I carried out maintenance on my X-Air and gave it a thorough clean right back in the first week of August and have been waiting ever since to test fly it. I couldn’t at the time because the weather wasn’t favourable enough and then later in the month I went off to the UK in my Savannah, so it still remained unflown. Since I got back we’ve been subjected to excessive winds that have continued to keep the X-Air grounded but as my friend Wim pointed out on Monday, this afternoon was likely to be acceptable.

And it was. I wanted the conditions to be as suitable for a test flight as possible as although I’ve carried out multiple taxies up and down the runway at Malbec together with several engine tests at take off power, these things can always be unpredictable. But today it looked as though although the winds wouldn’t be totally calm, with the possibility even of a small tail-wind on landing, conditions in general would be OK.

I did another taxy and high power engine test and was going to do another, but the results were so good that I decided not to and took off anyway.

My intention was to just fly around in the vicinity of the airfield and then land back. In fact things went so well with exhaust gas and water temperatures rock solid in range and fuel pressure at a constant 0.3 bar, just as it should be, that I eventually ventured a bit further afield, to Thonac and overhead Galinat to see how it looks now that it’s closed (its owner, Christian, unfortunately passed away at around the time of Covid and there’s no news about what’s going to happen to it in the future).

I also took in Rouffignac as shown in the next shot.

The T & P readings remained perfect so after an hour or so I decided that it was time to head back for a landing at Malbec. The next shot was taken as I approached Fleurac.

And here’s a shot taken just before touching down at Malbec with everything looking good. Take a look at the windsock. Although a light southerly tailwind had been forecast in fact there was a cross wind from the north-east, a complete turnaround!

In many ways the results of the test flight were bitter-sweet because it now means that I can advertise 24ZN for sale. Yes, I need to sell it because as I’ve said on several occasions, I don’t have the time to fly two aircraft and aircraft need to be flown, not become hangar queens. In some ways I’ll be sorry to see it go though, as my association with it goes right back to June 2008, not long after I started My Trike, when I found G-BYPW as she then was for my friend Ken up in north-west England. That’s over 16 years. Many people don’t even stay married for that long 😐

When I landed at Linton airfield in Kent last month, my destination in the UK, an old friend John was there and took a video with his phone.

I think it’s the first exterior video ever shot of one of my landings! It was quite windy and I came in a bit hot, but fortunately they’ve just extended their runway and I managed to stop in time 🙂

It’s taken a while to put together and edit but I’ve at last managed to upload the video of this flight. It’s quite long (nearly 1 hour) as it’s of the whole flight in its entirety. I’ve done this because I wanted to show other pilots who maybe have thought about doing the same but are worried about the procedures involved, especially the radio contacts that are necessary with air traffic control on both sides of the Channel, that really there’s nothing to fear.

You don’t have to be perfect as many of the conversations included in the video show. All you have to do is say what you want to say clearly and confidently and the Controllers, who have massive experience, do the rest. And that includes the French ones who demonstrate amazing skill switching in an instant from French to English and back again.

The landing at Le Touquet is quite interesting as traffic in the circuit began to build up, and this wasn’t even a very busy morning. It gets even more frantic on week-ends with aircraft coming in from all over Europe. All you need to do is not panic and keep aviating, navigating and communicating in that order, as the old saying goes.

Enjoy!

I awoke the next morning in the Red Fox Hotel feeling remarkably refreshed. I didn’t know whether the hotel offered breakfast or not but decided anyway not to bother as I still had a flask of cold orange and yesterday’s lunch in my aircraft which I could consume when I eventually got the chance while preparing he paperwork to depart from Le Touquet. In the meantime I checked the weather and re-did my route calculations on my laptop, although I had to be fairly quick as I didn’t have its charger with me.

Then I went downstairs, paid my bill and waited for my police transport to arrive. And waited and waited, for over an hour. Then my phone rang. “Where are you?” said a voice. “In the hotel, waiting for someone to pick me up”, I replied. The voice said that nobody was coming and that I’d have to walk there. It turned out that the police station was only about five minutes away and when I announced my arrival there, the reply was, “Ah, the aircraft man!”

Shortly after a youngish officer in plain clothes appeared and invited me upstairs. We walked into a spacious upstairs office and a colleague joined us, for no reason apparently, except that he was interested in what we were talking about. After the previous day, the conversation was a bit of an anti-climax. He said that as nothing untoward had happened, everything was in order and I was ‘unknown’ to any of the authorities, things would not be taken further and nothing was going to happen. Then the three of us began talking about flying. The two of them were very interested in my experiences and exploits and liked the pictures of my aircraft that I was able to show them.

But they realised that I was under pressure to leave due to the weather and after bidding farewell to his colleague, I was given a lift back to the aircraft by the first plain-clothes officer. We had a very enjoyable conversation on the way and after dropping me off, before he left and I entered the airport building, he took some shots of Hotel Papa. For the ‘dossier’ 😉

But that wasn’t the end of things. My GPS was totally flat and I needed it for the flight over the Channel to Headcorn. When I went to the counter to ask if they could charge it for me, which they did, one of the airport staff who had been there the day before (but not one of the two apron workers) spotted me and his face broke into a huge grin. “Shall I call the police now?” he said. And we both laughed.

I didn’t stay laughing for long though. When I took off from Le Touquet it was clear that the cloud was much thicker than forecast on the way to Cap Gris Nez. I spotted a corridor that would allow me to climb up over it but it meant initially flying almost directly out to sea in order to do so. So that’s what I did before gradually attempting to regain my planned course to Folkestone on the English coast.

Luckily it was dead calm above the cloud because the conditions were a blue-out IMC with no horizon. Very disconcerting but turning back was more risky than continuing on. I spotted the coast off to my right at Dover before I got a horizon and a sight of the coast at Folkestone at which point I could descend for an eventual landing at Headcorn. After crossing the coast I got a call from Headcorn asking if that was me as they were watching my ADSB out signal on their computer screen. And after a bumpy cross-wind landing I was never more pleased to be back on the ground after the experiences of the previous two days.

