Sheltering in the hangar, working on my trike, between trips across the airfield in driving rain to my van to get tools etc, and feeling sick into the bargain, none of the jobs really seemed to go very well last Sunday. All my efforts seemed frustrated ....bolts that wouldn't come un-done, my 10mm spanner being missing, phillips heads in danger of rounding off, etc.
But finally, I got the carburetter off (being careful to photo everything as I did it because this is NOT an easy set-up); packed my bogey wheel bracket with plastic angle pieces (as advised by Ben) to stop wearing the keel; and wired in the gps auxiliary power supply, which didn't draw power when it was done, so presumably the engine has to be running (which I didn't try because I didn't have my prop on, but it makes sense, on reflection).
A tricky part of the re-fitting is going to be threading frayed steel throttle cable through the small hole in that brass cylinder at the top of the groove (see picture).
Referring to a drawing provided by Bruce Hatton at Bailey's, I took my carb apart to clean any possible fuel varnish out of my jets. Though they appeared to be clean, I soaked them in Wynns carb cleaner for about three hours (overkill perhaps, but I had no idea how long a "good length of time" was). I sprayed all other parts and let them drip dry.
Opinions differ about whether you should EVER stick anything in a carb jet, but on Bruce's advice I used a fine strand of brass taken from a cheap BBQ brush, bought for the purpose at a hardware shop. (I pulled the strands out with pliers and now have a supply in a 35mm film pot). The thing about brass is that it is a soft metal, so ought not to scratch the surface of the jets, while still being useful to remove any stubborn deposits or flecks. The brush strands are zig-zaggy, which makes them a tiny bit more abrasive. I did this with great care.
When everything seemed clean (time will tell), I dried everything completely with compressed air, which I also powered through the jets to make sure there was nothing at all left in them, then reassembled the carburetter.
There may be a slight delay in the GO SOMEWHERE plan, as Paul Bailey has expressed the view that my rev hunting was due to varnish in my carb, and also Bailey's (confirmed by Ben) say that Flylight now set up revs at 2,500 rather than 3,000- to aid landing on the Dragonfly, as its wing resists coming down at the best of times; so I am reluctant to leave mine at over 3,000.
So, I need to clean my carb, which ought then to make it easier to adjust the tick-over.
A slower idle ought to improve my consumption too, so it is a good way to go.
I was the last one down last night and the first up this morning...and as nobody was about, either time, I did a fair bit of larking about. Completely brilliant to be flying again.
Then I fitted the tacho and saw how dramatically my revs fluctuated close to idle. I fiddled around with settings much of the day and couldn't for the life of me get it sorted. Dave Broom offered to have a look at it at the end of the day, so I hung around, chatting to loads of people. And after all that, it took him less than 5 mins to get it set up. He has got it stabilised a couple of hundred revs above the 3,000 specified.
So, next time I go to Sutton Meadows, I am going to GO SOMEWHERE...no more anxious hanging about near the airfield.
(This week I need to solder some spade contacts on to my GPS power supply connector. Fitting that to the auxiliary power supply is the next job for when I go up to SM)
I'd spent the afternoon doing a mod on my throttle, which increased its pivot from an M3 to an M5, increasing the surface area of washers etc, so that it won't slip (thank Steve for sending me the drawings). It should have been a simple mod but my pivot bolt had become very slightly distorted and would neither tighten nor undo, so I had to drill it out and file the button head off...with a crappy drill bit (and nothing adequate to pilot the hole as I hadn't anticipated the problem). Anyway, eventually the job was done and I was just packing away when Dave Broom and John Lawrance, who had both just landed, urged me to get some in before sunset. I had to get a move on....but it was worth it!
It was completely glorious!
I am now in the clubhouse at Sutton Meadows and have discovered this computer (wireless generously provided by Dave Broom), so no longer feel quite as cut off; it is deadly quiet here. I forgot to bring my radio. I remembered school stuff, with a view to planning lessons, but am I, 'eck ;)
The plan is to sleep here the night, rise at about 5.30 and rig to fly before sunrise. The winds, which I haven't checked yet, were due to be around 7mph at 7a.m. and rising, so I need to get airborn and back down again and de-rigged before ten to avoid the worst of it.
Crikey, it feels good to be back!
(tomorrow's jobs incl fitting the tacho and checking my power settings)
Paul Bailey said that Paramotorists always drain their carbs when they pack up, but I'd naively imagined that was because they were planning to put their equipment flat in their cars and didn't want it dripping on their seats.
