Our Dumb Blog

First day of autumn

The air a little crisper

The shadows longer

A chilly ride home on the motorcycle

The apocalypse may be around the corner

But a sundog watches us drive home

And the earth falls once more around its star.

Berck got a new job.  He started Monday and didn’t do much this week, so he doesn’t know yet if he likes it or not.  It does pay more money though, so, of course, he had to buy a new motorcycle.

It’s a brand new 2014 red Honda CB1100.  It’s meant to look like a Honda from 40 years ago but with modern conveniences like fuel injection and anti-lock brakes.  We picked it up yesterday after work.

 

One of Berck’s coworkers took us dirt biking today.  Here’s roughly the route we took out:

And here’s the route we took back:

Since this was my first time driving a motorcycle since (A) our motorcycle course (B) driving around the block after we got our bike, I thought I did really well.  I drove on both difficult trails and the highway for approximately 50 miles!    We got almost all the way to a road we were trying to get to in order to go home when we had to turn back because the road was closed ahead by the authorities because of a fire.  I can see why people love dirt biking.  It’s like hiking through beautiful terrain but a lot quicker.  At one point we were going through an especially difficult stretch with Randy leading.  When we got to where the picture is above, Randy told us excitedly, “You guys did fantastic!”

It was 64°F here yesterday. I took the opportunity to put another 100 miles on the motorcycle. It’s doing fine, though I still need to replace the throttle cable and put the correct o-rings on the main primary jets inside the carburetors. I plan to do that once I get the new throttle cable, but the USPS seems to have lost it. It went “out for delivery” early last week, and has since disappeared. Additionally, I found out that it drips fuel if you forget to turn the fuel valve off. I accidentally left the fuel selector on while I was in Dallas, and yesterday I discovered a little puddle of gasoline underneath the overflow drain tubes for the carburetors with a steady drip from both of the tubes. The float valves are brand new, so they should be sealing just fine. The floats are clean and have no holes, so perhaps they’re slightly misadjusted. I carefully checked the float height, and they appeared to be right on, but maybe I’ll tweak them just a bit to see if I can make it seal better. I’ve never noticed it dripping before, so it may just be that the float valves don’t hold up to the pressure of the gas tank for an extended period of time. Fun system. Not really sure I want to spend forever messing with it though, when simply remembering to turn off the fuel valve will solve the problem.

It likes to die when coming to a stop, but only if I’ve been cruising for longer than ten minutes. It always restarts immediately after that, so I’m not sure what the problem is. Might be related to the float level setting. When the design regulates an engine idle mixture based on some brass bobs floating in fuel, weird things might be bound to happen after 37 years.

I just got a call from the USPS. My throttle cable is at the post office. They claim to have attempted to deliver it twice. I was assuredly home, and I think I even saw the mailman, but I’m not sure. In any case, they never left a note that they’d tried to deliver, nor did they send a message that the package was at the post office. Without the delivery confirmation number, the package would have simply disappeared. She told me to come pick it up, but I explained that was their job and they should give it to the carrier to deliver tomorrow. She agreed, amazingly.

So while it was spring yesterday, it’s winter today. It’s been snowing all night and morning. It’s only 25° out now, though, and the residual heat in the pavement is keeping the snow from sticking to the roads. There’s a few inches on the grass, but overall this has been a very warm and dry winter. Stupid climate change giving all the snow to the East.

The American Eagle interview has caused me a large level of anxiety. The exceedingly long lead-time before the interview meant that I had a very long time to get worried about it. My previous “failure” at Lynx (why the hell didn’t they want me? I aced that interview!) had me concerned that I wasn’t actually employable. Airline interviews are highly technical in nature, and one is generally supposed to study for them. Three weeks was more than enough time to prepare for an entire oral examination, though an interview is a lot different. There’s not so much nit-picky details about the aircraft (unless the interviewer knows the last plane you flew well), and you can’t be expected to know the specific regulations of the airline you’re applying at. It’s hard to know exactly what they might ask, fortunately folks on the internet will let you know what they were asked at their interview. Obviously, it’s a good idea to know the answer to anything they might have been asked, but there’s no rules about what they might ask. This makes studying for it a rather anxious endeavor.

