Despite being a very busy month for me, there really isn’t a whole lot to report. The three big highlights for me were the Air Adventure tour, the CUFC reunion hosted by the Clarkes, and the trip to the Nelson Fly-in.

Saturday, July 21 was my 40th birthday, and what a birthday it was. It started out with an early departure from Chestermere with Troy Branch in his very capable RV-9. I won’t go into detail on the trip as Troy has done a wonderful job of that in his article presented in this issue.

We arrived back in Calgary around lunchtime, well in time to make the CUFC reunion Bar-B-Q at the Clarke farm. Unbeknownst to me, my wife had planned a little surprise for me. She decided to get me a cake and bring it with us to the Clarkes. I knew the cake was there as I had seen the slab of carrot cake in the back of the car. When they finally brought out the cake, it had been magically transformed into a work of art! It turns out that the carrot cake was a “decoy cake,” allowing Renée to sneak in the real cake made by Cake Works. As you can see, it’s a masterpiece!

Two days later, on Monday, July 23, we were off on the annual CUFC Air Adventure Tour! This year’s tour consisted of 7 aircraft and 8 participants. We endured temperatures up to 38° C with no major issues. More details of this trip will be forthcoming in a future article.

I will say that Chrissy performed flawlessly over the 13 hours of the tour. I had been having issues with high oil temperature over the past two summers. I tried numerous things, including a larger cooler and several schemes to improve the air volume coming into the cooler. In the end, it was solved by increasing the cowl outlet area. Despite the hot temperatures, the oil only got to 210° F at its maximum.

In addition to the various flying events, I was able to make some excellent progress on the Buttercup. I’ll be providing more updates in future issues as the ship takes shape.

As summer draws to a close, I’m preparing myself for school, which will be starting in two short weeks. See you all at the September meeting.