Now I can assure you that I’m not making any of what follows up.

I’d landed at Le Touquet at 4.50 pm and by the time I’d taxied to the apron and parked it was pushing 5.00 pm. I’m pretty sure that this must have been the highlight of these two chaps’ day because even though they were only apron hands, they had evidently been delegated some authority and were taking their new responsibilities very seriously. Thinking back I suspect that the police had told the airport that they were on their way and that I shouldn’t be allowed to leave and these two nice but slightly dim gents were the means by which that was to be accomplished.

They tried to hustle me a bit as I got out of the aircraft but didn’t forget their duty as apron hands, however, and asked if I had a fluorescent ‘gilet’ to wear on the apron (mandatory at all larger airfields in France). I did have and put it on but I wasn’t to be hustled and took my time gathering up my charts and generally clearing up the cabin. Even so, I was unable to switch off my GPS and when I left with them for the terminal I left my keys in the ignition and didn’t latch my door.

I, of course, didn’t know at that stage what they were talking about and I doubt that they did either. It was difficult to take what was happening seriously but as we made our way up to the terminal four hefty (including the one woman) police officers emerged all toting side arms and a host of other dangling equipment. They must do exercises every day just to stay fit enough to carry all that stuff, let alone run with it, but I digress.

So by now I was surrounded by six people all about two feet taller than me who were taking their jobs very seriously indeed. The police told the two airport workers they could go and they sloped off with an air of obvious disappointment. Luckily I’d had the foresight to dismount my GoPros as their power bank was long exhausted and fetch my laptop and flight bag with all of my documents thinking that as soon as I got the chance I’d need to file my necessary papers to get away to the UK. But these custodians of the law thought otherwise.

We pretty soon established that only one officer had a smattering of English and my French was perfectly adequate for the tasks in hand, and that visibly tilted the balance such as it was in my favour. Every now and again the officer who had a bit of English came out with some but he was the only one who could throughout the whole affair, which was conducted almost wholly in French.

They’d started by asking me for my documents and I had all of them in order, for both myself and the aircraft. I sensed that this might have been something of a surprise to them but we ploughed on. Then they said that they’d noticed that I had two GoPros, a camera around my neck and my phone and that they’d need to take a look at what I’d been taking pictures and videos of. I still hadn’t a clue about what they were driving at and assured them that the GoPros hadn’t worked since shortly after I left Saumur, that I hadn’t taken any pictures with my phone at all and that I had only taken a few shots with my camera since leaving Saumur, except for one or two coming up the coast, due to the bad weather.

They said that nevertheless they had to see what I’d been photographing and after I’d paged through the pictures in my camera and shown that there were none on my phone, they went off with my two GoPros to see if they could borrow some ‘C’ type USB leads to view the videos they contained on a PC in the airport reception. By now the atmosphere was becoming more relaxed except the youngest officer, who clearly took his policing very seriously, maintained a grim expression the whole time.

After a few minutes I decided to go and see how they were doing and found them all gathered around a computer screen. I said that I hadn’t had a chance to view the videos yet myself and sidled in beside them to get a good view. In fact they had already seen as much as they needed to and the one who could speak English turned and said to me, “We saw your take off at Saumur. Very good!” He then got his phone out and brought up a picture he’d found of the apron and control tower there that I’d left several hours before.

They clearly hadn’t found anything incriminating and they returned all of my stuff, including my pilot licences (I’d also produced my lifetime UK PPL), passport and ‘carte de séjour’ (my residency permit). So now I had some questions for them. What on earth was this all about? To cut a long story short, it turned out that the ‘prohibited zone’ was a lot more significant than what I’d thought and that was what all the fuss was about.

The English speaking officer then produced a slightly crumpled sheet of A4 paper that turned out to be a printout of the radar screen showing my incursion into the zone. It wasn’t by very much but it transpired that the zone wasn’t just around a key French nuclear establishment but was around just about the most key one in the whole of France. No wonder people were jumping up and down in the way they were!

I thought that as we’d established that nothing untoward had happened I’d now be allowed to continue on to the UK, but no, apparently they had other instructions. They had to take me to the police station in town as ‘procedures’ had to be followed. They had no choice, so I followed them and got into the back seat of a Gendarmerie car with two officers in the front and one beside me. I’d forgotten that I’d left my aircraft totally unsecured on the apron.

Things were now beginning to descend a bit into a Boys’ Own farce. As we were driving to the police station they activated the blue lights and the marvellous French emergency sirens that sound the opposite way to those in the UK (Dah Di, not Di Dah) and always sound a bit hoarse to me. As the traffic miraculously parted in front of us I thanked them for not wasting time getting to the police station as I needed to get away as soon as possible for the UK but they replied that they always drove like this. Goodness knows what people outside thought. Maybe they thought that I was either a government minister being escorted or a criminal getting my comeuppance, often one and the same thing here in France.

On arriving at the police station I was taken into a back office. I think policemen must be the same everywhere. I’d seen offices like this in the UK when I was younger while working in my vacations for a plumber and a builder who had government contracts, which is also why I’m pretty unphased by being around the police. An interrogation room this was not, its walls plastered with printed jokey sayings and phrases. Officer ‘English speaker’ eventually began typing a ‘statement’ for me although he didn’t need to ask me many questions as I’d already told him just about everything he needed to know. Then he left.

Then it was the turn of the lady officer. I kept looking over her shoulder whenever I got the chance and it was clear that typing wasn’t really her forte. I asked who was going to read all of the paper that was being generated and she looked at me, smiled wanly and raised her eyes to the ceiling, which was answer enough. I’d already noticed that they had a check-list that they were working their way through and it wouldn’t be over until it was over.

