A day of mixed fortunes

Today was the day for MYRO to start coming back together again. I haven’t seen MYRO with wings on since I last flew it back in Summer 2008 so I was really looking forward to achieving a real milestone today. I don’t have a key to Paul’s hangar so I had to make a late morning start and when I arrived a bit before Bob at around 11.00 am, Linton was totally deserted and looking absolutely stunning. The first pic was taken from the up-slope on the northern side of the field and the second was shot directly along the main runway looking towards the west.

Bob does all the looking after of the field and I have to say that it’s an absolute credit to the work and effort he’s put in. The main runway looks a lot better than my back lawn actually 😉

I pulled MYRO out of Paul’s hangar and down to the other hangar where the wings have been stored. I decided it would be best to work down there because it’s close to where MYRO will be parked and at the end of the day when I would probably be pretty knackered I wouldn’t have far to move it before leaving for home.

I’d made a plan for re-rigging MYRO based on the instructions in the User Manual and my first task was to lay out the the various parts in the order that they’d be needed. I also had to replace an aileron bracket as I’d only done one previously because I needed the old pivot bush when I fitted the rudder and found one for that was missing all those weeks ago. Here are the parts all laid out – lucky I knew we could expect good weather today, eh 🙂

As well as replacing the second bent aileron bracket, I also had to re-secure the wing tensioning cables. There are two diagonal cables on the underside of each wing that apply tension between the cross-strut in the middle of the wing and the wing root, crossing over each other in an ‘X’ roughly in the centre of the wing. There is absolutely no need to remove them when removing the wings but for some reason, someone had released the inner cable fastenings. Anyway, it was a simple enough job to re-fix them with the wings on the grass and I wanted to renew the rusty bolts anyway. It never occurred to me that, having released the inner fixings, anyone would ever, ever, think about undoing the nuts holding the outer fixings as although they screw onto bolts that protrude outside, the bolts and the cable fastenings are totally inaccessible inside the wing structure itself.

This was in fact to prove my downfall, but more of that later. With the help of Paul who had arrived by now, and Bob I was able to get the wings and struts on with sufficient clevis pins to secure them. I was very, very happy when I stood back to see MYRO at last looking like more like a complete aircraft again, even if my satisfaction was somewhat dampened when I saw for the first time the several niggly little nicks and scuffs that the wing leading edges had suffered during their journey months before into Linton on the trailer.

I was surprised just how difficult it was lining holes up to get clevis pins in and I have to say that I don’t think I’d have been able to do it without my two helpers. I think it would even have been difficult with just one, so I was very fortunate that Paul had decided to drop in to give his Quik a clean and polish. I think he managed to do it even with all the time he and Bob spared me, but it must have been a bit of a close run thing even so 🙂

I then pressed on and got the jury struts on the starboard side on and with the rate of progress I was making, I had high hopes of getting both wings on, the aileron cables fitted and the upper and lower central wings covers on before putting MYRO to bed for the night.

And that’s when it all went pear-shaped. I was going around putting all the clevis pins and rings into place that I’d missed when we initially positioned the wings and struts. I’d finished the starboard side and was working on the port wing when I noticed a bolt hole in the centre underside of the port wing leading edge. When I checked I found that it was the hole that should have been filled by the cable securing bolt that I mentioned previously – the one that you can’t get access to because it’s up inside the structure of the wing.

Well it seemed that not only had someone removed the nut and washer, but they’d also tried to bang out the bolt that didn’t need to be removed anyway – into the wing. There was enough of the bolt in the hole (but only the tip) to hold the cable in tension so I didn’t notice when I secured the cable’s other end. But now it was too late. By looking through a hole in the fabric I could see the bolt standing up inside the wing but there was no way of getting access to it. Paul and I tried by removing the front strut and trying to work through the hole in the wing fabric that the bracket that the strut attaches to comes through, but there just wasn’t enough space to get at it. After Paul and Bob had left for home, I had another go by myself and actually succeeded in getting the bolt a good inch or so down. But it’s difficult enough getting three or four holes lined up to get a clevis pin to pass through when you have easy access, so I came to the conclusion that it would be impossible to get this bolt to successfully pass through that number and a cable bracket besides, when access was totally impossible. It’s obvious that the wing will need to come off to do the job, but that’s not all. To get to the bolt, the wing cover will need to come off too and to do that the port aileron will also need to be removed. In fact it will require a total wing strip down, back to the frame, probably the best part of a days’ work. All because someone tried to remove a bolt that didn’t need to be removed at all really. I feel like the proverbial football manager – as sick as a parrot, although that’s actually an under-statement.

So that’s how the day eventually drew to a close – like a bit of a damp squib. More was yet to come, though. As I mentioned earlier, I had to move MYRO into it’s parking spot which also involved shifting the tie-downs to where they were needed. They are really heavy and I found that totally exhausting after all my efforts during the day. And then I had to get some tarpaulins on to cover the gap between MYRO’s wings and the cabin. I can tell you, doing that by myself was no fun with the gusty wind having a real old laugh at my expense 😕

I eventually succeeded but it needed the best part of an hour to get everything tied down so the wind couldn’t get under the tarps and possibly damage them while no-one was looking. Here’s how MYRO looked parked up and eventually tucked up snugly for bed just before I left – at around 8.00pm!

I was thinking about the job to come during the drive home – which is to take two or three steps back, remove the port wing, strip the aileron off, remove the battens and cover and sort out this bolt. And then do the whole thing again in reverse. I can’t say that I relish the prospect at all 🙁