For the last twenty-nine years I’ve regularly flown airplanes since I was eighteen. The overall goal was to get paid to do it so all the training to obtain certificates and endorsements and ratings was for that purpose. Within that flight time there were moments for just going flying and enjoying it; however, that time also went toward the overall goal:

Haulin’ ass, Gettin’ paid.

I’ve tried to finish up the tail wheel (conventional gear) sign off but each time either schedule or money got in the way. I had to actually pay taxes! Couldn’t afford to rent a plane. But now, eh, I can do it.

So I go and study a manual, learn the speeds and weights again and get checked out in the local rental plane. A safest plane ever made and a stable plane for training. A boring as hell Cessna 172. But it does have a bigger than normal motor which is great for the 5,000 foot airport altitude.

I realized I haven’t been totally alone in a plane since....my cargo days? Yes. Since then I have had someone with me as captain or first-officer or instructor for the last 12,000 hours. But yesterday, nope! Just me! And it felt really weird.

Then I took off just for takeoffs and landings. I still gotta get decent at that again! It’s tiny, and floats, and doesn’t have mammoth Boeing shock absorbing struts. It will bounce. Regardless, I arrive a thousand feet up, parallel to the runway and feel all normal again - relaxed even. Normality restored.

It was like being home by yourself. If I desired I could hum or talk to myself, whistle, sing, even belch out loud without apology! I mean, should I ever wish to do those things.

I flew an hour on my own without a desire to build time or fulfill a cross country requirement or practice a maneuver. Just me and a quiet airport and five takeoffs and landings. Only one was any good in my own book of high standards.

I was done abusing the nose wheel of this old paint chipped girl. She was solid, but not fast nor exciting. I parked and tied the ropes which I also haven’t done since 2000! But I remembered how without thought.

It was interesting. I taught for two years and I think worked fifteen students through their private license. In dash GPS units were only just a thing then and glass replacements for instruments were only for corporate planes. But now in a Cessna? Man. For some things I would prefer a sweeping hand to show RPM or oil temps.

After flying this 172, I have no idea at all how in the heck I fit or even taught in a Cessna 150.

And it worked as intended!
K550 motor pushed well. But many more of those big push long burns and the aft end will start to really cook.

Also flew the big tall rocket, 5500feet there.

But it’s a lot of rigging and prep. Any bigger builds and transportation is an issue.
Was a real nice day on the BLM lands.

For a very long time, dad has had media credentials at the Indy speedway. I was also briefly a ‘reporter’ with him but only for May...at least my passes said so.That pass comes with access to garages and pits and the main straight pagoda. Once in a while things are left behind by teams or considered single use. Dad picked up two of those left behinds at one of the Brickyard races while roaming the pits.

So on the kitchen island, sits Joey Logano’s nuts.

In the parents garage is a set of 1/2” drive 12pt Thorsen sockets. Extensions, and ratchet. It’s apparently my Illinois Grandpa’s set, but who knows how or why he got them because he was a sales territory manger, but, he did build planes for Douglas in Chicago during ww2. Perhaps they came out of that? They are 12 point. More frequently found in aircraft. I wonder how many tool sets on a wartime production line were offered to the workers after the war is over? Obviously surplus by that time.

As far as quality the internet says old Thorsen was amazing. As good as gold. Although it’s old, the tools are not rusty and in great shape. Where some are missing a few ancient SK sockets stand in. The box has rust outside but it’s still good. My dad never used the set. He is decidedly NOT a mechanic.

I wonder the history here...

Mini wants basket.

Dads retirement present to himself, a 435ix, has 85k miles now. I got to drive it around and see my old town. 40-80 in 4 seconds...if I need that.

Enough changes each year that when I do get back, it just ain’t my town anymore. Changes man.

So I stopped at the old airport FBO to visit and see what is new. Saw some old faces and chatted a bit. Someone pulled a stearman out and took off, and another guy had his T28 readied.

(That guy used to own a pet food company)

And then went home for lunch with dad at a mom n pop burger place. His bypasses needed that, and the pineapple shake! We then drove out to see a friend of his who recently acquired a restored ‘78 series 3 diesel. It only goes about 50mph. But was a real fun ride.

