Thursday, September 24, 2009

Small Aviation World

I have long been a fan of Greg Swingle's Ohio Bush Planes Videos and have watched them all so far. He has a great sense of humor and puts a lot of effort into fun flying videos. He turns out to be acquainted with my Uncle that I fly a lot with.

One of Greg's friends featured in the videos is John Graham and last summer I met my Uncle and some of his friends up on the Knik...

Then, while searching for more Greg Swingle videos, I came across one that had my 180 in it! It turns out that the 'guy' I flew up to the Knik with was THE John Graham :-) and had made a video of the trip Ohio Bush Planes meet real Alaska Bush Planes. He was a real nice guy and I'm pretty embarrassed I never put this together. Note the GIANT JG in his N-number.... duh. :-) And I don't remember landing at Eklutna either, but there's a nice shot of me on short final.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Foundation Repair Two

We're still working on repairing the broken foundation. I was going to just shore up the wall around the steps to the daylight basement, but the wall turned out to be in a lot worse shape than I thought. Taking it out will give me better access to the footer and allow us to enlarge the entry a bit anyway. It's not going to get done before winter so pretty soon I'm going to insulate and let it ride until Spring.

Here is the demo crew. Hanna didn't have too much fun. She doesn't like picking up garbage or handing out tools - she only wants to run the power tools she isn't big enough to even pick up, lol


Pulled the first bit of the wall off by impact hammering through it with my Dewalt SDS Max hammer drill. I think it hits with 8 lbs of force - works pretty good but there is a lot of dust. I used my supplied air respirator. It will drill a 5/8 hole through the wall in 15 seconds - it took 5 MINUTES with my 1/2" Milwaukee hammer drill. Which is why I went and bought almost the biggest hammer drill I could find :-)


The next wall had separated from the footer so bad that Jake and I shoved it over by hand.


I had to break it up a bit because it was too heavy to yank away.


The first piece was little too heavy but I planned on dragging it a bit. The rest I was able to drag without picking up.

Unfortunately I found the load limit, lol.


Hanna was giving me a standing ovation, :-)


It was easy to tip back up.



I've been dumping scraps in a ditch about 6 feet deep so I can build a road to access the South lot.