Back home and no rain.

The ditches around the house have finally firmed up enough so that I could mow them. I used a push mower first to get the grass down to manageable heights. The park hasn;t been mowed either and I had to stop flying because of it. They did manage to mow and there is a lot of clippings clogging the ditches. The ground is flyable that's all I care about. I took the Mo'Best down and charged the batteries. One of the batteries has a dead cell and can't be used, you get what you pay for. That leaves me with three batteries for that plane. I have others that are heavier but will swap right in without any other changes. I got 6 flights on it anyway. Today I took the Jamison out and got in some old time patterns and then a normal pattern. It's the first time I flew the new pattern with the plane and it did quite well. I can use it for old time and classic events. My plan is to use the Mo'Best for the profile, nostalgia 30 and precision aerobatics (PA) events. A lot less stuff to carry. The Jamison was powered by an O.S. .46LA. I had one .40LA doing nothing from the three I put back together. I swapped the .46 out for the .40. I needed Fox .35 muffler instead of the tongue muffler as the .46 had a one ounce spinner weight under the plastic spinner. I didn't put that on the .40 and the slightly heavier muffler brings the balance back where it was. I bought three .40's many years ago off EBAY and didn't quite understand how they needed to run. The .40 and .46 share several parts so I bought what I needed to make 3 .46's. I reversed the process a few months ago and bought the parts I used for the .46's to put the .40's back into service. I have since learned how to run them. Using my fuel mix I can run them the same as the .46's with the same props and a bit higher rpm's. Fuel consumption is the same as the .46's and the power is a bit less but they run quite well. I think the .40 will work well in the Jamison. I'll try it tomorrow. The two Twisters have a .40 in the nose and fly very well. The Jamison is about the same size. I tried to start the El Camino last week and the second hand me down battery had lost it's power. I got a new one and installed it and the engine fired right up. I drove it around a bit and it was down on power. At home I put a brick on the gas pedal (the engine wasn't running) and found the carburator only opened half way. I made adjustments and got it to open all the way but now there was a sticky spot off idle. Several tweaks and bends later I think it is where it should be. The transmission kick down cable is very draggy. It's the original. It takes a lot of pull to get it to pull out. It may be the system in the transmission, it's been rebuilt. I just left it off. It shifts fine without it. It took longer to recover from the adventure into Oklahoma and Texas. I figured I wouldn't be able to make the Georgia contest and was undecieded about the Oklahoma contest. I thought there was 2 weeks between them. (Which is going on this weekend one week after Georgia.) A few years ago I would have made one of them. I can make the local contest in October and the season final in El Dorado in November. I miss the raffles most. Last year a neighbor gave 14 boxes of aviation books. I managed to give them all away. A week ago she gave me 50 or so plastic airplane kits to give away. In one of the boxes was some old engines that were never run. They are not very valuable but could be used after converting them from r/c to c/l. That's converting from a carburator to a venturi intake system.