Off and on

Off came the Savannah’s new panel top covering, so hopefully next time it’ll be ‘third time lucky’. Today I trimmed down the one that I stuck on the other day but as I still couldn’t get the new screen to sit properly, it had to come off.

Sticking the next new one in when the screen is in place will be much less of a problem than doing a proper job on the screen install without damaging it while the panel top covering is in place. The trouble now is that I’ve got to get all the adhesive off that I carefully applied to the top of the panel, and if it wasn’t for that I could have had the new screen in by now 😕

So I had to leave that job for the present as I didn’t take a chisel with me to Malbec to remove the old glue but as I’d taken the Weedhopper’s new battery with me, I was able to switch jobs, remove its old flat battery and fit the new one. It didn’t take long and afterwards I soon had 28AAD out on the piste, still without its wings of course, and ready to fire up.

It started up after a few swings of the prop and as the engine warmed up, I was pleased to see that all of the gauges were working as they should. Having buckled myself in, I was then ready to do some taxy checks. First I headed down the runway and was happy to find that the brakes, which I’ve not done any work on yet, were working OK and easily pulling the aircraft up at low engine revs. After arriving at the bottom of the runway I then applied a bit of power to turn round so my nose was pointing up the slope.

The temperatures were all good so I slowly increased the throttle up to take off power. The aircraft shot off up the runway like a scalded cat, but before closing the throttle again, I was delighted to see that the engine achived just over 6000 rpm with a bit more still to come. So on this initial evidence, it looks as though the cut-down prop will be fine.

I repeated the process once more with the same results so it looks as though MYRO’s trusty old 503 engine, which only has 65 hours on it after being completely overhauled including a new crank, has come through its period of storage in good shape. So as far as the Weed is concerned, it’s now just a matter of attaching the wings and trying it out as it’s all good to go.

I wish I could say the same about the Savannah… 🙁