One thing I don't get is, if you have to refuel each time, why don't Bailey's provide primers on the fuel system? One of my correspondents is an electrical engineer and he is very unhappy with the fact that I have to keep a finger on the starter for longer at start-up to pump fuel to the carb. Apart from being a heavy load on the battery, it must put a heat strain on the wiring loom.
The manual says you shouldn't have your finger on the button for longer than 5 seconds but past experience showed that 5 seconds wasn't long enough to lift the fuel. Ben advised me to turn over for up to a minute. He said, "pissing in the wind is better than 5-second bursts". I drained a battery doing those...with Steve timing me, religiously.
I thought I had solved this problem, now that I am hangering, by leaving fuel in the system...but this week's drama has taught me a lesson: I need to drain the system (keeping the fuel in an unvented container) and refuel each time, and . . ..
I need a primer.
They don't appear to be easy to get from aviation suppliers, but would probably be ludicrously expensive if they were, but I have found them on marine supply sites for about £5.
An image search on Google suggests that I'd just cut my fuel line above the filter and insert the bulb between the filter and the pump/carburetter.
The other news is that we are to be joined in the Dragonflying fraternity by Wayne Lofts, with whom I have enjoyed a summer of phonecalls and texts. He is to have a red trike and a red and grey wing. Formerly Wayne had a Quik but has been inspired by Will Minns, Steve Wilson and myself to experience not merely piloting but actually pretty damn close to pure flight...and to do so at a considerable reduction in expense.
On the very last day of a summer holiday spent grounded by winds, I finally got airborne. This day's other great significance was that it was the first take-off since I ploughed into a field of crop when my big end bearing failed on the climb-out in June.
And this time, as I took off I was clearly under-powered and naturally this alarmed me more than it might otherwise have done and, aware that I had to immediately set myself up for an emergency landing, (and not get caught out by continuing into wind as I did last time - running out of runway), I called Mayday and did a tight turn downwind and then, still high, lined up at the start of the runway (and this is the funny thing with the Dragonfly wing) couldn't dump sufficient height to get in on the first run, so had to go around, but again in a very tight circuit. Once down, the engine died at idle. I restarted and Dave Garrison (who had given way to me in the circuit) reminded me to cancel the Mayday, after which, I taxied in to work out what was wrong.
A quick call to Paul Bailey suggested the main reason:- I had flown on a tank full of fuel that had been venting since the 6th July. No wonder it had lost its potency at the top end! Also, he said, having left the fuel in the carb the jets would be (what word did he use?) coated in the residue of the old fuel and this would affect the settings. He said that running new fuel through the carb would clean the jets. Never leave fuel in a carb for more than two weeks.
Lesson learned.
Steve has mentioned this before and I had forgotten. Others say they top up with fresh fuel, but this time I drained mine off completely and filled with new stuff and that did the trick.
I flew another circuit, but again came down very quickly because my throttle was slipping, so that I couldn't fly without keeping one hand on it. Once down, I tightened it.
Dave Broom kindly took G-CFKK up and confirmed that it was now climbing well but said he too had trouble with a slipping throttle. I tightened the throttle as best I could without the right allen key, and then went to test it again but aborted when the runway vibration made the throttle slacken again.
Today I have bought some nuts and super glue for the throttle job and next time, and from now on, will be monitoring engine revs with a Tiny Tach *, a very nice little tachometer which works by induction (by wrapping a lead around the HT lead) to measure the number of sparks per second - and giving an RPM read-out. That should take the guess work out of power settings.Then all I need is a good flight to overcome the psychological block at take-off....the anxiety, which I didn't know was there, that I won't have enough power to get airborne.
*The Tiny Tach cost me £45, which includes VAT and postage. You pay by return, once the item has arrived. I thought that very reasonable. The one done by Bailey was more expensive and anyway has been discontinued by their distributor because the price has been hiked by the manufacturer by 30%!
Thursday, 2 September 2010
Steve, who appears to know me rather well, just sent me what he knows is my dream property. He over-flew it yesterday evening.
They have added stats here and it is amazing to see how many hundreds of people have visited this site. My partner teases me that nobody reads this thing. Please, if you follow this blog, would you click to add yourself as a Follower. It has always been very encouraging to hear from people I meet that they actually already know me from my blog.