Followed by lots of doggo pets.

Other than that, the past few days have been filled with doing to do lists old folks need done, teaching them UNO flip, learning rummikub, and puttering around. Oh, and ice cream on a screened porch in very mild Missouri evenings.

Is nice to do that. It’s been 3 years since I’ve been back. Still ain’t my home town anymore.

Back in the revenue saddle! Flew it to Florida. Real smooth operator. With 170 people at 36000 feet, it burns the same gas as a full e170 (70 peeps). Magic.

Realize you don’t have to know everything. That’s part one. Pictured is the gear well. The landing gear folds up and the tires fill this area. I check five things in here, hydraulic and fire extinguisher pressures. Otherwise if I see a leak or a fluid mess, I tell someone and they deal with it. I have no idea what the rest of this rat mess is. What I do know is a white shirt is immediately ruined if I bump against anything in here. So I carry a spare in the suitcase. I learned quickly that not only can you wear the same shirt three days in a row (if it’s not summer flying in the south) but you will need that spare when you decide to not pack it. Because If I don’t ruin it here in the gear well, the gel pen in my pocket will! I’m back to ballpoints again as a result, specifically the metal zebra type. The click seems to always work and if I leave it clicked, it won’t spot the shirt with one horribly large black left nipple. This is probably why they are so popular with military crews. And they don’t look cheap for the money! I never see a pilot with Mont Blanc hundred dollar pens.
So part one of aircraft systems summary: Spare shirt preparedness and selecting the correct writing implement for industrial situations. Stay tuned for part two, which may not be about preflighting.

(This is an idea that I may turn into a larger re-written project, where I focus on everything except how to actually fly it. You’re not gonna learn much here!)

Show her a dripping faucet once.....

Colorado had a winter that didn’t give up early. So this is the one chance I had between work trips and family trips coming up to change out the winters. Thank Christ the Impact wrench is a real thing. Because it made super quick work of MY NUTS! Lug nuts that is.

Tacoma tires and wheels aren’t exactly light. They’re bulky. They are unweildly. And I discovered after 6 months of near zero exercise, um, seriously difficult to lift and mount! I can’t say I’m happy about that. I’m kind of pissed off, actually. I’ve never had trouble like that. Sure they’re difficult to work with but I could always put them on.

Once my back muscles warmed up to it, I just had to lift hard. Is that a term? Lift hard bruh! Grrrr!

So I got them on and I tell you, that impact wrench on its lowest setting is the greatest thing for my nuts. Easy breathing electrics. It saved me probably a half hour of cranking on an 18” bar. And further back damage. Plus my garage sounded like a garage.

The lesson I’m passing along to you all who are getting miles on the bike, hiking, exercising some way, is to NEVER get out of shape if you can help it. I’m faced with a hell of a time getting back to a shape near what I was in five years ago. That hill is steepercthan it ever was. I really thought for a moment I couldn’t get those tires on. A big shock.

Goodnight tires. See you in September. 4 months from now?!?!?!?!?

Hell.

Behold a free car! As such, even free, it was still a hated necessary evil in my family. I was only a child of, at the most, ten years old when we replaced it with a 1983 Chevrolet Celebrity. A remarkably better car in every way, except for the less comfortable seats and the fragile connecting rod bolts of the 2.8 v6.

I must share a bit of history on how we got this car for free.

Chrysler was doing horrible. The malaise era was tragic for everyone. Smog rules killed any performance, and when the OPEC shortage hit, nobody but imports had a mileage car to offer, but they were also small and cramped. Chrysler had to do something, and they raided their parts bin and came up with this beautiful 70's engineering P.O.S.

