More like it

We had a beautiful day today with sunny skies and a high of around 26 degrees Celsius. At one time I saw 28 degrees on my car temperature gauge but I think that was being a little bit optimistic. So what better day to head down to see my local contact who’s making up my new Savannah tow arm for me to drop in my final drawing and then to scoot over to Malbec to mow the runway.

With the fine weather and warm southerly winds that we’re getting we really needed to get the runway grass down as otherwise the sun wouldn’t be able to work on the ground directly to dry it out and with a bit more rain being forecast over the coming few days, if we’d let things stay as they were, we’d be waiting for weeks to get a useable airfield.

Victor and I checked out the mower the other day and found it a bit temperamental starting. And so it was again today even though Victor had fitted a new starter solenoid in the meantime, but I found that today’s problem was a breaker that Victor had fitted into the battery circuit to prevent any possible current drain while it was standing unused over the winter.

After initially getting it started and running it for several minutes it began to cough and splutter as though there was a carburettor problem. But there wasn’t, it was the dang breaker and after I’d removed it, the machine purred like a contented cat. After a few hours I’d completed the job and at last Malbec was looking like an airfield again!

It’ll need a few more mows to get it looking properly ship-shape again but today was a good start. The next thing will be to get hold of a new windsock to replace the existing one that has now been reduced to tatters.

Wim was hoping to fly into Malbec tomorrow morning but I walked the length of the runway before leaving for home and although the ground is no longer squelchy, it’s still much too soft to use. So I’ll have to keep waiting before I can get the Weedhopper onto it, which is so annoying, but I suppose I’ll just have to be patient for a little bit longer.