Tinworm-wings: Post Mortem -almost

Sunday 28 February 2010

Post Mortem -almost

Not strictly a post mortem....hopefully my plane isn't really dead....but I went back to Sutton Meadows today and unpacked my wing, which was in the wing-bag Dave Broom lent me. We'd done a very rushed pack last night and I didn't want to risk nasty creases and mildew, and wouldn't have been able to get back there for a week.

There was nobody else up there as it was a miserable day with 20mph+ winds and driving rain, and of course that meant an in-hangar rigging, which was incredibly tricky on space, but eventually I managed to get it on its wing-trolley and manoeuvred into its bay. The rigging itself was straight-forward. I am getting a bit of a dab hand at it. Camming-over at the wing-tips used to feel nigh on impossible, and I despaired of being able to tension at the keel.....but now it is just easy.

I didn't have time to start the engine, though I did give it a look-over but couldn't find anything obvious. I refitted the fuel tank and the re-charged battery, the seat bucket ....and the padding I forgot to take up yesterday.

Next week I will suss out what was wrong with the engine. It'll be nice not having to worry about weather; I will have a good reason to go whatever it is doing.

On the way back I got a puncture, most likely caused by hitting a hole in that bloody awful track from Sutton to Chatteris (as the washes have flooded the Sutton road) and ended up having to change the wheel by the roadside. There is a moral here too: make sure the spare is full of air! Mine wasn't and I had to limp it to a garage, where the unlit pump had one of those tiny windows clouded with condensation. Consequently I over-filled it. When I found a more modern pump, I found I had put 36psi in a 29psi tyre!!! That was yet another drama waiting to happen.

2 comments:

Simon R said...: Haha - some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed!

Glad you got home safely and I hope it's nothing serious that stopped the engine. It'd be very good if you can find a definite cause so you can make sure it'll not happen again!; 1 March 2010 at 20:25
Tinworm said...: :)
I have had a run of them, Simon. Today I had to get a colleague to jump-start my van as I had drained the battery leaving my lights on! Me culpa, should have known better.

will post the cause as soon as I know it.; 1 March 2010 at 23:41

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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!