Magical day

Which is why I’m treating myself to a glass of red wine while I type this. I was ready when Wim and Regis arrived at about 9.00 am this morning with the X-Air’s covers off so we could whip the wings off pretty quickly. Then they pulled the fuselage down the road from my front garden to the cow field while I steered from behind using the rudder. We had to pull over a couple of times to allow cars to pass us but it only took a couple of minutes or so for us to arrive at the field, where we then left it to return for the wings. I put two lengths of wood across the front and back of the roof bars on my car and we laid the wings on them in turn and very slowly drove them down to the cow field to join the fuselage so we could get to work re-rigging the aircraft ready for flight.

It was about 10.00 am by this time and I had told various people previously that I doubted that I’d be taking off much before mid-day, which is how it proved to be. Later actually, but when you’re fully re-rigging an aircraft that has had its principal controls disconnected, it pays to take your time and be sure that you do everything properly. It was a big bonus having Wim and Regis helping because both of them are expert in this kind of thing and we could all get on with doing several jobs at the same time as a result.

While we were working, I met the landowner, M. Lajoie, who had kindly agreed to allow me to use his field. Word also began to get around and more and more of my neighbours came down to watch what was going on. When the time came for me to take off there were 20 or 30 people there and there was almost a festive atmosphere on the field with much chattering, laughing and joking by everyone. I met several of my neighbours from the area for the first time actually. After I’d taxied around for a bit to test the engine, perform some power checks and burn up a bit of the old fuel in the tanks, I stopped to give the aircraft yet another check-over and top up the tanks with 20 litres of fresh 95 octane ‘sans alcool’ which is freely available in France, as well as the nasty stuff with 10% added alcohol that UK microlighters hate so much. Wim had flown into the field earlier in his Weedhopper and we decided that he would take off first, circle around and then I’d take off to follow him over to Galinat. He had already tried a practice take off to the south with a slight tail wind so we already knew that we wouldn’t have any problems on that score.

I’m glad to say that with all those people watching, everything went off smoothly, like clockwork. The X-Air took off like a scalded cat as soon as I applied full power and leaped into the air in what seemed like only a few yards. It only took ten minutes or so to make the flight over to Galinat and during it, my main problem was keeping behind Wim because his little Weedhopper, like MYRO but just with a single seat, is much slower than the X-Air. I had to keep doing S-turns to stay to its rear. I found that the X-Air was doing a comfortable 90 kmh at around 5200 rpm which should make for fairly economical cruising in the future and flew smoothly with no nasty vibrations or other vices, just as I remember it from when I flew it before agreeing to buy it last year. Once I’d spotted the field, I went in ahead of Wim and landed first. The views while in the air were spectacular and I flew right over one splendid local chateau but I said to Wim afterwards that there were noticeably few areas where you could make a forced landing in the event of an engine failure – just trees and more trees.

So my X-Air is now safely covered and tied down on the ground at Galinat. So now after a delay of over a year, my life here in Plazac is back on track again and I can’t wait to repeat the experience and get back up into the air again over the spectacular and beautiful countryside that is ‘La Dordogne’.