Wash and brush-up… and a warning!

Now that the Savannah’s new instrument panel is finished, I need to test the new avionics before I make an appointment to get the system signed off at La Rochelle. But before I can do that, I needed to give the aircraft a good clean. Both aircraft, actually, because while they’ve been standing in the barn they’d both acquired a thick coating of yellow pollen.

In the seven years that I’ve been here, I can’t recall seeing so much in such a short time, but maybe that was because only my old X-Air was in the barn for the last few years and it had plastic covers on it. Anyway, today was the day for both 77ASY (or F-JHHP if you like) and 28AAD to be wheeled out into the sun and given a good old wash and brush-up to get the pollen and other muck off (loads of mouse droppings on 28AAD’s port wing) and get them looking good again.

Here’s are some shots of my now-reduced (from three to two) fleet in the yard after I’d finished both aircraft.

And even though there was nobody around today to give me a hand by being on the other end with my Vertex portable, I also managed to test the Savannah’s new radio with its engine running. I had concerns that there might be something going on when the engine was running to cause interference or even some kind of signal breakdown.

The reason for that was because the last time I flew to the UK and was flying around the Solent controlled airspace, they complained that due to my signal being so bad, they couldn’t read my callsign but said not to worry so long as I remained clear of their zone. So that was not at all satisfactory and it needed to be addressed.

I did the check by myself quite simply by setting my portable up in my car next to my phone which I put into sound record mode. Then I went off into the Savannah, started the engine up and made a few test transmissions.

One of my new headsets arrived on Saturday so I was using that for the test (incidentally, the headset is in fantastic condition – absolutely like new) and I’m delighted to say that I needn’t have worried. You can hear the hiss of the carrier wave but even with the Heath Robinson set up that I was using, the transmissions were clear as a bell and completely interference free.

So that was a great relief and now I just need to run a test on the transponder. I’ve decided that now I know that the radio is OK, I’ll do a flight this coming week just outside the Bergerac Class D airspace and give them a call to see if they’ll run a test of my transponder for me. They get so little traffic, I think that they’ll be pleased to give me a hand, so I’ll see how it goes.

Now a few more shots of my fleet standing in the sun – actually, it was beating down the whole time that I was washing them and then nipped behind a huge cloud just as I got my camera out.

And now the warning. After I’d finished up I thought that as I haven’t flown it for a while, I’d do a short flight in the Weedhopper and take in a couple of landings. So having climbed in and got myself belted up, a gave the rubber primer bulb a couple of squeezes… and got showered with fuel!

The bulb had been eaten through by the alcohol in the fuel. I was absolutely shocked even though this is not the first time that this has happened with this aircraft. But what makes it shocking is that the failed bulb was only replaced with a brand new one a few months ago, in September of last year as I recall. This is clearly a serious potential hazard which, although I was aware of it as it happened previously, is evidently much worse than I originally thought.

I confess that the two bulbs that failed were inexpensive ones ie Chinese rubbish that were bought on Ebay and Amazon I think, and this time around I have ordered one which is a bit more expensive and branded Polini, the paramotor manufacturer. I hope that when it’s fitted, it lasts longer than the others because the last thing you want when flying at 2000 feet is to start being sprayed with fuel.

And to make it even worse, today I had to compress the fuel pipe with Mole grips to stop it because it was syphoning out of the three-quarters full tanks. Imagine having 30 or 40 litres of fuel being dumped over you while you look for a suitable field in which to land. Not very nice at all 🙁