Nothing Doing …… (Almost)

Well, something like 10 days have slipped by and we’ve been able to get very little accomplished in that time. But not quite nothing!

Managed to make contact with our local BMAA Inspector who will have the job of giving our trike a thorough look-over and deciding whether she’ll get her Permit To Fly or not. Anyway, that’s still a few weeks down the line. His name’s Jim and he sounds like a very nice chap indeed. Obviously safety must always remain the top-most priority but already the differences between microlights and Group A light aircraft, that we’ve been used to in the past, are becoming apparent. With the former, you’re discouraged from touching anything on your aircraft whereas the opposite seems to apply with microlights.

The policy seems to be to positively encourage you to do things yourself (on the assumption you do have some idea what you’re doing, of course) and I think this is a very good thing. The more you get to know about your aircraft, how it’s made, what the various parts do, how it goes together and, more importantly, the condition it’s in, surely the safer it will be for both you and your passengers. Not even a complete fool would risk flying something they know to be unsafe, and how can they know that unless they’ve been all over it with their own eyes and hands, touching, feeling, removing and replacing bits, tightening nuts, checking cables, fabric, components and so on. Luckily I’m pretty experienced in those things, but for other less experienced owners who have yet to learn, that surely is why at the end of it all you have an experienced inspector go over it with a fine tooth comb just to make sure you haven’t done anything silly. Anyway, in my book, it’s a good system.

What else have we done? Well, not much unfortunately. I got hold of some excellent 4-core multi-strand cable at the weekend but the FA Cup Final saw to it that the old cabling didn’t get replaced. After watching the match I almost wish I’d spent the time working on the trike instead!

A grudging ‘Well Done’ to Chelsea 😐