Tinworm-wings: I need a fuel primer

Saturday, 4 September 2010

I need a fuel primer

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.

Thoughts, anyone?

1 comment:

Colin said...: All good stuff!
What Octane are you using? I notice again on Bailey mainsite normally the engines are set for 98 Octane? Regular unleaded I believe is about 95. How do you drain the fuel out of the Carb' float chamber? sounds like a pain in the *rse. Also I would have thought start and warm up would purge any 'vented'?? carb fuel through?

Surprised it is that critical of fuel quality..unless your octane is already low.; 4 September 2010 at 19:59

Post a Comment

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!