Eventually she left too and Officer ‘English speaker’ returned and asked me if I’d like a drink. As I’d had nothing to eat or drink since breakfast I accepted a glass of water and asked how long this was going to take? He said that it was a problem as it was a Sunday and that a ‘procureur’ had to be contacted in order for a final decision to be taken. He couldn’t say how long that might take but that in any case his colleague had to come to take another statement from me.

In the meantime I was shunted out of the office into the vestibule and the more I asked what was going on the more embarrassed the office staff became as it was clear that nobody really knew what was going on. The ‘colleague’ duly arrived at 8.00 pm when I suspect the shift changed. He then proceeded to type yet another ‘statement’ and confirmed that a decision about the matter had to be taken elsewhere. He was very sympathetic about my situation but said that unfortunately it wasn’t up to him and when I asked for a copy of the ‘statement’ he’d typed it was clear that he’d been telling me the truth. It couldn’t have been more in my favour.

But by then I’d been in the police station for nearly five hours. I’d asked what could be done about my aircraft but was told very apologetically that they’d tried phoning the airport several times and it was closed. So nothing could be done and I just hoped that as the Savannah has no parking brakes there would be no strong winds overnight. I would obviously need a hotel for the night and one of the staff went off to make a few phone calls. Shortly after they said they’d found me a room in the Red Fox Hotel in the town and four of us, me and three officers, bundled into another car to take me there.

What the staff thought when we all piled through the front door I can only guess. I asked how I’d book in with no luggage and without my passport (the police had hung onto my documents) but they smiled and said that with them accompanying me, that wouldn’t be a problem. And I got a special rate too (the police declined when I suggested that they should be paying for my room). They then left saying they’d pick me up in the morning and I went off for an enjoyable meal at the Matisse restaurant just up the road, followed by a good night’s sleep.

A very strange day indeed 😕

There’s an expression used in aviation, which is “When the holes in the Swiss cheese line up”. It’s often used to explain what led up to an accident occurring, but it can also be used for any incident, even far less serious ones. Like the one that happened to me.

The expression explains how a series of events occurred that taken together allowed the incident to happen but if any one or more had not occurred in the way that it or they did, the end result would either not have happened at all or would have been completely different. The following image makes it easy to understand.

I’ll explain how this how is relevant to what happened to me during my recent flight up to the UK and to do so I’ll need to go right back to the start of the flight. I originally intended to take off at 8.00 am but couldn’t do so on account of low cloud at Malbec. In fact I couldn’t get away until 10.10 am, a delay of over two hours.

This needn’t have been a problem as the UK is one hour behind France at this time of the year and with a total flight time of 6 1/2 hours or so allowing for landings and take offs en-route, I would still have arrived at Headcorn in Kent in good time to clear the UK entry formalities. So what en-route landings and take offs had I planned?

First off, I had to land at Le Touquet in order to file my international flight plan, the paperwork to leave the Schengen area and the form to notify my entry into the UK. Secondly, I needed at least one, and preferably two fuel stops to ensure that I had enough for the whole flight. The first one would be at Saumur which was half-way and also had an easily accessible pump that accepted bank debit cards, but the second was more problematic.

My calculations showed that as a result of the forecast headwind component it would be touch and go making it across the Channel without a second top-up and the places available for this were limited – either Le Touquet itself or Dieppe. The system at the former is more complicated as you have to order fuel and taxy to a remote delivery point and a staff member has to come and serve you and then you have to return to ‘Control’ to pay. At Dieppe the system was far simpler, so that was my choice.

Now the holes in the Swiss cheese began to line up. Having taken off at 10.10 am I should have arrived at Dieppe in just over 4 1/2 hours even allowing for a previous landing at Saumur. However, due to the larger than expected headwind component, it took 5 1/2 hours during which my GPS was switched on the whole time, although this shouldn’t have been a problem as it was plugged into a 12V socket on the Savannah’s panel.

The delay was compounded even further, though, because whereas I thought I’d be able to serve myself with fuel and get away pretty swiftly, it turned out that the pump there is operated by the parachute school and only the jump aircraft pilot can do it. And he was in the air. So after I’d refuelled and paid, it was a full six hours after leaving Malbec before I was able to get airborne again.

The leg from Dieppe to Le Touquet should only have taken 25 minutes but I knew from the flight so far that it would take longer. In fact it took 45 minutes, almost twice as long. Excluding the landing at Le Touquet, the whole flight from Dieppe to Headcorn should only have taken 1 1/4 hours but with the wind over the Channel having by now picked up considerably, that also was going to take much longer.

So my rough mental calculations told me that allowing for a bit more than an hour to complete the formalities at Le Touquet, I could well be landing at Headcorn at around 6.00 pm local time or later, at which time the airfield would be close to closing. That was already placing me under pressure and things got worse when I took off. I’d noticed coming into Dieppe that my GPS screen was becoming darker and difficult to read, so I’d turned it off after landing.

I thought that it was possibly overheating but after departing Dieppe it was just as bad. I assumed that something was wrong with it but decided to press on as I could still make out my route on its screen, albeit with some difficulty. I had my phone as a back up but was reluctant to try to set it up as controlling the aircraft as I ascended in the wind, which I conservatively estimated at 280 degrees 31 gusting 40 kmh, was demanding in itself without having to take my eyes off the instruments and one hand off the controls to open up the GPS system on my phone.

So I persevered, but that wasn’t all. As I intended to enter the controlled airspace at Le Touquet, I also had to call up Lille Approach on the radio for a squawk code at the same time, so together with the time pressure I was under and the problem I had with my GPS, my workload was quite high to say the least.

Now it just so happens that to the north-east of Dieppe, there’s a restricted area. I didn’t know then what it was for but I did know that entry into it was prohibited at all times, so I’d planned to skirt around it, as shown by the following image of that section of my route.

