs and they may be to radical for most builders as a designer's first design. So what would be a good first introduction design? When I think of innovative aircraft design I think PZL 104 Wilga.

The Wilga is a complex design when it comes to the wing with the leading edge slats and slots. So do things simpler and make it lighter.

I'm working on keeping the fuselage profile the same only make it boxy for ease of building. Running the numbers between side by side and tandem seating, on the lower horsepower side of things the tandem seating wins the day, but as you go up in horsepower the numbers between side by side and tandem seating is not much.

So more conversation happened with Rich and I and we agreed the tandem would be the lightest to build and a good starting point to proof design ideas and get the design and our names out there. Then bring out the side by side design. Both designs will be the size of a Piper Super Cub and will at least on the computer preform as good as or better than a Cub with the same amount of power.

Be safe out there friends it's going to get crazier as time moves forward.
Blessings femm

Mouse is healing and is doing PT for her shoulder. But she is having issues getting help from the staff when she needs it...

Yesterday morning she tested positive for Covid... the current tests have a 50/50 chance of detecting C-19 because they show a positive test result for the common Cold, Influenza and C-19 because all of them are covid virus. The tests have a hard time distinguishing between them, much less any of the variants. She was tested a second time that was sent to a lab for farther analysis.

To stave off boredom I went looking for a cheap tablet or laptop... found an Acer One 10 for cheap will be looking at it tomorrow. Will likely put Libre Office on it so I can remove the bloated MS apps it has now for more disk space. There is not much more I can do because it has Windows 10 and it's a touch tablet...

It's about time to walk Bella and see if I can get some sleep. Them some Emergen-C and colloidal silver before bedtime.

As always be safe out there.