Guys, A pretty good weekend again, after a week of rain in between. I mentioned before that I went down to the Virgina regional for their fly inn and had a good time there with great weather down and back. The only thing that I didn't like was the departure pattern which took you right through the middle of the arrival pattern. I had a guy depart right below me and disappear right under my wings and I think that I did something similar on my way out except I had climbed pretty good and again saw 2 arrivals disappear below my left wing. Just a very uncomfortable procedure. Any way meet Don Reid and Steve Vertrili and checked out his plane which is very nice and he seems to be making very good use of it. It was my first trip that I had to cross some major water which was the bay bridge tunnel area although my course took me smoewhat west of it. I climbed to 7500 ft crossing the bay and started my decent into SFQ about half way across. After departing SFQ I did the same thing climbing to 9500 by the time I was mid way across the bay.Figure that I was over water for more than 30 miles. I stayed at 9500 until I was near Dover Del. and then descended around the scattered cumies like racing pylons (man that's fun). After getting back down to about 3500 I realized that I was probably a bit hypoxic. I am not going to fly high for any length of time again until I have O2 available. I had checked into it some while at SNF. Today it was pretty breezy so I took the time to install the new stainless steel exhaust headers that I made the past couple of weeks and did some other maintenance. One of the items that I need to attend to is the fact that my fuel burns have been a little high and I have been chasing mixture settings. I found that one of the flex connections on the right side intake was misaligned and was at least on occasion leaking. I also adjusted the carb a little leaner for the warmer weather. I got a half hour test flight in before sunset and was very pleased with the results. No leaks in the exhaust and the new profile will allow me to close up the cowl for drag reasons. I also installed a O2 sensor in both sides so I can switch between the 2 headers for the mixture gage. The mixture and exhaust temps were leveled of and very controllable. as well as the fuel burn was noticeably lower at full throttle. All in all another good weekend for another 5 hours and a couple new airports. Looking forward to Wings and Wheels fly inn this weekend. Joe Horton Coopersburg, Pa.
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