But by now the holes in the Swiss cheese were fully aligned. Just before I’d called up Lille Approach I’d looked more closely at my GPS screen and thought that I was getting much too close to the restricted area. So did a sharp turn to the right in order, as I thought, to avoid infringing it, but after contacting Lille and getting my squawk code they came back with the following message. “Hotel Papa, you are in a restricted zone”.

That’s the sort of message that no pilot wants to hear. I replied that I didn’t think I was as I’d turned so as not to enter it, but it was later shown that I was wrong and they were right. I had indeed just entered the zone and subsequently even my own recorded track proved it, as shown by the image below.

The blue line is my intended track and the thinner red one is the one I actual flew. It shows that half way towards the zone from leaving Dieppe, my track continually veered left without my noticing. Once I’d noticed it was too late and although I’d taken steps to exit it again as soon as I could, my incursion had been picked up on their radar screen. The chart on my GPS is not 100% accurate and the actual incursion was less than the above image shows, but there was still an incursion and that’s the end of it.

My approach into Le Touquet was otherwise without incident and I received full cooperation and assistance from Lille Approach. However, once I’d taxied in and parked up on the apron, as I opened the aircraft door two large airport employees loomed up and said, “You have committed and infraction. The police want to talk to you”. And so the next phase of this unfortunate incident began.

It’s been a slow job but I’ve at last managed to complete the video of the first leg of my recent flight to the UK.

I’ll do a write-up of the flight north as soon as I can because it was ‘different’, to say the least, and was an experience that you don’t have every day. I’m glad to say 😀

What have I been up to? Yes, I’ve been absent and quiet for a while but there have been reasons for that. First off, I managed to make a flight up to the UK and back in my Savannah nearly a couple of weeks ago which I’ve not yet managed to write about, but I will as soon as I can because it was notable for both good and bad reasons, which I’ll talk about in due course. Secondly, I picked up a nasty bug, probably while I was in the UK, that has been a bugger to shake off. I’m still not quite right but I’m getting there and it’s time to get back into stride with my life, albeit a bit more slowly than usual to start off with.

First off, I’ll talk about photos of my latest UK flight. Unbelievably, due to my own carelessness and stupidity I managed to delete almost all of the videos and all of the still photos that I shot flying up to the UK. I’ve been trying ever since to recover them but I’m now resigned to the fact that they’re gone forever. I’m managing to make a video from salvaged material of the first leg of the flight that I’ll be putting up on Youtube so it’s not a total disaster but although it wasn’t easy taking stills from inside the aircraft or even outside because of the wind and bad weather, I did get some good pics (some of Le Mans and the famous racing circuit there) that I doubt I’ll get the chance to take again. But such is life.

Luckily I did get a perfect video of the first leg of my return flight from Kent in South-East England to Le Touquet in France. It captured all of the radio calls and ATC procedures between myself and other traffic and might be of interest to anyone interested in what’s involved or might even be considering the Channel crossing for the first time.

The flight up to the UK turned into an extraordinary experience. I’ll post the write-up when it’s done but I’ll just say for now that I was detained by the French police in Le Touquet and questioned in regard to a potential terrorist offence!! And no, I wasn’t wearing either a beard or a turban at the time. It was a terribly disruptive affair but was difficult to take seriously, and pretty soon the police didn’t either but they have ‘procedures’ to follow 😕

But for starters I’ve attached a couple of pics that I’ve lifted from the saved videos. The first is of your erstwhile pilot starting the under-wing video prior to take off at Chateau Malbec and the second is of starting the cabin video in the UK prior to taking off for the return flight to France.

The person shown is a gormless looking individual who looks just the type to delete valuable videos and photos, I’m sure you’ll agree 😀

And to finish off, a shot of Cap Gris Nez taken when coasting back into France on 21st August.

And having finished writing this, it’s 9.30 am and time if ever there was one, for a cup of tea and a Bramley apple pie that I brought back with me from the UK 😉

I didn’t want to have another early morning at Malbec after having had one yesterday and then worked for several hours in the hot sun, so by the time I got there today and unhooked the battery charger the temperature was already pushing 30 degrees C, as had been forecast. The first flight of any aircraft immediately following maintenance, especially if it involved the engine, is in effect a test flight and you therefore want conditions to be as good as possible.

So the conditions this morning were yet again far too unstable to get 24ZN into the air and instead I settled for more taxying up and down the runway before parking it under the tall trees at the top of the runway in the hope that conditions would be more favourable in the early evening. I wasn’t holding out too much hope, however, as the forecast for today was for another extremely hot day with the heat continuing on well into the evening.

And so it turned out. When I arrived at Malbec at 8.00 pm the temperature was still around 35 degrees C so I decided that prudence was the best policy and to abandon any idea of flying this evening. As two more very hot days are forecast for tomorrow and Monday it looks as though the earliest I’ll be able to fly 24ZN will be Tuesday so it meant that both it and my Savannah would have to be put back into the barn, with the Xair needing to have its covers put back on as well.

It’s extraordinary. When I wanted to fly 24ZN over to France from the UK in the autumn of 2019 I was prevented from doing so due to bad weather in the form of cold, wet weather and high winds. Now it’s here the weather is again preventing me from flying it, but this time in the form of scorching hot days that would be thermic to the point of being dangerous for such a light aircraft. You couldn’t make it up.

I did have one piece of good fortune today, however. Take a look at the following photo and on the right of the panel there’s a switch labelled ‘intercom’. Underneath it there’s a little green light.

it turns out that whoever wired in the intercom didn’t connect it through the master switch as they should have done. I either left it on earlier or, more likely, knocked the switch on when I was cleaning 24ZN’s panel and it’s been on ever since giving a slow but steady drain of the battery. So that’s why the battery went flat yesterday.

Now that I’ve switched it off, hopefully I’ll have no further battery problems. Certainly, there was no problem starting the engine after the aircraft had been sitting for several weeks, months even, so something must have caused the dead battery yesterday and I’m pretty sure this was it.