Also, please put comments below articles. Feedback is very much appreciated.
starting from 19th November 2010
tinworm63@gmail.com
Neill Howarth photos of me in my Dragonfly
click image for slideshow
Wing Commander Tinworm
Sadly, this is a complete fantasy. I got the uniform on ebay for a hangar dance at Biggleswade. My girlfriend at the time made a dress from a pattern we found in the States. We had our pictures taken in front of various aircraft, dined with a flight sergeant and his wife (in that uniform, I rather expected him to salute me) and we jived the night away! It really was a "splendid" night.
I flew a Chipmunk
Click to read all about it.
A Fabulous Flare
Click pic to read all about it
early in my training, standing behind a GT450, which I had just landed at Pitsford
or you can just read your drift off a ready-reckoner
click image for article
Neill Howarth
click pic to read my instructor's pearls of wisdom :)
films of the Dragonfly
Before it became the Dragonfly, the people at Flylight played with lots of possible names, including the clever Lightfly. Here is an early concept film showing an unfaired prototype. Great stuff.
Here's a great film about how to assemble the Dragonfly. My actual Dragonfly: G-CFKK is the one shown in the film. Mind you, I keep my trike assembled, with the wing off and stored in a wing bag, which I carry on the roofrack, with the trike in the back of my van (on its narrow gauge undercarriage).
A masterpiece from the prolific editing suite of Ben Ashman isElectric Blue, filmed one frosty day at Pitsford, which was where I did my first solo out-landing - in January 2009. I was the first person in the year to log-in. The film features a clip at the start demonstrating the electric undercarriage retraction. The red Dragonfly is mine. It has manual undercarriage, which deploys and retracts more quickly.
French pilots are so stylish! Here is a superb film featuring many times world champion microlight (ULM) pilot, Samir Elari, flying and discussing the Dragonfly.
Ground handling (how to store an aeroplane at home and get it to the airfield)
Follow these links to look at my system for manoeuvring my trike through my front door and into a van without taking the panels off and folding it up....and my chock trolley for easy movement in the front room-cum-hangar.
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.
BOAC VC-10 to Africa
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!
Raoul Hafner dissertation
"The elegant solution: the work of Raoul Hafner, pioneer helicopter designer" was the topic of my BA(hons) dissertation. I had met an old lady in a bookshop who saw me showing interest in the aviation section and introduced herself as the widow of Raoul Hafner, who she said had invented the helicopter before the design was ripped off by Igor Sikorski. As it happens, it hadn't been and Hafner himself had never made such a claim, but he did get his first helicopter, the Revoplane 1, airborne in Austria before Sikorski's first helicopter flew. The picture above is not the R1 but an autogyro, the ARIII, which was actually more revolutionary than Cierva's, as it incorporated tie-rods and cyclic and collective pitch control.
Hafner later worked for Bristol Aeroplane company (then based just over the road at Filton, Bristol, where I went to technical college) and designed Britain's first production helicopter, the Sycamore and then the twin rotored Belvedere. I have been a loyal BAC enthusiast ever since.
Bristol Sycamore (Hafner)
Bristol Belvedere (hafner)
Hafner Rotorbuggy (WW2)
Hafner Rotorchute (WW2)
bensen
hafner rotorchute (WW2)
One wartime design of Hafner's, the Rotachute, a means of dropping an infantryman into battle in a gliding autogyro was subsequently developed by Igor Bensen in the USA, one of which was bought by Wing Commander Ken Wallis (lovely bloke I interviewed for the dissertation), who massively developed it into a powered autogyro.. He built 19 of them in various guises, the most famous of which appeared in You Only Live Twice as Little Nellie, WA116. This short promotional filmcirca 1984 shows an intended production version.
Little Nellie
Beth and Tiger Moth, c1989
My sister, Beth, is not tubby, as the picture above suggests. She is slim and gorgeous - but here she is dwarfed by the flying kit she borrowed for a joyride in a Tiger Moth in Australia.
Dad in the Bristol University Air Squadron
The good looking young man on the right is my Dad in the late '50s, when he was flying Chipmunks with the Bristol University Air Squadron. I wonder what became of the boys looking out of the windows? Inset you can see him in the early 1960s, just before I was conceived in a powercut.
Dad? He went on to become a schoolmaster and took up gliding when he retired. I am very proud of him: In an air investigation report he was commended for his quick thinking as a novice pilot, after he brought a glider down safely when a fault led to the canopy blowing off.
Dad
manoevring your trike
Here is a nice trolley design with full maker's instructions.