Helping out with the X-Air

I bumped into Peter, Ken’s brother, the other week-end and shortly afterwards spoke with Ken about their X-Air. As I mentioned quite a while back, I was involved in its purchase the best part of 3 years ago but unlike MYRO, which took a few months of work to get flying, the X-Air hasn’t flown in all the time since. It’s a great machine as you can see from the pics below.

This particular X-Air has a 582 liquid cooled 2-stroke engine which gives about the same performance as MYRO’s 503 because the X-Air is a bit bigger and heavier. But whereas MYRO is rated at an all-up weight of 390kg, the X-Air is 450kg which allows for more fuel and a longer range even though the aircraft itself weighs a bit more. It also has a larger cabin and twin sticks which is rather nice, as can be seen from this pic which I posted when I first mentioned the X-Air at the time it was purchased.

Because it’s been standing for so long without being run, the X-Air recently had its engine fully overhauled. It now needs to be got ready for inspection and permit in the Spring, which isn’t very far away, but unfortunately both Ken and Peter are very short of time. So they’ve asked me if I could give them a hand to get the work done and I’ve agreed of course. I’m now looking forward very much to working on the X-Air over the next few weeks, while still flying MYRO of course, and at the end of it, I look forward to enjoying the pleasure of flying it across to Stoke for its check flight, as I did MYRO. And then seeing it up in the air and being regularly flown as it should be.

I’ll be keeping a note on progress here on my blog 😉