Today was forecast to be another very hot day and as I can’t afford to keep losing one day after another, I made the effort to get over to Malbec by 7.30 am this morning in order to finish off the work on my Xair. And everything went very smoothly indeed. Not only did I get the aircraft thoroughly cleaned inside and out – the best it’s been since I’ve had it actually – but I also managed to clean its outdoor covers in which it’s been stored in the barn and which were filthy, and lube all of its control hinges and pulleys.

So as it had then been fully serviced and checked over it was ready to carry out some taxi trials, but before doing so I took some photos after I’d moved it onto the top of the runway.

It was just gone 1.30 pm by the time I’d done a few taxi trials up and down the runway including some high power runs and I was very satisfied with the results. As by then it was much too hot to think about flying – it would have been extremely thermic and bumpy and the approach back into Malbec over the trees would have been very challenging indeed – so I decided to park the Xair out of the sun (and UV) in the shade of the tall trees on the other side of the runway, go off for the afternoon and prepare a flight for when it had cooled down this evening.

My idea was to take off and fly around the airfield as far as Rouffignac and high enough so if I needed to return I’d be able to make it back safely and I also planned to set up a couple of Go Pros on and in the aircraft to record the flight. I also made up 20 litres of new fuel and by 7.30 pm after setting everything up and carrying out some more taxi runs I was all set to go, so I stopped the engine at the top of the runway to start the Go Pros recording. But when I came to restart the engine the battery was flat.

So that was it. I’ve left the Xair out overnight with the battery on charge and I’ll be very annoyed if the battery is giving up the ghost because the one it replaced is still going strong on my ride-on mower despite notionally being too small to start its engine. The other thing is that having made such an early start this morning I don’t think I want to do it again tomorrow and if I try flying later in the morning it might be too hot as it’s forecast to be even hotter than today with a top temperature of 36 degrees C or possibly higher. But anyway, I’ll just have to wait and see.

Having completed my work on my Savannah yesterday, today I moved on to my X-air. Like the Savannah, this has also been standing for months with its engine only having been run from time to time but at least it has been under covers so they took the brunt of the dirt, filth and bird poo and only small areas of the aircraft were affected. I started by pumping up its tyres and then moved on to emptying, flushing and refilling its cooling system with 50% G12 anti-freeze, the same as for the Savannah.

As it has a Rotax 582 two stroke motor which I extensively checked over before flying the aircraft to France in 2020, there was little to do by way of servicing other than a general inspection and cleaning and re-gapping the spark plugs and then I was all set to start and run the engine. It did so faultlessly so after confirming that the coolant and EGT gauges were rising towards their expected levels and there were no leaks, I was able to shut the engine down and move on to the initial stages of thoroughly cleaning the aircraft inside and out as I’d done for the Savannah.

I took the following shots after I’d started washing the aircraft down after I’d reached the end of a very dirty bucket of water which I decided wasn’t worth re-filling before packing up and leaving for home.

As the shots I took of the Savannah yesterday were so poor, I took some more shots today while it was still clean and sparkling in the sunlight.

It was cooler today than it’s been of late but as it’ll be up to 30 degrees C again tomorrow I’m aiming to make another early start on the X-air to try and finish it off before it gets too hot. So it’ll be early to bed tonight with the aim of getting cracking at Malbec by about 8.00 am. That’s the aim anyway… 😕

My Savannah has now received the most thorough service and inspection than it’s had the whole of the time since I acquired it eight years ago. I did it for two reasons but mainly because it hasn’t been flown for months while I was concentrating on my house build and now that it needs to be got back in the air I wanted to ensure that it was in tip-top condition. It took longer than I expected due to the potentially serious problem I found with its cooling system which prevented me from completing its engine service as the system had to be drained.

This prevented me from running the engine to warm up and drain the oil but once I was able to do that and complete the engine service I was then able to embark on a thorough inspection of all of its controls. Yesterday I finished doing that by lubricating all of the control hinges and pulleys both externally on the wings and rear control surfaces and internally inside the fuselage, so all that I then had to do was give it a thorough clean externally and internally in the cabin.

As we’re still experiencing very hot days making it uncomfortable at the very least to work outside in the open, I made an early start this morning. Even so, it took me over four hours to complete the job and I had to push the Savannah back into the shade in the barn to finish the work off by vacuuming out the grit on the floor and the accumulation of dead insects. At the end it looked a treat as it always does but later on I shall have to remove a few more spots of surface corrosion and paint the affected areas before they get worse.

I took a few pictures but as I was inside the barn they were of very poor quality. Nevertheless here are a couple of shots taken of the panel and screen after I’d cleaned it inside and out with Plexus making it clear and clean again.

So what is the second reason for carrying out such a thorough inspection and service? It’s because I’ve decided that I’m going to take advantage of the current settled period of weather to make another return flight to the UK. I’ve already decided on my routes out and back as shown in this final image. I’ll provide more detailed routing information later on closer to the departure date but I’ve decided to go out to the UK via Saumur and back via Blois.

I’ve flown both routes previously so I know they work, mainly for taking on fuel as although you can purchase fuel at many aerodromes in France, not all of them accept a standard bank debit card and require payment by cash or a company card (Air Total or Air BP). The latter are uneconomic for pilots like myself because although you get invoices and a month’s credit you have to pay an annual subscription which is more than the cost of the fuel I’ll use going to the UK and back.

I have to go out and back via Le Touquet due to Schengen Area exit and re-entry rules but there’s an additional complication. If I top up my tanks at Saumur I’ll need to take on more fuel before commencing the Channel crossing. If I don’t depending on the wind direction I might make it – but then again I might not so I need somewhere that will accept my bank debit card and Le Touquet does not. Payment there is solely by Total credit card.