It had a terribly smogged but absolutely indestructible slant-6 that made 90hp@3600rpm. That was a free part from the bin. It had a Chrysler A904 three-speed transmission. That was a free part from the bin. It had a lot of free and already engineered parts, but it was still a totally early seventies bag of know-how. But Lee Iacocca had to sell something before the debut of the massively expensive project of the K-car. That was hitting the lots in 1980, and there were still several Aspens, and Volare' cars left over to clear out! Since Chrysler had a left-over lump of cash in their marketing budget, they decided they would just give away a bunch of the cars to companies needing fleet vehicles.

So My dad's company got a batch of them from the local dealer. Free from Chrysler. And for many places, the company car was born. But the result wasn't good. My dad told me about just how bad it was on a recent visit:

It wasn't as big as a boat, but it handled like one. The brakes were never properly balanced, and strange handling would make the brakes lock up at weird points in the weather. I remember one of those moments where we were on the freeway through town and slowing for a stoplight on a slight downhill; the car suddenly pitched to the left on this drizzly day, at a nearly 45-degree angle, bumped the middle curbs (before medians) and bounced back straight. He said the car tried to kill him twice. If he turned hard enough to the left, the engine would quit! And the best tank of gas he ever got out of it was 17 mpg. It was sold with a rating of 20 highway. But! But...the seats.

Despite the vomit-inducing brochure picture here, they were very comfortable seats! As a kid, remembering things that now, as an adult thinking back, I do remember not complaining at all about them. We drove to Colorado and elsewhere. It was just fine! So fine I don't really remember long trips in it. Since I was eight when we got it.

So in order to discover how terrible the car was, but also vindictively crash the hell out of it in Beam NG, I decided to build it in Automation. That turned out to be somewhat of a challenge.

The engine. I could not get the thing to represent the decent torque curve but anemic power curve. The actual charts I could find showed 91hp and the power diving away after 4,000 rpm. I couldn't quite get the 160 pounds of torque but got most of the power at 4,100 and it dove away at 4,800 before ea 5,000 redline. Good enough. But to do it, I had to get really creative with fuelling and compression and cam choices. So the end product has a top speed probably 5mph faster and gear limited to 107mph, and it does wobble and roll as expected.

The body had only one choice that fit the shape I wanted and It did well enough. The wheelbase of 2.8m was spot on. but finding enough crummy square and junky looking trim pieces to use was the hard part. The side strips are bumpers adjusted to look like strips. And They really turned out well. I'm glad I got it right.

Performance specs are close to the real car but not exact. And that's fine. But here they are, depicted by REAL-aspen / AMation-aspen:

0-100km/h: 16.9 / 14.9 (my car came out 500 pounds lighter)
1/4 mile: 20.5 / 19.6 (Hey! This is spot on!)
1 kilometer: 37.7 / 36.0 (I'm awesome at this game! easy!)
top speed: 96mph / 103mph (game isms)
mpg combined: 16mpg/10mpg (I had to get the thing rich and dirty so it wouldn't knock....a penalty)

Overall I think I did well in creating it. The driving impression is pretty much exactly how dad said it was.

horrible.

And when he got the replacement car, we were very happy and so was dad because it finally was a decent handling car and way better for the family.

a rod bolt let go at 96k miles. But it was the same 2.8 that was in the Fiero. No biggie. New short block and away he went. It was totaled at 115k miles by a guy in a truck.

I found some respect for the Aspen in the end of all this. It truly was a serious attempt to get the last of what Chrysler had to fill the time before the revolutionary K-car was ready. We could refer to it as a '76 Porsche 912e, the one with the 2.0 VW engine that filled a gap year before the 924 was on sale. this was that car. It wasn't trying to be anything special but a solid and affordable something. It got you somewhere. That is for sure.

So what was the 77-80 Dodge Aspen after all?

It was that guy who was alright at first but wound up under the bleachers smoking and hopeful for something more.

@nermal the coffee turned out pretty good! All things. Inside red though. The heat has to be monitored cause when it starts to boil it’ll boil out the spout too. Otherwise, for camp coffee, sitting outside in a chair with it was real nice.

Taco and that class of truck is indeed different, but are bought by people who don’t need the full size but have no other option till now, so they may see a loss unless they offer something comparable.

Still waiting on a turbo diesel 4 cyl hybrid 4wd….

