Foiled again!

As planned, I went straight out this morning and did the adaptations that I mentioned in my last post, to the small black ‘bache’ (tarpaulin) that I got ‘free’ with the main large one that I’ve been cutting up bit by bit. I was pretty confident when I marked out and made the cuts that I thought would do the trick and sure enough, the end result was everything that I’d hoped it would be. So much for my previous wild plan that ended up wasting me a large area of tarpaulin 😐

Here are a couple of pics showing how snugly the resulting new cabin cover fits and in them you can also see the engine cover that I made last night.

So far so good, and all I then wanted to do was press on to make my tail cover/bag and a cover for my wooden prop in order to finish off. But things didn’t work out that easily. Fist of all, I got a call from one of my neighbours asking me if I would use the keys that they had hidden outside so I could go into their house and check that they’d turned their oven off. The things you get asked to do, eh 🙂

The trouble was that the caller didn’t say which neighbour they were and I wasted a bit of time searching outside the house of one who had just left to return home earlier this morning. When the penny dropped, though, I did as asked and nope, they had switched their oven off, so all was well. Then I had a chat with Jean Claude, my neighbour on the other side. He’s just back from holiday in Bretagne (temperature similar to the UK for the past week or so, ‘very refreshing’ he said, compared to the 37 degrees Celsius or so that we’ve been getting most days) and having seen the X-Air on my lawn, he wondered when I was thinking about taking off from the field opposite. I said that I’d been having a few second thoughts because of the shortness of the available runway. As can be seen in the following pic, the area where he occasionally grazes his daughter’s horse only gives a runway of about 80 metres (the shorter of the two red lines). It slopes slightly downhill before then dropping away quite sharply with a few bushes further down and trees at the bottom of the hill. On the other hand, if I took off in a different direction, across the hill, adjacent and parallel to some electricity poles, I would get a much longer run before the slope falls away a lot more slowly, allowing a safe run-off zone should I have to abort the take off for any reason.

After flying for several months at Stoke, the electricity poles don’t worry me but I am now worried about the dangers posed by the shortness of the runway I was originally intending to use. On the other hand, the second runway would involve using Jean-Claude’s land and also that of another owner. ‘No problem!’, said Jean-Claude. He knows the other owner, who lives just up the road, very well and said that he’s a very friendly type. It also turns out that the other owner and I have never actually met face-to-face but have acknowledged each other and waved as neighbours when we have passed each other by, so that’s very good news indeed. At the end of it all, I suggested that if my registration papers are returned from Merignac this week, I’d be looking to go this Saturday, but having since checked the weather forecast, it appears that the wind could then be a full tail-wind, making a take off impossible. However, we’ll have to wait and see.

By the time I’d sorted all this stuff out, I’d got well into making my proposed tail cover but had not got anywhere near to finishing it. The wind was beginning to pick up and as one forecast had given a high probability of a thunderstorm this afternoon, I thought it wise to cover the tail back up again and batten the hatches down. It was tricky getting the light blue tarp that I’d previously taken off, back on again in a by now wickedly gusting wind, but I managed it, as well as wrapping the wooden prop just in case the promised rains do come today or in the early hours of the morning. So although I was foiled by the weather and didn’t get what I’d intended to do finished, on balance, with the news about the ‘piste’ on the field opposite, I still think the day had a favourable outcome 😉