I looked over the basic limitations and emergency procedures for the Dash-8. I re-familiarized myself with the federal regulations that the airlines operate under. I studied the key to the Jeppesen en-route, arrival and departure charts. Much more than that, I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t start studying until a week before the interview, but I might should have waited longer, because I was able to go through all of that in a day, and I wasn’t sure what to study next. I could keep delving into the regs, but I was worried I’d start focusing on esoteric stuff that I wouldn’t be asked.

On Sunday evening, I started packing. I fretted a lot about wrinkles in the cuffs of my shirt, polishing my shoes, etc. Joanna gave me a stupid-looking haircut and then I hacked off my beard, even the sideburns. I decided I looked pretty dumb and fat, so I tried not to look in the mirror. I decided not to take any study materials with me, except what was on my MacBook.

American Eagle had booked me positive space on an MD-80 from COS to DFW on Monday afternoon. I had to wait in line at security, something I haven’t done in a very long time. I was in an aisle seat at the back of the plane, and fortunately had the whole row to my seat. You don’t want to sit in the back of an MD-80 if you can help it. The big reason is that the engines are all mechanically controlled, thus not synchronized and are deafeningly loud. Additionally, if an engine blows, it’s likely to send little bits of shrapnel flying through the back of the cabin, and the folks sitting in the back next to the engines are going to be dead, or at the very least, shrapnel-impaled. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen often. Still, I have an unnatural, inexplicably uneasiness riding around in MD-80’s. These days they’re old, they don’t have a wonderful maintenance record, and I just don’t like them. I don’t have a lot of terribly good reasons for this, but it’s the way it is. The elevators, for instance, are free and floating. They point in different directions until they get moving. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it looks broken. The first time I saw this from the cockpit of a CRJ on the MD-88 in front of me, I asked the Captain if we should tell them about it. He laughed at me.

I arrived in DFW not-dead, and waited half an hour for the hotel van to pick me up. I stayed where American Eagle told me to, in the Candlewood Suites. They offered me a “discounted” rate of $73, which is more than I think I’ve ever paid for a hotel in my life. I could have tried to stay with a friend in Dallas or found a cheaper hotel, but Eagle had arranged for this one to provide transportation to their headquarters, and I wouldn’t have to worry about it if I stayed where they told me to.

The hotel was nice, at least, and I spent a few hours on the internet. I looked up the answer to a few questions that I figured they might ask that I hadn’t previously thought of, and called Kajuri. I hadn’t given her any notice, because I wasn’t sure that I should do anything the night before the interview. But both Jonah and Sydney thought that I should call her, so I did. She’s got her own dental practice these days, and she and her husband came and took me to dinner. We had a nice time catching up at a middle eastern place.

I climbed into bed around 10:30pm, and read for a bit. I eventually got to sleep, by some miracle, some time after 11:30. I woke up at 4:30am, though, and never went back to sleep before finally get up at 6am.

The shuttle from the hotel was scheduled to leave at 7:30. It left at 7:40, which made me rather anxious. The other interviewees left on a 7:00am shuttle, because they’re more paranoid than me. I just wanted to be sitting in their lobby no longer than necessary.

It turns out there was only 3 other people interviewing with me. Usually they try to have more like 8, from what I’ve read. There were 2 people who’d interviewed the day before there for the 2nd day medical exam. They didn’t want to tell us how many people they’d started with. Probably a good idea. Two of the people interviewing with me were Piedmont Dash-8 drivers. One of them, a girl, had been furloughed not long before I was furloughed from Mesa. The other guy had was still actively working for Piedmont, but he was pretty sure he was going to get furloughed before long. The third guy at the interview had never worked for the airlines, though he was an experienced flight instructor. I was surprised he’d gotten the interview, but I found out from him later that he knows a chief pilot for American who was able to personally secure the interview for him.

