Tag Archives: airplanes

The Oil Pump Tester

There are lots of ways to have fun. For example, I have found a group of Bluegrass Pickers here in Morgan Hill near where we are staying. They get together a couple times a week and play Bluegrass together. Other times I have fun by volunteering at a small local Air Museum at the airport in San Martin called Wings of History. One of their restored airplanes is a Peitenpol Air Camper, a kit plane from the 1930’s. It is powered by a Ford Model “B” engine. It is nearing the end of its restoration effort. Recently a debate has been raging in the hanger around the adequacy of the oil lube system and a new improved Model “A” oil pump was secured. Last Tuesday I helped remove the engine from the Pietenpol one more time. We flipped the engine and removed the pan. We extracted the oil pump and the crew decided we needed to test the old pump compared to the new pump and see if it really was able to pump more oil. I more or less agreed to design and build a test apparatus for the pumps. Ideas were flying back and forth while I took some basic dimensions from the pumps. Continue reading The Oil Pump Tester

Oshkosh Fly-In:

Bleriot XI
Breriot XI bis, First US Air Mail, 1911
Judy and I just today left Oshkosh, Wisconsin and the EAA Air Venture fly-in. We spent nearly two weeks camping right at the airport, (Whitman Regional,) and got to be up close and personal with about every aircraft you can imagine. We walked around under the new Boing 787 Dreamliner, and studied a flying replica of the 1911 Bleriot XI that delivered the first sack of air mail on September 23, 1911. By the way Lewis Bleriot flew the original model of this aircraft across the English Channel on July 25, 1909, and claimed the 1,000 Pound prize for the first channel crossing.
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Frazier Lake Airport

Here is a story about one of the most unique airports I have ever seen. It is about five miles out of Gilroy, California where we have been staying for the past month. I have been volunteering again this fall at the Wings of History Air Museum. One of my fellow volunteers suggested that we should visit the Frazier Lake Airport open house this weekend.

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