Tinworm-wings: Starting a Bailey engine after it has stood for some time

Saturday 24 October 2009

Starting a Bailey engine after it has stood for some time

Ben wrote back to my worried enquiry about my starting problems, and his advice was very helpful indeed. I followed it up with a call about charging my battery and that too very much reassured me. He is very clear that when in doubt, he is happy for people to ask.

I hope he won't mind me quoting him, because I think this could help others:

"Starting the engine after leaving the engine for a few weeks:

1) No throttle, throttle closed.
2) Turn engine over and keep it turning to pump up the fuel. This may take up to a minute if the fuel bowl in the carburettor is empty. Once the fuel bowl fills the engine will fire.
3) If the engine does not start after turning over for up to a minute. Leave alone for at least 2 - 3 minutes, the generated vacuum in the crank case and fuel system will draw up the fuel. Now try to start and she should fire almost immediately.
4) Do not use any throttle until the engine fires, the automatic choke is on full at this point and any throttle will simply flood the engine and prevent firing.
5) If engine fires and stops, open the throttle by a small amount (10%) and she will fire.

Pissing in the wind is better than 5 second bursts, the initial rotation of the engine requires huge power from the battery and repeating this will flatten the battery very quickly, make sure the battery is fully charged before starting, charge at home if you haven't been running the engine for a long time.

Try to start the engine and run it for a minute or two every couple of weeks, this will keep the fuel line and fuel bowl primed and help start the engine first swing. "

It all makes perfect sense. Short bursts just drain the battery. Ben said that the initial load on the battery is actually, for a microsecond, greater than the fuse rate, but it is so short a burst that the fuse doesn't blow....but if the process is repeated over and over, it is bound to deplete the battery, especially as it hadn't been charged after standing for a few months.

So, this afternoon I need to snip my securing wires on my battery connectors and get that battery on charge while I find someone local who sells locking wire. I reckon I will get loaded up to fly tomorrow, when hopefully the weather will be better.

Thank you, Ben

I have just heard back from Cath at Flylight, too, confirming my payment for a front strut protector; they now have them in red :) again, and for an F1 funnel, which is the type she uses on her Dragonfly and which she says fits the Dragonfly well. The great thing about these funnels is that they are designed to filter out water caused by condensation in fuel tanks.

Thanks Cath.

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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!