Son of MYRO?

A few days ago I spotted a Weedhopper ULM on LeBonCoin. It’s a French one, of course, that’s slightly different in design to the UK version, but most of the main structure is identical. It had been in an accident, a very hard landing much as I recently suffered in 56NE at the end of our west coast tour, but considerably harder. It had resulted in damage to its undercarriage and, apparently, its lower tubes that make up the floor of the cabin, but nothing else appears to be damaged. The owner has already stripped off the engine, a 582 Rotax similar to 56NE’s, and taken out the instruments, which he’s selling separately, and put the rest of the aircraft up for sale to a ‘bricoleur’, or handyman.

Now it just so happens that the damage suffered by this Weedhopper is totally the opposite to the damage incurred by MYRO. The whole of MYRO’s lower half is undamaged, except for the pod that was damaged during the recovery, but it needs a main tube, at least one wing and sundry bits of covers that were either damaged in the accident or during the recovery. All of those items are present on the French aircraft, which just needs undercarriage and lower tube work, and I still have MYRO’s 503 Rotax engine safe in my cave.

So after thinking long and hard, as to be honest I don’t really need to take on yet more jobs when I already have enough work to do in the house and garden, but you can’t allow a good opportunity to go begging, I contacted the seller and made him a ‘realistic’ offer for the aircraft. I was going to leave it for a few days to strengthen my bargaining position, but last night I noticed that the seller had placed separate ads for the fuselage, wings, wing struts etc and the last thing I wanted to happen if I was to acquire it would be for parts to go missing. The outcome was that the seller accepted my offer of 600€, subject to my viewing the aircraft.

Here are some pics of it that Christophe, the seller, kindly provided me with.

I’m not that bothered about the extent of the damage as it appears in the photographs and has been described to me, as it’s not as bad as I had to deal with on the last occasion before coming to France with MYRO. So I’ve arranged to go up to the seller’s home airfield tomorrow with a view to completing the sale and picking it up. My new trailer will be big enough to take it and I’ve converted it into a platform by taking its sides, front and back panels off. So now I’m looking forward to the drive north leaving early tomorrow morning. As usual, I have to go to the other end of the country but there’s nothing I can do about that. Well, it’s only money, isn’t it 😉