@looseonexit since the zero-wait instant gratification introduced with compact discs and continued with high speed internet and streaming binge media, guess how the addictive personalities respond….

@texturedsoyprotein I wasn’t sure if the turbo was also a hybrid. That would be phenomenal if it did. And - for 4wd mpg wouldn’t be too severe. Still curious

@taylor-martin I second this. The engine bay is easy to get around in. Not super complicated, and there was a “trunk kit” you could get from the ZX2 version for club racing. Find one, and copy the parts best you can.

I’d run it like the winners do. Run a redline 1k less than stock, granny shifting. And plan $4k for the cage/safety and suspension refresh.

I’d love to lemmons with someone. But every wrap up video I see posted looks like a masochistic hell week.

@essextee I would rather hear a whole list. There’s things I’ve heard on TV I never knew were possible! A tear of the perineum? Wtf!?!?

@forsweden …and you can tell this, how? There’s lots of trucks like this around here. If so, I may run into him. We apparently just started daily service to Jackson.

The newest addition to our kitchen box is Chester Coffeepot. I’ve never before percolated coffee, but we will figure it out. We got a pound of coarse ground.

The oppo discussion on the Maverick has intrigued me greatly. My daily in an ‘11 Tacoma DCSB that only gets 20mpg on the best of days at purely interstate speed for the whole tank. We are currently vacationing an unboosted Ford Flex loaded to the gills with a XXL roof box on top and just got 22mpg on the first tank of 75% freeway work. (I wholly recommend one for long range family trips…It was quiet at all legal velocities+5 and was comfortable and not tired at all after 7 hours)

But this Maverick. This and Hyundai’s offering is resetting the industry. I remember the late 80’s with the mini trucks and full size and the Durango arrived adding a midsized. Here we are again. But what the rest must bring has to truly equal or exceed the Mavericks value. The segment is cooking!

The all new upcoming Tundra is sharing it’s platform with the eventually all new Tacoma, which has many more competitors that ever. So it must also bring something to match the Maverick even if it’s a bit bigger; hybrid systems, boosted engine maybe. Something.

(Turkey apple sausage slices ready for cooking)
Either way, the varieties of breakfast sausages that exist equal mission requirement check boxes. That means doing everything is the goal. So although I’m not happy my taco is getting older in accelerated ways, it is paid off in 3 months, and has 160k miles(350k to go) but I must wait until the new taco arrives. At least. The Maverick I fear is just too small for my giraffe kid(s) but if it can fit 6-3 me and some most likely 5’10” kids, then I’m really gonna shop it hard. But! But….

What will the industry response be to what might be a 35 mpg turbo 4wd 5seat small and very capable truck? What will Ridgeline, Tacoma, Colorado, etc offer after the Maverick to gather some of that market but also come out ahead in their own segment?

Those are my thoughts.
And buy now cause the future never stops coming are the other thoughts.

I leave you with what happened today entering the Teton National Park. We slowed to turn in and the dirty CRV in front also turned in, and about stopped to talk with a friend coming out, leaving several of us hanging out in traffic. I especially in an oncoming lane.

A horn blip to get traffic moving for safety sake got me a big hairy middle finger. Looking for parking yielded huge trucks on the lines hanging huge mirrors into the space next door,

now unusable space. So this is a new normal? Or was it always like this? I’ll have to ask my parents if my childhood vacations were full of daily frustration at others.

Get ready for fun.

@houstonrunner is this the bad boy suburban with a 40 gallon tank? My uncle had one and it was the best, except for the combined mileage….and the need for 40 gallons

@old-busted-hotness horn=a-hole so ya can’t be that guy shouting and messing up the fun game

@thatguywiththe_i30n max makes money for an airline by itself, not for Boeing. I was clear on that. Where the airbus gets it’s subsidy comes from Emirates and other ‘state invested run’ airlines and the a380, which has never made near the money. So inaccurate, somewhat, not clear, sure, but how professional of journalists are we all here?

I want to believe your response was commentary and not a dig at someone. It’s early here and I can’t tell before my coffee.