Day: October 21, 2011

There were two bits of good news today. MYRO whizzed through its permit inspection this afternoon, which was very satisfying after all the work I’ve put in, and also doesn’t have to be re-weighed after the repair as standard AX3 parts were used to replace the items that were damaged. Chris is usually a bit uncomplimentary about ‘old AX3s’ but even he had to admit that MYRO ‘is a nice bit of kit’ now, which was very pleasing.

On the other side of the coin, I had been hoping to get an attractive quotation for insurance from Joint Aviation but to no avail. Joint took over with the broker that On-Risk had been using and when I needed to take out insurance last year it was in the change-over period after On-Risk had finished and before Joint had taken over. So I insured with Crispin Speers at a cost that was quite a bit higher than On-Risk had been charging for similar cover and after Joint had taken over, the lower cost premiums returned again. But that was too late for me and I missed out. Well, it looks as though it’s happened again! I contacted Joint and was told that the original broker isn’t taking on any new business and that they have had to start using a new one. The premiums required by the latter are something like 100% MORE than previously, so whereas I was expecting to be quoted £500 or so for the cover I need, in fact the figure was around twice that! So even though I can now ferry MYRO out of Ken’s over to Stoke for its check flight, I certainly won’t be doing it this week-end as I won’t have any insurance in place. Typical 😐

And there was another bit of bad news too. After the inspection, I thought I might as well empty the fuel in the jerry can into MYRO’s tanks. After I had done so, I watched the levels in the two tanks and there was absolutely no transfer at all from the main into the second tank. It appears that by bending the rubber outlet from the second tank to reduce the bulge in the rear fuselage cover, I’ve kinked the tubing even though it is of large bore and appeared unkinkable. So it’s back to the ruddy drawing board again. I’ll still put the mod through but I think I’ll try and get hold of another standard AX3 tank that doesn’t have its outlet coming vertically out of the bottom, which is the source of all these problems. Maybe it’s why the previous owner got rid of it, I don’t know. I suppose I could try reverting to my previous arrangement with slightly smaller bore tubing with a copper elbow below the second tank, which seemed to avoid the problem. As the flow problem then was apparently due to the outlet from the main tank collapsing when the clip retaining the rubber tube to it was tightened and not strictly to the bore of the tubing itself, that could be a way to go. I’ll have to think about it for a bit.

Oh well… at least MYRO has now got through permit inspection, which is another big milestone not to be sniffed at 😕