One of those days

My plan was to start the day by going to Malbec, installing the new battery that I received yesterday in 24ZN, my X-air, starting its engine to check whether its fuel system problems have now been resolved and possibly even doing a take off and landing. But it wasn’t to happen, right from the word ‘go’.

My caravan’s electrical and water supplies have been in place with only a few minor problems for over a year and I expect things to stay that way. However, quite by chance I was checking the cable and hose pipe which run just outside my fence (so I don’t damage them with my mower) on the north side of my land when I found that one of the cable reels that I’d put inside a plastic bag to protect it from the elements had been exposed.

So it seemed to be a simple matter just to replace the plastic bag but what was on the face of it a quick and easy task turned into a job that took a couple of hours, because in the process of relocating the cable drum the connection was lost. The problem was that I didn’t know where the problem was so I ended up doing an end-to-end check from the main box next to the road down to the caravan before I could satisfy myself that I’d identified the problem and that it wouldn’t happen again, because the last thing I want right now is to lose power when I’m not there, for example, to my fridge and freezer.

So, so much for nipping over to Malbec first thing to sort the X-air out and I didn’t manage to get there in fact until after lunch, by which time the temperature was climbing towards the mid-30s degrees Celsius. But I was confident that the new battery would solve all of my problems, so it was worth struggling in the heat to pull out the Savannah, then the X-air and to remove all of the latter’s covers.

So what happened? It was a fiddly job fitting the new battery, but I knew that it would be, and eventually I was ready to go for an engine start. The engine cranked as usual and then… just as with the old battery, the engine began to turn over more and more slowly until there wasn’t enough power left for it to turn over any more. So what’s going on?

I suspect that the old battery wasn’t the problem – in fact I charged both the old and the new batteries up beforehand and when I checked their voltages, I found that the old battery was showing just over 13 volts, and the new one just under. I heard a weird noise coming from the starter motor when I’d been trying to start the engine previously which I’d put down to the battery not having enough power to spin it properly, but I think I was wrong.

I think that there’s a problem with the starter itself which is most likely dead shorting the battery while it’s spinning and thus causing the battery to discharge so quickly. I’ve removed the starter and disassembled it but won’t be able to do any more with it until at least tomorrow. However, my thinking is that it’s time to put the X-air on the back burner until I’ve sorted out the Savannah’s brakes and I’ve just left the X-air’s new battery on charge overnight for now and will decide what to do in the morning.

There was then nothing more that I could do, so after achieving practically nothing, I ended up just covering the X-air up again, pushing it into the back of the barn and replacing the Savannah in front of it. I think that I probably spent more time moving the aircraft around and uncovering and re-covering the X-air than I did actually doing any productive work, not that what I did achieve could in any way be described as ‘productive’.

So what a frustrating day, but unfortunately it was not yet over. When I returned from Malbec firstly I was incredibly thirsty because I hadn’t taken anything to drink with me and secondly the inside of the caravan was very hot. While I was waiting for the ice cubes that I’d put into a long glass of fruit-flavoured drink to melt I opened the caravan’s windows, and lo and behold, one of the supports on the main window at the rear snapped off, meaning that the window could not be held open.

Luckily, I still have some spare parts left over from when I did previous work on the window supports, but after all of the trials and tribulations that I’d been faced with during the day, this was just about the last thing that I needed. But anyway, out had to come the tool box once again and the window had to be fixed there and then as otherwise it would mess up the beginning of the day tomorrow. Since then, so far there haven’t been any more disasters, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed and may have an early night so nothing else can go wrong through my touching it… 🙁