Skiing in 40 minutes

Last weekend I did the first family ski trip in the Baron.  This was a good test because I despise long car rides, and with Friday afternoon traffic a weekend trip to Tahoe from the SF Bay Area is most definitely a long car ride.  Destination was Truckee airport (KTRK) which is an excellent and well equipped airport with runways in perfect condition.  If you're going to rent a car, Hertz is right on the field across the parking lot outside the terminal building.  The problem is the office there closes at 5pm on Fridays.  Getting there would be a test of my door to door time because I had meetings until about 2pm in the city.  Long story short, we left for the airport at 3pm and had the rental car by 4:45.  Not bad and we had a lovely flight.  Total inflight time was only 40 minutes.  We had an excellent Italian dinner in the town of Truckee (Pianeta) as well as a little shopping and made our way to the house we rented with friends who arrived looking quite road weary.  Airplanes rule!

Drove the rental car right up to the plane and we were loaded in less than 10 minutes.  The overnight fee is $10 / night. 

Dialed in again

So here was the problem with the tach

After a lot of digging turns out it was the left tach generator.  Apparently it was filled with dust or something, weird!  Oh well, turned out to be a $150 item, and while she was in the boys at TriValley aviation (MxExpress) finally fixed the left alternator.  I filled up with cheap(er) gas at LVK ($5.26) and flew down to Harris Ranch and had a yummy steak sando with my buddy and Bonanza owner Tim.

Good times, and the plane is back in her home snug as a bug!

On the paint front, I'm actively talking with Don Copeland about this scheme...

I'm going to pull the trigger any moment, I just can't decide when to take the 6 weeks of downtime...