JdFinley.com

Fulltime RV Living Adventures

Oil Change

Just like my car last week, my RV-3 was due for an oil change. Not exactly my favorite job but it isn’t the worst either.  Out came the old milk jugs and off came the cowling. I have one of those handy-dandy quick drain fittings on my Lycoming O-320 so draining the oil is about… [Read More]

Tire Maintenance

I had several issues to resolve on my Vans RV-3B: The right main gear shimmies. Tire Pressure constantly leaking. Tires wearing on the outside and need rotated. I figured I w0uld take a stab at resolving these issues. The shimmy problem will probably take a couple of tries to resolve.   It can be really bad… [Read More]

Utah Photos

I was looking thru my stash of photos of my recent trip to Idaho and the following stood out.  I wish I was a better photographer and had better equipment, please forgive me for that and just focus on how gorgeous this terrain is!  You can click on them for a larger version. The first… [Read More]

Tail Dragger I hate your guts

This is a little poem that has been making the rounds for a few years.  I’m not sure who wrote it but I like it! Tail Dragger I hate your guts I have the license, ratings and such, but to make you go straight is driving me nuts. With hours of teaching and controls in… [Read More]

Negrito Camping

I did a little Negrito camping this past weekend. Negrito is a USFS back country airstrip located in the Gila Wilderness Area of southwest New Mexico.  What a wonderfully peaceful setting. I departed for the Gila immediately after work. For July in New Mexico, it was a relatively cool day.  However; that 92 degree OAT… [Read More]

Aircraft Trim

I was flying with a student pilot the other day.  He says: “For some reason I can’t get on altitude – I keep chasing it around.”  My response was: “Let go of the yoke.” Guess what happened?  Ya, the aircraft nosed over and headed down. It was not in trim.  The pilot was having to… [Read More]

Fuel Indicator Calibration

My Vans RV-3B has a fifteen gallon fuel tank and Princeton capacitance fuel quantity sensor in each wing.  These sensors are connected to a Grand Rapids EIS.  As long as I’ve owned her, the fuel quantity indications have been wrong.  The fuel flow gauge has done an excellent job as a backup but the quantity… [Read More]

Negrito Breakfast

Negrito (ONM7) is one of the New Mexico backcountry airstrips.  It is on the north side of the Gila Wilderness Area which is a spectacular area.  The strip is at 8143′ MSL and has two runways. 17-35 is 7500′ x 60′ and 3 -21 is 4000′ x 60′ and in pretty good condition. Plenty good… [Read More]

Electronic Flight Bag

There is at least one thing that all aviators agree on – folding sectionals (charts) in an aircraft while airborne is a pain!  Throw in some turbulence, busy airspace, etc… and it can become REALLY fun. Now that I have a good Android Tablet computer (Samsung Galaxy Tab 2), I decided to try an EFB… [Read More]

Mountainair

I made another breakfast flight to the stylish dirt runway at Mountainair, NM and took the following short video in so doing. I previously mentioned this place in this post.  It is a pretty neat little town. The following two images are my GPS tracks imported into Google Earth. The first is the “going to”… [Read More]