The solution to my problem is to land slightly off track at Dieppe which I don’t mind doing as the deviation is only very small plus it will give me the opportunity to land at a new airfield. An alternative would be to take on fuel at Abbeville but I’ve been there and done that. Also it’s closer to Le Touquet (and further from Saumur), and anyway, I’m always up for a new adventure 😉

Yesterday morning I had to wait in for a parcel to be delivered that needed to be signed for so while I waited I prepared a 50% mix of the G12 anti-freeze that I’d received previously. Afterwards it became too hot again to work outside and finish off the service on my Savannah but I was able to today, which was much cooler.

I started by emptying its cooling system which I’d previously filled with straight water and then filled and emptied it again to flush out as much of the original coolant as I could. I suspect that having the ‘wrong’ kind of anti-freeze may have had something to do with the original coolant expansion bottle having corroded but even if this was not the case, I’ll be happy now that it’s been swapped for G12 which is the recommended coolant for the Savannah’s engine.

As I’d already done an oil and filter change and replaced the spark plugs, it was then just a matter of going all over the engine to make sure that there were no leaks and cable-tying anything that needed to be secured. It was then time to run the engine up to temperature and afterwards recheck the fluid levels. Here’s how it all looked before starting the engine.

So not bad for an old ‘un, which the Savannah now is. The engine started very easily and ran very smoothly with good oil pressure. Afterwards I was able to top up the cooling system after the air in the system had been expelled and as I’d already cleaned everything up and lubricated all the cables and linkages, the engine service was complete.

Then I had the pleasure of replacing the lower and upper engine covers. These had been removed and left under covers for weeks due to the delays on account of obtaining the correct coolant overflow bottle and not being able to work outside because of the exceptionally hot weather.

Before I left for home I lubricated all of the external control system hinges and linkages so all that is left now for the Savannah to be fully flyable is for the internal controls, cables and linkages to be checked and lubricated and for the aircraft to be thoroughly cleaned inside and out. Then I can’t wait to get it back up in the air again. It’s been a long time. Too long 🙁

Too hot. Last week they were forecasting temperatures of over 40 degrees C for this week but now they’ve been moderated a little to the 39 degree mark. OK if you’re on holiday down here next to a cool swimming pool but not if you have work to do. Like I have. It’s so hot that I’m not getting any work done on my aircraft. I’d hoped that by now I’d have my Savannah all serviced and ready to go and just be waiting for the new anti-freeze to arrive while I’d have started work on my X-Air, but things have just been at a standstill.

I’m typing this at teatime and I’ve just returned from checking what conditions are like at Malbec as the barn has been in shadow for several hours. When I left the temperature gauge in my car read 39 degrees C and at Malbec it was still 33 degrees in the shade. Also the humidity, although forecast to be only around 50-60%, was quite a bit higher I think, making working conditions not very enjoyable and the vis quite poor as the following pictures show.

When I returned home the temperature inside my house was 31 degrees C even though I’ve had the shutters closed on the sunny sides of the house and yet again sleeping tonight will be uncomfortable, even with a fan running, as it’s been for the past several days. The temperature is forecast to be 35 degrees C tomorrow and falling slowly thereafter but is still not forecast to fall below 30 degrees until Saturday, so whether I’ll get much done before then I do not know.

I need to pump the Savannah’s tyres up and lubricate all of its swivels and hinges after which it should be ready to fly. That’ll only leave the anti-freeze and a thorough clean inside and out to be done. There will be less to do on the X-Air but that also will need a thorough internal clean, although it’s always kept in the barn with outdoor covers on, so cleaning its exterior won’t be much of a problem.

The other problem because of the weather is the insects. There is a profusion of wood wasps this year and they’re all flying around looking for places in which to build their nests. As soon as I open the doors and windows of my house in they come making a nuisance of themselves. I was stung on my toe while wearing flip flops a few days ago when I opened the doors of my tool store because several of them had started to build their nest behind the left door and got annoyed when I slid it open, and even this afternoon I had to chase two out of the Savannah’s cabin who had found their way inside through the left wing root. The last thing I want is for the cabin to be full of angry insects next time I open the door!

I started servicing my Savannah weeks ago but it’s been ages since I’ve been able to do anything on it at all. As it has been some time since it has been flown and even longer since it was last serviced, I decided that I would give it a thorough inspection and service before taking to the air in it this year. It was during the engine inspection that I discovered a potentially serious problem with its cooling system.

The Savannah’s cooling system is much like that of a car. Its engine is water cooled with a radiator and when its engine heats up and the water expands the excess passes out through a tube in an expansion chamber at the system’s highest point into a bottle. Then, when the water cools down again, it is sucked back through the tube back into the main system.

I found that what had happened was that the metal outlet of the expansion chamber connecting it to the bottle had completely corroded away so the excess cooling liquid instead of flowing into the bottle was just being lost to the atmosphere. If it had been allowed to continue there was a real possibility that the engine would overheat leading, in the extreme case to a potential engine seizure and failure and it doesn’t bear thinking about if that was to happen mid-Channel on a flight back to the UK!

A replacement expansion chamber was called for and in preference to the original Rotax part that had corroded away and is very expensive, I decided to go for a less expensive Chinese made copy. I think it’s made from stainless steel, or maybe aluminium, so it will not corrode, and also looked to be extremely well made. I ordered it from Ebay and unfortunately it took several weeks to arrive, and even worse, when it did it wasn’t the correct part.

It turned out that there are two versions and I’d ordered the wrong one because I hadn’t checked before placing the order. The supplier was excellent when I let them know and offered to send the correct version without my returning the original, just for the cost of the postage. And they were true to their word, but unfortunately yet again the correct version took several weeks to arrive while the Savannah remained un-serviced and, of course, unflyable.

The part arrived a few days ago and today was the first day when I could get around to fitting it and doing the engine service. I started soon after lunch and when I’d finished the cooling system was back together and filled just with plain water so I could run the engine to heat and drain its oil, a new oil filter was fitted, new oil added and eight new spark plugs had been gapped and also installed.

