Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

We had a beautiful day today – calm wind, a clear blue sky (to start off with at least), a high of 17 degrees Celsius and… the first butterflies of the year. Spring is here! Well, for this week anyway as it looks as though things will remain much the same, albeit maybe a couple of degrees or so lower, going into next week.

And both Friday and Saturday look as though they’ll be perfect for flying, so today was a good day to get the Savannah ship-shape and all ready to go. And as I needed to be at Malbec to move the X-Air to make space for an incoming ‘pendulaire’ who is joining us there, I had the perfect opportunity to combine the two activities.

Things went well and I soon removed the end terminals of the new plugs and got them fitted. And today I also had the tool to remove the magnetic plug below the gearbox which I forgot to take with me when I did the oil change the other day. I’d expected oil to come out when I removed it but none did and I was pleasantly surprised that far fom having an overcoat made out of metal filings, all the plug had clinging to it was a light black sludgy material.

It only took a jiffy to clean that off and replace the plug and it was time to give the engine a run-up, which I did after pulling the Savannah’s nose out of the front of the hangar. In doing so I unfortuantely forgot that I’d left the four Camloc fasteners that secure the lower part of the engine cowl on the top of the fuselage just in front of the screen and, of course, during the process they fell off into the muddy grass below. As is always the way, I could only find just three of them.

Now if I was in the UK and had ordered some replacements from a UK supplier, I could be pretty much assured of the fact that I’d receive them by Friday at the latest. But this is France. I’ve ordered three more so I have two spares from ULM Technologie and I’ll be very surprised if I see them before Monday. If so, despite all my efforts, that’ll be my week-end’s flying up the spout 🙁