Day: May 22, 2022

My UK family visitors have come and gone and after going through a bit of unsettled weather, I thought about doing my planned flight in the Savannah yesterday as the weather was just right. I didn’t get myself organised in time, however, so decided to do it today instead as the forecast was for the weather to be similar to yesterday. But it couldn’t have been more wrong. I got everything prepared and ready and was over at Malbec by 8.00 am with the idea of getting away by 09.00 but that was impossible.

There was very little wind and the humidity level was through the roof, which meant that visibility was extremely poor with the TV mast at Audrix near Le Bugue being almost invisible in the thick haze. In the hope that it might clear up as the sun broke through, I got 77ASY out of the barn though and did a thorough pre-flight inspection with its engine cowling top removed, this being its first flight of the year, so I could inspect amongst other things the oil and water levels, the hoses, all the hose connections, the rubber carb connectors that I fitted a couple of years or so ago, the exhaust fittings and connections and the engine mount.

I haven’t done such a thorough inspection for some time, so this was a good opportunity to give the contents of the engine compartment a really good going over – see the pics below.

Once I’d finished the engine inspection and done a full walk-round, I then turned my attention to my video equipment. This comprised mounting a Go-Pro under the right wing together with a power box for extended time enough to record the whole 2-hour flight and a second Go-Pro in the cabin behind my head. This also had a power box and a connection into the radio system that I successfully tried out a few days ago using the Go-Pro sound connector that I acquired months ago but have never used.

I finished up mounting my Asus tablet-based GPS system as I always have done and all of this is shown in the final four pics below.

But it was all to no avail. The haze failed to burn off and has persisted throughout the whole day until I type this at the end of the afternoon. To make matters worse, we have light rain and a thunderstorm forecast for early this evening and continuing rain on and off throughout the coming week, so goodness knows when I’ll be able to get round to doing this flight. I seem to be fated not to for some reason 😐