And not before time. The old spark plugs still looked to be in excellent condition but they were due for a change and will be disposed of. The engine oil was also very black so it too was overdue for a change. And the best part after all this? I did the work in the shade inside the barn (which is why I didn’t start in the morning) and when I pulled the Savannah out again after I’d finished, it started instantly on the key and ran beautifully smoothly 🙂

The following pics show the new expansion chamber in place and the old one with its outlet tube totally corroded away.

Rotax recommend that the coolant system rubber hoses are replaced every five years and I was going to do that. However, I inspected all of the tubes very closely and they all seemed to me to be in very good condition, so I’ve reused them and their clips. What I have done, however, is order five litres of G12 antifreeze. I disposed of the old antifreeze when I drained the system to fit the new expansion chamber and as G12 is recommended for the Savannah’s engine, it is sensible to make the switch from the ‘bog standard’ ethylene glycol mixture that was in there. I’ll also do the same for my X-Air’s engine when I eventually get around to that 😉

I have a list of things that I need to dispose of now that I’m installed in my house and I’ve been working through them, albeit rather slowly. I’ve already sold the small freezer that I had in the caravan, my old electric bike (not the new Chinese one that I couldn’t register) and the ‘coffret de chantier’ that provided an electrical connection for the caravan and the house while it was being constructed. However, the list of items that still remain is pretty long and high up on that list is my old caravan.

It’s been sited at the bottom corner of my garden for just over three years now and has been sitting doing nothing since I moved into my house last September. Although it’s old and a bit tatty it’s still watertight, which is a big selling point for someone needing an old caravan for the same reason I did or to site on a piece of private land for leisure use eg as a base for hunting or fishing. So now’s the time to ready it for sale while there’s still a a good market for it during the summer and early autumn months.

I always intended to use my Kia to tow it up to the front of my house where I can clean it inside and out and generally spruce it up. I never thought it would be easy due to the time it’s been rooted in the ground but in fact it turned out to be more difficult than I thought. I’d removed the jockey wheel when I sited it down there and somehow the bolt that clamps it to the frame has gone missing, so even getting it hitched up to the car wasn’t as straightforward as it should have been. But it was after I’d got it hitched that the problems started.

My Kia has a 2.0 litre engine and a 4WD drive lock but no matter how I tried it didn’t have the power to shift the caravan let alone pull it up the slope of the garden. I’d released the caravan’s hand brake but it could well have been that the brakes were seized on, but in any event I couldn’t get it to move. I made a couple of phone calls to see if I could get hold of someone with a tractor but to no avail as the only one available didn’t have a tow ball, so I had to try to work out something different.

My Kia is automatic and I was wary about overheating its torque converter so I let it sit and cool down while I had a brief lunch. I then returned to have another go. During the break I’d had a brainwave. Up to then I’d been trying to drag the caravan out from where it had been parked in a straight line and I thought that maybe it’d be a good idea to try waggling it from side to side instead by turning the Kia’s steering wheel to left and right in succession with a break in between to allow the caravan to settle back, and it worked.

I was really relieved when it eventually moved and I was able to drag it right up to the front of the house where I needed it to be. So the Kia had the muscle for it after all! Here’s where I initially positioned it, by driving almost up to the road and reversing back.

And here’s how the bottom corner of the garden looked after the caravan had been moved. One of the ‘tonnelles’ (small marquee type tents) has already gone as it was finally destroyed by strong wind gusts a few weeks ago. I’ll probably also throw away the one that remains as although it still has a good frame, it’s roof, which had already been torn by the wind, was ripped to shreds in a hail storm that was a once in twenty year event which also put dents all over the roof, bonnet and one side of my Kia.

Although a new roof and side curtains are available for it (on sale at the moment actually) I don’t now have a flat area other than where it is to put it up and as it probably won’t sell second hand for much more than what they would cost, I don’t think there’s much use hanging onto it and it’ll probably be best to consign it to the ‘déchetterie’ given the other priorities I have just at the moment.

It took me all day to remove the electrical and water connections that I’d run down to the caravan and then connect it up again in the front of my house so I can set to cleaning it inside and out and tarting it up ready for sale. Here’s how things looked when I finished up ready for a late evening meal.

As the pictures show, the caravan is filthy on the outside so tomorrow I’ll start off with the pressure washer which will probably improve its appearance quite a lot. Although I’ve given its inside a cursory clean from time to time while it’s been empty, it’s also quite grimy inside so cleaning it thoroughly inside and out is now the priority, especially as from time to time passers by often enquire if old caravans like mine are for sale. If that happened it really would put the cherry on the cake 🙂

As in the UK, dental treatment in France is quite (very!) expensive. And that’s if you can get it because when I needed to find a dentist a year or so ago, every one I tried said that they were full up and couldn’t take on any more patients. Luckily for me I had a small job done by a dentist in Montignac not long after I came here and when I phoned them they found that I was still on their list and could do the work I needed to have done.

Fast forward another year or so and I was experiencing some more problems. Work that I’d had done in the UK years ago, before I came to France, in some cases getting on for around 20 years, was beginning to fail and I needed some more major work, starting with a root extraction. Surprisingly this was done in the dental hospital at Brive on the French health service and didn’t cost me a bean and afterwards I was supposed to return to my own dentist for other work followed by a possible implant.

I put that off because I was in the middle of my house build, only doing so at the end of April of this year by which time even more had gone wrong and I was suffering discomfort both biting and chewing. I therefore took the decision to have a major dental overhaul done as hopefully it will be the last major work that I’ll need in my lifetime, and work started at the beginning of May.

So far it has cost me 2080€ to have three crowns and a bridge reinstated, including replacing pegs in the gums and the bridge forming an extended crown over an existing supporting tooth and one of the reinstated roots. This is the gross cost and some of that will be reimbursed under the French health scheme as I do not have dental insurance which, if I’d taken it out when I got to France, would have cost me over the years many more times than what I’ve paid out for the treatment that I’ve incurred.

