I finally did it. I was able to depart Chatham Airport on Cape Cod on Wednesday. The fog was supposed to burn off by 11:00 but I was able to take off at 9:30 with just a few low wisps of cloud remaining. The winds were similar to my arrival over a week earlier but stronger. So, I had a strong headwind for the early part of my return flight followed by a light head wind towards the end. Flying to Cape Cod I had a nice tailwind the entire trip. It took me about 3:40 to fly to Cape Cod and 5:30 to return to Maryland. So it goes in a slow airplane. The winds can be a large percentage of the aircraft’s cruising speed and therefore be a great help or hindrance. I saw both situations on this trip. Both trips were made in two hops with a stop at Central New Jersey Regional Airport (47N). They had the cheapest fuel west of the Cape and that was my primary reason for stopping there. I flew through a couple of light rain showers on the way back and as a result Niner-Zero is much cleaner than when I left Maryland for Cape Cod. At 100 mph the bug smears on the windshield disappeared quickly once we encountered the rain. The picture of Providence, Rhode Island was taken Wednesday morning.

I did not fly on the fourth but I went out this morning and gave a high school buddy of mine, Andy, a ride. That was sufficient to warm up the oil and then Andy assisted me in doing an oil and filter change. I had shipped oil ahead to my mom’s house and I carry the tools needed in Niner-Zero. I also took all of the cowls off and gave everything a really good inspection. Everything looked fine, I have almost 90 hours on her now. On the trip back from Cape Cod the exhaust gas temperature gauge was reading really low. It is not something I really need so flying without it is not an issue. During my fuel stop I made a quick visual inspection and nothing looked astray. This morning I disconnected and reconnected the leads from the thermocouple to the gauge and now it works. The airplane was bathed in moist foggy air for most of a week and it must have led to some corrosion on the connections which added some resistance and led to the low indication.  Other than that everything is working fine. I did replace the fuel cap gaskets a couple of weeks ago and there have been no more fuel leak issues since the one on my first day out.