Can't get enough

Today I went out to the hangar and met up with Jerry and Rick.  Jerry gave the plane the once over and gave me a bunch of tips for treating the new leather and also the boots, as well as some tips for leaning and adding oil.  The left engine has been burning a fair bit of oil, about a qt every 3 hours or so.  The right engine is much better and only burns about half a qt every 6 or 7 hours.  The left engine has a few cylinders with lower compression, which was found to be ring leakage, not valve leakage.  Not a safety issue but unless I want to buy a few more cylinders sounds like I'm going to be pouring oil into the thing, unless of course the rings seat themselves better due to better use.  These planes don't like to sit, they need to be flown.  That sounds good to me, time permitting!

Then Rick showed up and we took a little demo flight over to TCY for cheap gas.  I think Rick was impressed and I realized as I talked him through it just how much I've learned in the last few days.  The G600 and the 430W came really quick to me, but there are a ton of options.  It really does go deep, so I'm looking forward to digging in even more.  I think it's a giant step forward in terms of situational awareness and safety, but it can be daunting to learn and in some senses it's really an information overload.  The TIS traffic is a godsend and works really well.  It's pretty amazing seeing traffic in 3D on the PFD and with trend vectors and altitudes displayed on the MFD.  I brought my little HD video camera in hopes of snagging some video, but the battery was dead.  Doh!  I'll grab some soon.  I'm heading to Tahoe this weekend so I'll have to tuck the plane away for a bit... I'm cringing though because all I can think about is getting back out there to fly it some more.  I've logged 16.2 hours in the last three days, and my insurance mandated fly off time is complete!