They started by telling us a bit about the company and how the interviews would work. We sat in a waiting room while we took turns going to various parts of the interview. I started out with the technical portion. This turned out to be good because it was probably my strongest section of the interview, so it put me in a cautiously confident mood for the rest of the interview. I was asked just a few questions about the Dash 8, and then a lot of very detailed questions about how to read Jeppesen charts. It seemed like a strange focus for the interview, but it was good that I’d studied it. I didn’t know the answer to one of his questions about the chart. I also answered wrongly to a regulation question (for some reason I stated the width of a federal airway was 7 miles, the answer is 8). I knew I’d answered wrong immediately by his response, though he concealed it well. It was only because I’ve given these sorts of oral exams before that I was able to detect just a slight difference in the way he repeated my answer and move on to the next thing. I got a few nit-picky questions correctly, including one that he rather quietly said, “Wow. No one’s ever gotten that one right before. You’re a smart guy.” I may have acted a bit exuberantly when he admitted that, because generally they’re not supposed to admit whether I get the answers right or wrong.

So I left the technical interview convinced that I’d done well. Additionally, they liked my electronic logbook printouts, though they did want to see the paper versions with the signatures, so it was good that I’d brought those along as well. I nearly didn’t. After a very short wait back in the holding area, I was summoned to the HR portion of the interview. Here they collected the endless photocopies of documents that I’d brought, while comparing each one to the originals. I was asked a few HR-type questions, and wrote my answers down on some paperwork. He didn’t seem concerned about my speeding tickets, since I’d disclosed most of them, and had brought a driving record like I was supposed to. He allowed me to pencil in the 2 that were missing from my original application, so no one would think I was trying to hide anything later. He asked for a brief explanation of my failed checkride. Eventually, he sent me back to the holding area where I paced around for a little bit before the guy who runs the simulator evaluations came in to brief me on the sim.

He explained how it was going to work, gave me a profile and approach plate to study and left for 15 minutes. When he came back, I asked him to clarify that he would be acting as my non-flying pilot and making standard non-flying pilot callouts. He said that he would be.

The aircraft being simulated was a brand new Baron, which is a twin piston engined light aircraft with a glass cockpit. I’ve never flown anything like it. Fortunately, I didn’t have to know anything about the aircraft for the evaluation except that I had to fly the approach at 120 knots.

Shortly after takeoff, I was waiting for him to call positive rate so that I could tell him to retract the gear. A couple hundred feet later, I was totally distracted by trying to figure out the instrument display and the flight director which seemed to be pretty lame. That’s when he asked me, “Was the last aircraft you flew not a retract?” Oh, CRAP. “I, uh, thought you were going to call positive rate?” “Nope, that’s you!” This is totally backwards from every airline I’ve ever flown on, so I was a bit surprised. I wondered if that was enough to fail, but tried to forget it and press on. At 1,000 feet, he called acceleration altitude, and I asked for, “flaps up, climb check”. He ran a checklist and I moved on.

I managed the level-off at 2,000ft very well, within about 10 feet, thanks to the flight director. He had me turn left to intercept a radial and track it to the VOR. About 3 miles prior to the VOR, he told me that he was going to pause the sim and give me holding instructions. I copied the instructions, drew out the hold on the approach plate, thought about it, double-checked it, then briefed him on how I’d fly the hold. He unpaused the sim, and I flew the entry. Fortunately, it was a direct entry, the easiest. He gave me a descent while I was turning inbound, and I remembered to ask for a “descent” checklist, which is not a normal airline thing. Before I even crossed the fix back inbound, he gave me vectors for the ILS to 17R in Memphis. I briefed the approach, and flew it with the flight director. At around 500ft, he told me to go around, maintain 2,000ft and runway heading. I pushed the power up, mumbled something about flaps up, eventually got the gear up this time and asked for a checklist. The flight director switched to roll mode, and because I wasn’t holding enough rudder, I drifted left of course about 35 degrees before I realized what has happening. Fortunately, I caught it and corrected, and he seemed okay with that, but who knows. He paused the sim, set me up for another approach, this time raw data to a landing. I did okay, though made the rookie mistake of looking up too early after breaking out of the clouds, but managed to not get too absurdly far off. He said I did a good job, and he’d recommend me for the sim. If he hadn’t said that, I would have been sure that I’d blown it. Apparently, interview standards are not quite airline checkride standards. Which, given the fact that I’m flying something I’ve never flown before and never gotten a chance to practice with, makes sense.

