Cheerful Curmudgeon

A complete lack of ideas and the power to express them.

Art Zemon's Blog Posts

The Easy Way to Open a Brazil Nut

Opening a Brazil nut is easy. Here is Scarlet to show you how. https://photos.smugmug.com/Animals/Scarlet-Macaw/i-Qhsnq5q/0/89718a80/640/PXL_20201022_162433229~3-640.mp4

How to Safely Visit Friends Indoors

Warm weather has let us keep in touch with family and friends by visiting outdoors. If you are like me, the time spent in parks and on patios has been heaven sent. But with cold weather coming, what do we do now? Maintaining six feet of social distance is good advice for some situations but […]

Coffee Spice

Once upon a time, Rabbi James Stone Goodman introduced me to Turkish coffee in which he infused some cardamom. In today’s vernacular, OMG was that good! A few months later, I was listening to the Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack and wondered what coffee was like in eastern Europe and Russia back in the day. […]

My First Snap: DevOperator

I have published my first Snap in the Snap Store. DevOperator is a bundle of several tools used to manage applications and Kubenetes clusters inside AWS. This version includes: Ansible AVH git flow AWS CLI aws-iam-authenticator eksctl kubectl mfa & assume-role Terraform tf It’s a red letter day!

Tow Bar Attachment for Bede BD-4C

My FBO, St. Charles Flying Service, offers a wonderful service. They will put my airplane back in the hangar for me after fueling it. It seems like a little thing but it’s nice. There was only one tiny little detail which prevented me from taking them up on it: none of the attachments on their […]

Oatmeal Recipe

One of the highlights of my week is Torah study at United Hebrew Congregation on Saturday morning. Ostensibly, it starts at 9:00am but many of us grey-haired geezers show up 30 minutes early (or more!) to make oatmeal and waffles and schmooze over breakfast and coffee. The synagogue staff might have tried to dissuade us […]

Horseradish Infused Vodka Recipe

I have a new favorite Passover recipe. I know, I know; horseradish plus vodka sounds awful but trust me, it’s surprisingly good. It actually tastes kind of sweet. Ingredients Vodka Horseradish Directions Collect your ingredients and a knife and a cutting board. Or scissors. Or a hatchet. Whatever’s handy for making small-ish pieces out of […]

Chevrolet Bolt EV First Road Trip

Overture “We could drive the electric car over to see Kevin and Elizabeth but it we would have to charge it while we are there and that would be a nuisance so why would we?” I opined. “Mmmhmm. Anything you say, darling,” Candy replied. 12 hours later: “I’ve been thinking: We could drive the electric […]

This is What Flying is All About

I took advantage of beautiful weather yesterday to fly Caedmon and Geoff to the LSA Expo in Mount Vernon, IL. On the way, we flew over the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. The Mississippi is on the left; the Missouri on the right. Can you tell which one is muddier? It was […]

Cutting Aircraft Aluminum with a Hackzall

I tried all sorts of tools to cut the thicker aluminum stock while I was building my airplane. I used a band saw with a regular wood blade for most of it, finishing the rough edges with a big disk sander and then deburring with a six-inch Scotch-Brite wheel on a bench grinder. That worked […]

Improved Engine Cooling Baffles

When I built my Bede BD-4C, I decided to install an air plenum over the top of the engine. I built the plenum out of aluminum and was not entirely thrilled with the results. It was a lot of work and I figured that it was likely to crack. It did. But before the plenum […]

Night Currency

I went flying last night to regain my night currency so that I will be legal to fly passengers at night. Things look very different at night. It takes some extra work and practice to fly safely when there are many fewer visual cues available. The FAA Requires… A United States pilot’s license never expires. […]

Dual Alternator Failure

I chose to build a Bede BD-4C airplane in large part because it is a very simple airplane and simplicity correlates highly with reliability. Most of the time. On a recent flight with Steve, I had been proudly bragging about how I had installed dual alternators on my airplane for extra reliability. Less than 30 […]

Departing AirVenture 2019

Flying out of AirVenture is easier than flying in. It is still an adventure but, unlike arrivals, the waiting happens while sitting still on a taxiway instead of while flying at 90 knots (115 MPH). Once I had my airplane all packed up, I got help from a couple of EAA volunteers to push my […]

AirVenture Show Plane

When I planned my trip to AirVenture 2019, I never imagined that my Bede BD-4C would end up near the flight line, with all of the airplanes that are gorgeously painted and meticulously finished. N2468Z has not yet been painted. It got upholstery on the seats just a few days before AirVenture but it still […]

Flying to AirVenture 2019

I flew my Bede BD-4C airplane to AirVenture 2019, closing a seven year gap during which I drove to Oshkosh because I did not have a flying airplane. I last flew to AirVenture in 2011, just before I sold my Piper Arrow. Sunday morning, July 21, 2019 brought high clouds in the St. Louis area, […]

I’m Blocked in Russia

I don’t know what I wrote to achieve this status but I’m proud of it. My blog is blocked in Russia. 🙂 Thanks to Mike Elgan for making me aware of this site.

Flying My BD-4C from Missouri to Florida

It has been much too long since I took a small airplane on a long cross country flight. The last time was in October 2011, when I delivered my Piper Arrow to its new owner in Ohio. On June 12, 2019, I flew my Bede BD-4C from Creve Coeur, MO (1H0) to Fort Pierce, FL […]

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