Grounded again!

.. and this time it wasn't necessarily weather. We had planned to depart on Friday afternoon around 5:00pm for Moline so Sandi could attend a baby shower. After 15 minutes of hem-hawing around about the winds (16-17 gusting 23) we loaded up and taxied out. After warming up the engine a bit, I did my mag check only to have the airplane shake like a wet dog when running on the left mag! Damn! We both noticed the last time we flew that the engine felt like it was running just a bit rough. We were hungry already, so we just stowed the plane away for the night. I looked at it Saturday morning and quickly discovered a spark plug wire hanging loose. I did know right where to look since the engine monitor told me the #2 EGT was running higher than the rest. I can only imagine that the last time I messed with the spark plugs, I didn't get that one tightened. I checked the rest and they were all good.

We did get a bit of good news though... we finally got high speed internet!! We live about 4 miles from town and have no high-speed internet options. A local guy has been setting up a wireless network to service us folks out in the rural areas that can't get DSL or Cable. He has a 6meg DSL service at the local coop and has several large antenna's on top.

So after getting that all hooked up and getting all the updates installed on our new Dell PC, which I bought to do flight-sim stuff on, I fired up MS Flight Simulator with Squawkbox (virtual ATC) and did some flying at Dulles, Miami and one other place. I gotta saw, I was pretty damn amazed. I was doing touch and go's at Miami and Dulles with 737's flying around and an ATC guy directing traffic. I also have X-Plane and have downloaded XSquawkbox to use with it.

Next scheduled trip is to Franklin, NC to visit my sister.