Shortly after getting back to the waiting room, the instructor guy pointed out that the Piedmont guy’s bags were gone, which meant he’d been sent home. As I was processing this information, one of the recruiters came and and called my name with a very small piece of paper. I immediately figured they were sending me home as well, but it turned out to just be a $5 coupon for lunch. The American cafeteria had a lot of choices, but I settled on the salad bar. It was sold by the ounce, so I loaded up trying to make sure to get my $5 worth. With a soda as well as my salad, the total came to just over $7, whoops. So I had to give them a couple bucks, but not a big deal. I didn’t even finish the salad, because then I realized that they were probably going to give me lunch before they sent me home so I wouldn’t talk about how mean they were.

I got back to the waiting room, and for a long time was the only one there. Then the other guy came in, and we talked about lunch. He’d done the salad thing too, but had managed worse than me and topped $8. The girl from Piedmont came in after her sim, and seemed in pretty good spirits. Shortly after she got back, they called her out again. 2 minutes later she was back and said, “Well, I’m going home…. Good luck to you guys!” We tried to commiserate with her and I was a bit on edge as she left. When she was gone, both recruiters walked in. We looked at each other to see who was going to get sent home next.

“The elimination process is over, you guys made it,” they told us. Whew. They collected a lot more paperwork, fingerprints, and called the Admiral hotel to get us rooms and send a van to pick us up.

We got back to the hotel just before 4pm. I was exhausted, but decided not to sleep for fear that would keep me from sleeping that night. I met Daniel, the other guy who got through, in the hotel for dinner. It was a pretty mediocre meal, but we were both pretty excited and talked about what the future might hold.

I couldn’t sleep anyway, and woke up just before my 6:30am alarm. The morning was spent with a pretty intense hearing test and two drug tests, along with some more paperwork. They gave us an official “conditional offer letter”. I had to redo my fingerprints, because the FBI had rejected the set transmitted the day before. That done, we went back to the airport. We had a lot of time to kill before the flight, and grabbed lunch at the TGI Friday’s, and exchanged phone numbers before Daniel headed for his flight. Mine left a few hours later.

As it was explained, the Captain’s Review Board looks over everyone’s files before giving them the final nod to allow them to work for Eagle. Some people have indicated on the internet that they’ve been rejected by the captain’s board with no real explanation. So while I’m cautiously optimistic, I’m not going to count my chickens just yet.

I had more, but it’s no longer morning, and Jonah is home…

I promised updates. What follows is the probably somewhat boring detail of my week wrenching on the motorcycle.

On Wednesday I started out replacing the clutch cable, since this was the part that was most obviously in need of replacement. The manual I’ve got is absolutely awful. Some examples:

“The circlip use to a set the clutch center is of a special dimension (25×1.5 mm) therefore exercise care that the standard circlip 25 mm is not to be used.”

“Headlight is normally adjusted in the vertical directions so that the center of the beam intersects the ground at the point 50 mm (164 feet) in front of the motorcycle with the motorcycle in riding attitude.”

It’s the official, authentic, Honda manual. I’ve been recommending Honda products to people for years, but this is my first one. I hope that their modern shop manuals aren’t this bad.

Fortunately, a motorcycle is pretty simple, and I’m able to figure out how most things work through intuition. The clutch cable disappears behind a cover plate that also houses the front drive sprocket. The underside of the plate was coated in solid gunk. Whenever the drive chain throws off lubricant, it sticks on the underside of the plate. I spent about an hour cleaning it. I pulled apart the clutch actuator cam and figured out how it works. Clever, but seemed a little unnecessarily complicated. The cable pulls a cam that’s got dents in it. The dents ride on top of several ball bearings. When the cam rotates, the ball bearings are in a plate that cannot rotate, and as a result, the dented plate is forced outward since it’s not riding in the dents anymore. This pushes on a lever that disappears into the other side of the bike, but is presumably connected to the clutch. I have a feeling I’ll be forced to get acquainted with that side eventually. For now, I just wanted to replace the cable.

I cleaned all the parts and re-greased the clutch actuator. I removed the other end of the cable from the handle bars and routed the new cable, which also involved removing the gasoline tank, since it goes underneath. That’s when I discovered the new cable was too long.

No matter, I figured I could find a way to route it anyway. After I finally got it all installed and adjusted, it was simply way too difficult to operate. The problem seemed to be kinks in the cable, which were a result of the cable being too long. I called a few motorcycle shops to see if anyone could shorten the cable for me. It seems a pretty easy deal if you have the right equipment. Everyone I talked to acted like I was crazy. This has been a continuous problem with the motorcycle. I don’t know how to interface with the outside world. If I wanted to pay someone to work on my 37-year-old Honda, I’m not sure I even could. Everyone who owns one of these things seems to keep it running themselves. For instance, yesterday I walked into the Harley shop to to try to buy some chain lube. Harleys have chains, I figured this was a safe bet, and the Harley shop was close. No such luck, they have none for sale. Where do Harley riders buy this sort of thing? Wal-Mart?

So, after spending most of the day on the stupid clutch cable and having not really accomplished anything I moved on to the front brakes. I thought the front brake pads were pretty well worn, and had ordered replacements. It turns out, once I got the old pads out, that they weren’t worn at all. They were glazed a bit, but had mostly full life left. I decided to change them anyway since they looked pretty well glazed, and I’d already taken them apart. Then I worked on flushing the brake fluid and bleeding the lines. The fluid was pretty old-looking, so this was worth doing. I’d figured that I could also make the brake handle firmer, but this didn’t seem to be in the cards.

Finally, just before Jonah got home, I decided to go ahead and take the carburetors off. I was convinced the idling could be made better by rebuilding the carbs.

I got them off, and took them inside and pulled them apart. I figured out what was what, removed the rubber parts and dropped the rest into a gallon of carb cleaner to soak. I had replacement o-rings for everything except the main primary jet. So, of course, the o-ring on the main primary jet on the left carb was damaged when I pulled it out.

Jonah accompanied me to the auto parts store on my quest for an o-ring. I found one with the right inner diameter, but that was too fat. I tried to cram it on there, but the jet wouldn’t go in. So I trimmed the old one with a razor blade. This ended up being a bit crude, but seemed likely to seal anyway. I measured the old one carefully and ordered a replacement from an o-ring supplier on Amazon, and went to bed. I’d rebuilt carburetors before, and they’d always been pretty gummed up inside. These appeared to be in really good shape, and not in need of a rebuild at all.

It’s unlike me to use the wrong part, but at this point, I’d only ridden the bike once, and wanted to do so again without waiting for the o-ring to arrive. The o-ring won’t get here until next week when I need to be busy studying for my airline interview the next week. It would be obnoxious to not ride the bike until after the interview.

So on Thursday, I got up about the same time Jonah left, uncharacteristically early for me. Wrenching on a motorcycle excites me, apparently. I dismantled, cleaned, and rebuilt the second carburetor. I left the problem o-ring in place this time so as not to damage it.

While the right carburetor was soaking, I changed the speedometer and tachometer cables. The tachometer cable was old and rusted, and the tachometer took awhile to get up to speed after I started the bike. This was a pretty straight-forward replacement. The speedometer cable on the motorcycle appeared to be relatively new, but it was too short, and wouldn’t fit in the appropriate mounting brackets on the front fender, so I had a replacement for that as well. Fortunately, the new one was the right length.

I put the carburetors back on the bike. At some point on Wednesday, I’d removed the pet cock from the fuel tank to check the filter screens for blockage. There wasn’t any. I only spilled about half a gallon of gasoline doing this. So, on Thursday I fashioned two new fuel lines and put in two new in-line fuel filters. Honda didn’t see fit to include in-line fuel filters in 1973, but the tank wasn’t at all rusted back then, either.

I poured some fuel back in, opened the fuel valve, turned the ignition switch on, flipped the run switch to run, closed the choke, and pushed the started switch with the throttle cracked open. It started up immediately, and seemed to run okay. Only, I pretty quickly realized it wasn’t running as well as it should, and the throttle response was sluggish. It took me a good 2 minutes to realize it was only running on one of its two cylinders. Not good.

I almost panicked, but restrained myself and checked for the obvious. It turns out the right cylinder won’t fire when the right spark plug is unplugged. Right.

I plugged it in, and it ran a whole lot better. I spent the next half an hour fiddling with the carburetors, and got it about as well as it was before. It still didn’t idle terribly well, but maybe slightly better. Content, I put on my gear, and decided to go for a short ride to test it out. I stopped at the gas station right down the street to fill up the tank first, then headed down the road. Immediately, there was a problem. It sputtered and ran like crap at about 5,000 rpm. It seemed to smooth out at about 8,000rpm, but lacked power up there, and really didn’t like wide open throttle. Also, annoyingly, the new front brake squeaked.

