Welcome to historic Fort Yamhill State Heritage Area! As Judy and I set out on our latest adventure, we invite you to come along. Continue reading Step Back in Time:
Category Archives: Volunteering
Building a Fence:
Thursday, May 10th four members of the Wings of History Air Museum began preparations for the annual open house at the museum and the South County Airport in San Martin, California. One of the first tasks is to build a safety fence along the taxiway. Pounding down fence posts is rather physically intensive labor.
To make the job go faster and easier we had rented a pneumatic fence post driver, complete with an air compressor and a generator to power it with. When Todd and I arrived with the fork lift and a box full of safety fencing, Don and Steve were still trying to drive the first fence post. The air compressor would only run about twenty seconds before it would trip the breaker on the generator. After several minutes of trying we finally got the pressure up to 100 psi. We hooked up the post driver and got one half hearted thump out of the driver. Air pressure was back at 20 psi. Continue reading Building a Fence:
My New Skills:
Today I studied at a new skill set. When we back the coach and the trailer into a camp site, one of us drives the coach and the other acts a ground control. Ground control is a very important position. This person is responsible for keeping track of the big picture. He or she guides the rig back into the selected site making sure there is no interference with tree branches, boulders and posts. They must also guard against jack—knifing the rig and scratching the paint and smashing the clearance lights. Continue reading My New Skills:
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:
Continue reading Oshkosh Fly-In: