Day: August 16, 2011

I just phoned Mark at Galaxy Microlights about my engine. If you have a propeller strike, you must have the engine shock load tested in case it has suffered internal damage. For example, a few teeth might have been stripped in the gearbox, the woodruff key attaching the heavy flywheel to the crankshaft may have been bent or even sheared off and worst of all, the crankshaft itself might have been damaged. The one bright hope for me was that although I lost my lovely Arplast prop in the accident, its lightweight construction means that in theory, the force required to shear off its blades is less than the force required to do damage to the engine. I’d hoped that this was the case because after the accident, the engine was still running quite sweetly, albeit a bit out of balance because the prop blades had not all sheared off at exactly equal lengths.

Well, the great news this morning is that my highest hopes have been realised and the shock load tests that were carried out have come up with ‘no fault found’. I am really pleased about this because my Rotax 503 has been a great little engine and through all the hours flown it has never missed a beat. It was one of the reasons why I was so confident about doing my low level flights over the sea and I’m very pleased that once refitted, it will continue giving great service, just as before.

Anyway, I’m thinking I might nip across to Ken’s and fit my nose strut now I’ve drilled it out and pick up some more cable ties while I’m out. Then when I get back I can rub down the pod re-repair that I did yesterday so it’s back ready for spraying and also cut down the nose wheel spacers so the nose wheel will fit into the forks. And hopefully I’ll also be able to find time to fill the existing holes in my rudder pedal base plate so I can drill new ones at the new, correct spacing. If I can get all that done, it’ll end up being another very good day I reckon 😉

OK, it’s now just gone 8.30pm and I thought I’d come back and add an update to the above which I posted this morning. I can report that I got all of those things done, so the day worked out well. It only took a few moments to rub down the pod repair so I got that out of the way first. Then not only did I get the nose wheel spacers cut down but I also fitted the nose strut and the complete nose wheel forks assembly to MYRO this afternoon. When I eventually fit the pod, the nose wheel and forks will have to come off again, but it’s good to see MYRO back with 3 wheels again.

I also completed the work on the rudder pedal base plate – it was a nice warm day and the fibreglass filler and paint both cured very quickly, so I was able to do everything I needed to. When I positioned it on the fuselage base tubes, the new holes lined up beautifully as well. I couldn’t re-fit the rudder pedal assembly because I’d forgotten that there’s a metal plate that goes under the rudder pedal mountings that the bolts also pass through so its holes will also have to be elongated a bit. But the bolts are bent anyway, and I’d forgotten to order replacements so I couldn’t have fitted the unit anyway.

By the way – the man from Autopaint also phoned this afternoon. The grey JPG that I’d uploaded I’d called MYRO Grey and he asked what a MYRO was. Well, I told him and he said that it’s difficult to closely match an uploaded colour, although they’d do it if necessary, but did I have a colour reference? The pod colour I ordered was RAL3020, Traffic Red. I said that I’d check, and when I did, I found RAL7042, Traffic Grey that I think is so close to the panel colour (and also the JPG I created) that that’s what I’ve now ordered.

And yes, I also remembered to pick up another large pack of cable ties, so things are now getting really close to the point where I’ll soon need to re-fit the pod. So now I need a bit of warm, calm weather for me to get the spraying done and then things really will be looking very good indeed 🙂