Shuffling off from Buffalo

Entering Lake Erie Tuesday July 8, 2025

We had tied up at the North Tonawanda Free Wall the previous night. Got an early start but had to wait 45 minutes to enter the Black Rock Lock that runs on a fixed schedule. Lake was smooth and our destination was Westfield Town Dock.

Then, the wind picked up. The Beach House began proving to old adage about a boat handling much rougher seas than the crew. We had the west wind on the bow. White capped waves were 2.5 feet with close spaced swells. We rode these for two hours and then changed destinations. Behind the breakwaters at Dunkirk the wind was still strong, and it took three passes before Dolly was able to put a stern line on a post at the town dock.

Today we cast off at 5:30 AM. It’s been much smoother and we did 39 nautical into Misery Anchorage at Erie PA. Arriving before noon.

Washing the plane

Recently I became interested in creating videos with Power Director software while starting to code a flight simulator version of the Garmin G3X instrument. Coincidentally, Dolly has a very nice camera tripod. I took it to airport and captured the following video on my iPhone.  Click on the photo below to watch the video on Youtube.

 

 

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Flight Simulator Instrument Development

For two months I’ve been using spare time to code a Garmin G3X display instrument for the flight simulator community.

The G3X system is for both experimental and certified aircraft. It includes the GDU460, a ten inch touch screen multi page display shown above. Our plane (N50KB) has two on its instrument panel.

I have initially focused on coding the five engine instrument panels. Click on the image below to see a video of progress to date.