The most significant event of the week was Jeanie's sinus surgery on Friday.
Monday and Wednesday were spent working.
Tuesday, I took a day of vacation, and it was a day of highs and lows, literally and figuratively. I started out Tuesday flying a CAP Mission Pilot training mission which was great and my literal and figurative high. We flew up just over the St. Mary's river into Georgia and first flew an expanding square search pattern using the US-17 bridge as our starting point. On the way back, we flew a practice ELT search. This was particularly interesting, as it was the first time I had ever experienced an ELT search using the old DF equipment rather than the Becker.
The low was then going to buy four new tires for the Durango, which was very traumatic and my literal and figurative low. Things started out okay. I had done research the night before, and had narrowed down my options to two - either Michelin LTX or Bridgestone Dueler A/T Revo. After talking with the salesman, I selected the Michelins. As to size, I thought my only option was to stick with what was already mounted. The salesman indicated that I could either go with the size we currently had, or a slightly smaller tire. He said that the advantages of the smaller tires were that they we less expensive, and would yield slightly better gas mileage. The disadvantages of the smaller tires were that they wouldn't fill up the wheel wells like the 31's, would cause the truck to lose a little bit of ground clearance, and would be a mismatch with the spare, although that wouldn't be any more of an issue than driving with a "donut spare." I thought I was clear that I wanted to stay with what we had, but apparently, there was mis-communication between the salesman and me, and they ended up installing the P235/75R/15 tires rather than the 31X10.5-15 that were on the vehicle. The salesman offered to swap them, but I was tired and didn't want to wait another 30-45 minutes and the fact that the 235's were $186 cheaper (t0tal) was enticing. The other issue with going to a smaller tire was that it caused the speedometer to read "slow" by about five miles per hour at 65 MPH. Not a big deal, but for some reason, it really bugged me. It also seemed to me that a tire with a larger diameter would get better gas mileage, not worse. I did some online research, and while it indicated that in city driving, the smaller tire would yield better mileage, on the highway, the larger tire should get better mileage. Can you say "Buyer's Remorse?" Fortunately, Discount Tire is an upstanding company, and when I called to tell the salesman how unhappy I was, he offered to replace them with the larger tires. I told him I'd sleep on it, and let him know in the morning.
I did, and on Wednesday morning, I was still unhappy, so I got up early and was at the store when it opened. They were very nice, and replaced the tires without a fuss. As to the mileage question, the Durango has a trip computer in the overhead console that includes a readout of instantaneous miles per gallon. On the way to the tire store (with the 235's still on) it showed 19 MPG at an indicated 63 MPH turning 1950 RPM. On the way home, it showed 18 MPH at 60 MPH turning 1850 RPM. Go figure. My guess is that even though the almost two extra inches in diameter improve the mileage, the one extra inch of width creates enough extra rolling resistance to negatively impact the mileage. It still doesn't totally make sense to me, as I had always thought that fuel usage was mostly a function of engine speed when the load was relatively constant - thus, lower RPM should equate to higher gas mileage. Oh well, at least the 31's "look right," the speedometer shows the correct speed, and maybe that extra inch of width will keep us from getting stuck in the sand.
On Thursday, I took another vacation day so I could do my Civil Air Patrol (CAP) Search and Rescue (SAR) Mission Pilot (MP) checkride. The oral and practical portions of the checkride went well, and as a result, I am now an official CAP SAR MP. Even though we started at 9:00 AM and the oral portion of the checkride was only about an hour and the practical was only about an hour and a half, between having to wait for some weather to pass, and having to do all of the paperwork, I spent the better part of the day getting through the process.
Friday, as noted earlier, was Jeanie's surgery. Because Jeanie's parents were here, I was able to attend the annual meeting of the flying club, for which I am very grateful. The meeting was well attended and I was reelected to serve on the board of directors. The toughest part of the night was resisting the Sonny's Bar-B-Que that was served for dinner. Fortunately, I was able to fill up on coleslaw, corn muffins and banana pudding.
Saturday was spent at home caring for Jeanie.
Sunday was Father's Day, and it was nice to have Dad Melvin here. Jamie sent me a really cool card that was really sweet, and both Jamie and Robby called and I had nice conversations with both of them. As noted in this post, Jimmy and Kimberly drove down for lunch and we had a nice visit and meal at Pepper's Mexican Grill.
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Posted by David at June 22, 2009 07:30 AM | Categorized under: A day in the life, Flying