Tinworm-wings

Saturday, 23 October 2010

Feeling discouraged

I collected my trike from Flylight today, but was rather disappointed that having fitted the throttle, Ben hadn't tested it, fired up. He said he couldn't without the prop...but I had deliberately left it behind the seat and he had overlooked it.

So Ben agreed to try the engine with me but we couldn't get it to start. Ben kept trying until it drained the battery. He checked all the lines and all looked right - I had put it all back together after cleaning the carb, but couldn't convince him that I hadn't somehow managed to block the idle jet while cleaning it.

Fuel was definitely being drawn up, but the lack of a smell of fuel didn't seem right. So Ben has said that I should take it back to Paul Bailey, who has always been very good to me, but who may not feel as magnanimous a third time. Ben has emailed Paul and hopefully he will get back to me Monday.

This is really getting beyond a joke now. I am not blaming anyone....these things happen and are clearly all part of owner-operating a plane, but for a plane which is meant to start every time (so that you can turn off and be sure of starting it again in flight), I seem to spend a hell of a lot of time trying to start it and keep it running.

Sunday, 17 October 2010

Car Trek Voyager

Latest addition to my trike transporter is this bit of metalwork (I made from scrap), which bolts to the one-time back seat member, making a support for tool locker hatches behind the front seats (discreetly extending the back of the van bed over some storage space) and incorporates a drinks bottle holder. More pics when the project is finished, but for now....

When I took this photo the metalwork looked like
a distorted Starship Enterprise - do you see it?

G-CFKK goes home to Flylight

Before heading off to see Neill at Sackville, today, to look at his engine, I dropped my trike off at Flylight to have its foot throttle fitted

It was good to see Cath, Bernie and Paul.

There was a lot of activity....the Harvard showing off, an autogyro refuelling, a Tiger Moth...and lots of flexwings on the grass.

I wished I was flying too :(

an EXTRAORDINARY engine failure

the offending nut - well mallered!

see description below

pitting in cylinder head

goughing in the top of the piston

I had the privilege of being present, today, at the post mortem of Neill Howarth's 912, 48hrs after he brought himself and his student safely down, after it shuddered violently and stopped on take-off.

Amazingly, it turned out that the nut which held a cowl over his air filter's heater had vibrated loose and was sucked through the carb, through the inlet manifold, through the inlet port and was trapped between the piston and the cylinder head, where it was hammered violently. We think the washer must have broken up on the filter cowl bolt, easing the nut so that it wound free...and that the bits of washer got caught in the carb (where we found them). Some debris went into the rear cylinder head too with less catastrophic consequences. The gouging and pitting in both the starboard cylinder heads, just near the valves, and on the pistons is very clear.

It is hoped that the cylinder heads can be cleaned up, the pistons replaced and stress testing done...and that these steps alone will put things right. It could have been a hell of a lot more expensive.

effing celebs in Spits etc

Is anyone as sick as I am of celebs and other TV types getting rides in Spits and Lancs, etc.....because it is part of some programme or other about the war?! Half of them don't even realise what they are being given.

Urrrrgggghhhhhh

Saturday, 16 October 2010

Back to Ben

The carb went on fine...along with the electrical re-connections etc....but that frayed throttle cable was a bugger, so I rang Ben, thinking that maybe if it needed a new cable, I ought to bite the bullet and get a foot throttle fitted too...and as I'd be asking Ben to fit them, he'd set up my idle power setting properly for me too.

Ben was delighted to hear that I had been so daft as to remove the brass thingy on the end of the cable, saying, "This is all a bit beyond you really, isn't it" :) Apparently, he insists, I could have removed the throttle without undoing the brass thingy.

So, I am taking the trike to him tomorrow and picking it up again next Friday, at the start of half term.....solving a bunch of problems. At the end of this crisis, as was the case at the end of the last lay-up, I shall be left with an aircraft which is better than before. It has been odd flying on a hand throttle alone...especially when landing. I think a foot throttle will give me far better control - it is a nice little design too.

p.s. Thinking it through, I can see now exactly how I should have taken the brass thingy out without undoing it. It is just the same as dismantling bicycle brakes. What a numpty! (I feel embarrassed)

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Friday, 15 October 2010

Here's the plan

OK, here's the plan. Saturday, SM to do mechanics.
Sunday, go back up there to fly!

(providing I can shake off the last of this cold...and get everything back together satisfactorily)

Sunday looks great, with 3mph winds forecast.

For reference purposes, I have loaded pics of my carb assembly on to my GPS :)
and made up a sheet of them, just in case the battery dies ;)

-It sometimes seems like, no matter how many tools etc I take up with me, I will always have forgotten something...or failed to anticipate a need. But I am getting there.

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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!