A long day’s work

We’ve had a stonker of a day today with blue skies, continuous wall-to-wall sunshine and a high of 26 degrees Celsius. One of the things that you don’t have to worry about on a day like today is getting things soaking wet because before you know it, they’re back to being bone dry again. So what better day to get stuck into giving 56NE the thorough clean that it’s overdue for.

I don’t think that 56NE’s former owners ever did more than the bare minimum when it came to keeping it looking presentable for the summer tourists in Brittany. Even when I bought it, the inside of the pod was covered in a film of grime and areas that you couldn’t see, like under the rear fuselage covers, were a grimetastic disaster. And since then not only have I flown it for two more seasons without doing as much myself in the cleaning stakes as I really should have, it’s also been parked out in the open under covers which also encourage more grime to be deposited as the air blows through them.

Now I know that 56NE is not in the first flush of youth, but there’s no reason why an older aircraft should be a dirty one. If an aircraft looks dirty and down-at-heel, that’s the way it flies and it’s amazing how by just giving it a bit of spit and polish, it seems to become more sprightly and altogether more lively. My plan for today, therefore, was to start on 56NE’s deep cleaning process, including the inside of the rear fuselage, covers and tubes, and the interior of the cabin. And because of the weather, I needed to have no fear about softening the grime with a weak detergent solution and hosing it away, including in the cabin even.

It all went very well. At different times I used a sponge, a brush and even the floor mop to reach areas that I couldn’t get to by hand – the bottom of the inside of the fuselage cover and up in the nose of the pod, for example. Then I used the hosepipe with a small high pressure spray to wash the grime away, just taking care not to spray up behind the instrument panel or onto the battery terminals, and tilting the aircraft afterwards to pour the water out of it. It’ll never come up like a new aircraft – that would need a miracle of sorts – but I was very happy with the results, as the following pictures show. Take it from me, the fabric, tubes and everything else in the internal areas shown in the first two were all beyond filthy.

It’s definitely the cleanest that 56NE has ever been since I’ve owned it and I haven’t even started on the outside yet. The cleaning and rinsing water that I periodically had to keep throwing away was as black as ink, so I must have shifted quite a lot of dirt, grease and muck. Once I’ve finished the cleaning, I’ll be able to go on and touch up the places where the white coating has been abraded or chipped off. I’ll have to use paint, of course, but someone has already been very busy in the past with the paint pot, not always as neatly as one might have hoped, so there’s no point losing any sleep over that. After all this, I’m hoping that when Wim and I leave for our west coast trip that 56NE will be a credit to its owner – just have to wait and see 😉