I was immediately disgusted that I’d made the bike run worse, and not better. I worried that I’d never make it as good as it was when I got it, and decided I was a failure as a mechanic. I’m easily defeated, what can I say?

I brought it home, dismounted and noticed that the choke was halfway closed. I’d apparently knocked the lever during my fuel stop, and there’s no way the bike was going to run at full throttle with the choke on. I turned it off, and rode again. Much better.

Jonah got home at about this time, and I offered to take her on a ride. She agreed immediately. I’d initially told her that it would probably take me some time getting used to the bike without her before I took her on a ride, but I figured I’d managed on a moped in Greece and this could only be easier.

She suited up, and we headed off. I stalled trying to get out of the apartment parking lot, right on the center line of our street. I managed to briefly block traffic before getting going again. Clutch work requires a lot more finesse with that much weight on the bike. The bike stalled as I was pulling up to the next traffic light. It took me a good 30 seconds to figure out that I’d left the fuel selector valve off. A potentially fatal mistake in an airplane, fortunately this was a motorcycle. And I didn’t have a checklist. (Should I have a checklist? I should at least have a flow.) Anyway, I managed to stop traffic twice in under 2 minutes. Nice.

The rest of the ride went without incident, and I was glad that the bike was running, if not wonderfully.

On Friday, I decided to tackle all that was left. I adjusted the valve tappet clearance, set the point gaps and the timing. None of this did much, except that I made one of the intake valves clack. I’d spent a long time with a stupid .05 mm feeler gauge trying to set the damn thing, too. Do you know how thin .05mm is? It’s really thin. Paper-thin, and flexes all over the place. I decided the whole thing was dumb, and with the engine running, I tweaked the tappet adjustment screw until the noise stopped. It was probably right-on before I screwed with it, and now it was “close enough.”

The point gap seemed a bit tighter than spec, so I widened it out. As a result, the timing was now off. I tweaked the timing until it was right, and now the point gap was too much. So I pulled the points back in, and the right side was timed perfectly, but the left was still off. So I tweaked the left side point gap until the timing was correct. The gap was still in spec, so I declared it good enough.

It still idled poorly. One thing left: I pulled the spark plugs.

Coated in black. Probably a result of running around with the choke on. I cleaned them up with some sand paper and re-installed them. It ran better than it ever has before. At least in the week I’ve been messing with it. The idle still fluctuates a lot more than I’d like, and I think there’s a subtle fuel issue at play. Someone suggested on the forums that the in-line fuel filters might be causing a problem. I’m not sure how, but I may try removing them to see what happens.

Finally, I still had to lubricate and adjust the drive chain. I started measuring the slack. It varied from a little over 1.5″ to less than 0.25″ depending on the chain position. Not a good sign. After cleaning with WD-40, it was a lot freer and most of the chain showed about 1.5″ of slack. The manual specifies 3/4″, so I tightened it up to the recommended amount, and drove downtown looking for chain lube. I eventually found some, sprayed down the chain, and got it down to less than 1/4″ of variation from tight/loose which seemed to me a pretty good indication that the chain was still serviceable.

Jonah came home and we rode for another 10 miles.

Then today was Saturday! With the bike in pretty good shape, we talked about a few different options for a ride, and decided on heading north up highway 83. Which we did, about halfway up to Denver. I discovered that the motorcycle won’t do much better than 80mph with the two of us on it, and a whole lot slower than that uphill, depending on how hard I want to push it in which gear. With a 9,500 rpm redline, 8,000rpm for any extended period of time seems a bit mean to a 37-year-old engine. At wide open throttle in 5th gear, it would pretty consistently maintain about 65mph uphill which is respectable.

We stopped several times to adjust gear and stretch. We headed north until just shy of Castle Rock and then turned east until we got to Kiowa, then headed south to Falcon and then back home. All in all, about a 3-hour, 100-mile ride. We had a great time, and the bike did just fine. And we didn’t die. All good things! I plan for more in the future, but for any distance, we either need a bigger motorcycle, or two of them. Jonah would prefer the two of them option, but that’s obviously not going to happen until I manage to find a job.