Tinworm-wings: Frustration

Sunday, 18 October 2009

Frustration

Compass pillar slots neatly into the hole-saw cut hole in the binnacle and is secured with velcro. This places the compass low so that the rear digits can be read easily and, unlike other solutions I have seen, cannot be bumped by the speed bar.

The outrigger bar performed well today, enabling me to load the wing single-handed at the airfield, though Steve did help me get it to the car, which I think might be easier if I made a skid or golf-trolley type affair.

Much of Saturday was spent getting last bits and pieces ready for today, which was to have seen my first flight from my home field since I qualified. I finished my outrigger for wing loading, cut a hole in my binnacle to mount my compass, tweaked my roof-rack, put pipe lagging on the rungs of the ladder and made a monopole support (for transit), which secures in place with velcro.....

and felt ready.

Loading up today (including erecting the roof rack), took over an hour, though I was grateful for a hand from my neighbour, David, in lifting my wing on to the roof of the van. I had an uneventful trip to Rougham, where the gate was opened by an aeromodeller and where another told me my mate was waiting and asked if I'd call up on Rougham Radio to let them know when I was taking off, so that they could ground their models first.

I met Steve and then discovered that he had turned out, just home from a trip, not intending to fly, himself. I'd imagined that he was going to be rigging his Dragonfly too. Very generously, he came just to help me, though he would also say that it gave him the chance to try out a half-tension rigging, which we concluded was not really easier and which created its own problems; we had to de-batten 8 and 9 to release sufficient tension to be able to locate cam cups over the wands; I found camming-over a lot easier today, both on half tension and no-tension; and tensioning at the keel (in both modes) was a lot easier today, too, which bodes well for the future.

But lifting the wing so that the monopole located was murder and Steve is adamant that it is a process which is best suited to hangar rigging. He watched and was very unhappy with the twisting that he observed in the plates either side of the monopole. Eventually we got it rigged, but only after a bit of surgery on the plastic sandwich, which had become rucked in the process. This is a bit worrying for me....

...but not as much so as the fact that I couldn't get the engine to start. The simple fact is, we later discovered, the filter was dry. I tried and tried to start until my battery was out of juice. I am guessing this is down to that fuel pump problem which Ben designed the modification to deal with. I have never encountered a problem with mine, but before I try anything else, I shall do the mod (and recharge the battery) and try to start it again.

This is the second week in a row that my plans to fly have been frustrated. Last week my van failed its MOT, now sorted. This week engine problems.

Damn.

Huge thanks to Steve for turning out and sticking with me through it all. Ah well, I expect I have learned quite a lot anyway and my rigging times are bound to be improving. Tell you what though, I can see why Steve has dispensed with body panels. I think life would be a lot easier without them. For pragmatic reasons, I reckon I will leave them at home next week.

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Ground handling (how to store an aeroplane at home and get it to the airfield)

A trial flight in a Thruster, when I was 28, c.1991

I have started to learn to fly before...TWICE! First time round I had just graduated and got a job at an aerodrome in Cornwall, where I earned flying hours by fuelling microlights, giving hourly weather reports to the Met office etc. The weather was bad, so there was little flying to be had...and in the end I was paid with broken propellers and bits of crashed fuselage to hang on the wall. The boss was a great bloke called Ian Stokes, who had been a leading light in forming the BMAA and had manufactured Thrusters in the early days . In retirement he moved to The Gambia and became a publican and, shockingly, was murdered this year.

Flying Rogues

ten years on from my first experiences at Moorland Flying School (and now nearly ten years ago) the flying school was under new management and my girlfriend and I booked full courses. We both made good progress initially but never felt we were being moved on and had difficulty pinning the instructor down to signing our logbooks. When another instructor signed himself as P1, we got suspicious, contacted the CAA and were horrified to learn that our instructor did not have a current instructor rating, that we had not been insured and that none of our hours counted towards our licences. We were eventually refunded and the instructors were prosecuted by the CAA.

The very sympathetic CAA investigator spoke to the BMAA on our behalf and my hours have been allowed to count (at the discretion of the school). But in point of fact, I flew way over the minimum number of hours subsequently, so it is really quite academic in the end.

Around 2001 an instructor in Norfolk tried to convince me that if I bought his aeroplane he could teach me at a cut rate, as I'd then be using my own plane. Great idea, I thought, except that it turned out that the aircraft in question had failed a noise test and could not be used from the instructor's field. He later admitted that I would have to learn on his aeroplane at the normal rate. He resisted showing me the paperwork, kept avoiding me and eventually, when it was quite clear I wasn't going to buy without the paperwork, told me to F-off.

So far my experience has been that there are a lot of rogues in flying, which is one reason why I was so very impressed by the professional set-up at Sywell.

by air to Africa

My sister and I were lucky to fly many thousands of miles in the 1960s and '70s in many aircraft types, including BOAC VC-10s, Boeing 707s and even a Nigerian Airways Dakota, as our dad (and later our mum) had teaching posts in Kenya and Nigeria. Those were still the romantic days of flying, when passengers walked across tarmac and up steps, rather than walking down the tubes that have turned passenger flying into a mundane affair. (Mind you, aren't take-offs still incredibly exciting!?)

Back then air hostesses GAVE children the sorts of nick-nacks that their parents have to pay fortunes for from the airline catalogue these days; things like model aeroplanes, keyrings etc. We were also given sweets to help us cope with depressurisation. (And they were hostesses, so nobody give me a hard time)

Mum says that I cracked my first joke when I was small, on a flight out to Kenya, when I said, "Mummy, shouldn't there be a wing on this side of the plane too". Apparently I got her with that one.

At Kano airport I remember standing behind an engine and thinking how hot it still was....and then being told that the engine was cold. The heat was Kano. I got a headache and took several days to aclimatise.

The airport perri-ways at Kano were littered with aircraft that didn't make it, including a burnt-out Mig 15. The Nigerian Airforce flew them and my dad played squash with one of their pilots, Ben, at the Kano Club. I recall a Mig fly-past on my birthday. Was it arranged with Ben over a beer? Was it a pure coincidence?

At Entebbe airport (Uganda) I remember climbing down the steps on to the runway and being encircled by soldiers with machine guns, who then went through all our belongings and confiscated my cherished Swiss Army penknife, purchased on one of numerous European stop-overs. That was in the twitchy time after the Israeli hijacking ...and mum had to stifle my protests.

Before my first flight to Nairobi, as an infant, I was scared stiff. I didn't understand that I wouldn't have to sit astride the fuselage, as I did on my pedalcar! In a funny way, I not only overcame that fear but have come full circle; microlighting is just like sitting on that pedalcar......open to the elements - real flying!