I’m not quite sure of the amount that I will recover. So far I appear to have received 324€ and I’m not sure because some of that may relate to prior health costs, although I don’t know what they might have been. So to date the refund amounts to just over 14% of my total outlay and there could (should) be more to come. Now we come to the interesting bit. I told my dentist that I wanted implant surgery to fill the most significant gap that remains and I was under the impression that he could do it. But apparently not. ‘Implantologie’ is a service that only specially qualified dentists can perform and he wanted to send me off to a colleague of his with a surgery just south of Limoges.

That’s about 1 1/2 hours drive away but I went anyway for a ‘devis’ (estimate) even though I’d found that there are several other ‘implantologues’ in my surrounding area. I suspected that the price would be on the high side and I wasn’t disappointed. I started off paying 100€ for a panoramic x-ray scan after which I was told what was being quoted for. This was for two implants, leaving a gap between them, and a bridge between the two implants over the whole space. For this the total amount quoted was 3880€. And the final rub was that none of this, nor the cost of the panoramic scan, would be reimbursable.

So that made me think. My friend Wim suggested that if I wanted the work to be done I might consider going to somewhere like Roumania where it would be much cheaper. In fact when I began searching on the internet I found that the preferred destination coming from France, and possibly also the UK, is Turkey and it didn’t take me long to find that there are lots of clinics, mainly it would appear in Istanbul and the holiday destination of Antalya.

I obtained a quote from a clinic in Antalya but I found that although it might be a good destination for someone who wants to combine dental treatment with a summer holiday, it probably wouldn’t be the best place in the winter when I want to go. I also found that at that time of year flights from Bordeaux, where I want to fly from, are fewer and more expensive, so I switched my search just to Istanbul.

One good thing I found was that almost all of the clinics that I was interested in had a Whatsapp account that made communication very quick and easy. They started off in French (I have a French mobile) but switched to English when I told them it was my preferred language, and the clinic I eventually chose was even prepared to exchange messages and provide me with a detailed quote at 10.00 pm French time, or midnight in Turkey.

All of the clinics explained that implants involve a two-stage process. The first stage only needs 2 days during which the implants are inserted and then you have to allow anything from two to six months for the gums to fully heal before the the crowns and/or bridges are attached. This means that two trips will be needed to Turkey for the work to be completed involving two round-trip flights and two hotel stays, the second of which being for up to a week.

The task is therefore to select a clinic and then search for suitable flights, preferably with low-cost airlines, to get you to Istanbul and back at the time of your choosing. That’s not as easy as it sounds because using skyscanner.com, my booking engine of choice, changing flights by a day can result in the fare almost doubling, or more, and flight times changing dramatically, from 6 or 7 hours to over a day.

And there’s a further complication. All (nearly) of the low-cost airlines are now playing games with baggage allowances. A stay of up to a week for me only requires carry-on cabin baggage and some of the airlines – Pegasus and Wizz Air being two notable culprits – levy a hefty charge on top of what look like very low fares if you actually want to carry on anything larger than a lady’s small handbag. I therefore immediately rule them out.

So how did I do? I think pretty well. The majority of the clinics that I checked out offered an ‘all-in, dental tourism’ type service involving transfers to and from the airport, your hotel and their clinic and also tie-ins with selected hotels. Unsurprisingly, these tended to be at the upper end of the price bracket although some were cheaper in the mid-range or slightly lower.

It appears that I happened upon a clinic that did not class itself as offering dental tourism. It did indeed offer a full range of services, which I won’t go into but including facial surgery and full mouth implants, and the price they quoted me for the same treatment as all the others was extremely reasonable – in fact the cheapest of all that I received.

On the other hand their facilities looked to be impeccable and when I queried this, saying that top-class facilities and low prices don’t usually go together and I needed to be reassured that what I saw when I arrived needed to be the same as what they showed on their web site, they explained that their clinic is owned by the principal, has no shareholders who need dividend pay-outs and they just concentrate on providing an impeccable service.

The way I look at it is no matter what price is being quoted, what’s on offer can be a bit ‘scammy’ and the impeccably modern facilities shown on their web site can turn out to be a dingy back room in a poor part of town. Like anything else you buy, it’s ‘caveat emptor’ and all you can do is weigh up all the evidence before making your final decision. I liked what I’d been told, how I’d been treated and the street view images I’d got from Google Earth so at the end of the day I decided to go with them. And the clinic’s cost, for the same treatment that I’d been quoted 3880€ for in France? The princely sum of 1020€, just over a quarter of the price, leaving lots of room for air fares and hotel costs.

Turning to the air fare, I wanted to go initially to Turkey towards the end of October or maybe the beginning of November and after trawling through dozens (literally) of flights I was delighted to happen upon a direct Turkish Airlines flight from Bordeaux to Istanbul within my desired time band for only 246€ return. I was really pleased because the flight did not involve a stop-over and transfer en-route and Turkish are one of the good guys who still offer a decent cabin bag allowance – up to 55 x 40 x 23 cm and 8kg. Good for them!

And now what about a hotel? OK, this is a bit sketchy I have to admit, as I’ve been told by a friend who’s a seasoned traveller and has booked hotels in Istanbul. On the first night I will arrive at the hotel well after midnight and when not in the clinic, I intend to be out exploring Istanbul as this will be my first visit there. So I will only require anything more than a bed for one night, which is not much of a risk to take.

So I’ve ended up booking into what claims to be a 3* hotel not far from the clinic for two nights and with this amount of lead-time (I’ve paid for the room already) the cost will only be 38€!! I wanted a hotel that provided breakfast with the room and I’ve since found that although this one does, it’s at a sister hotel a short distance away and I must admit that if I’d noticed that before booking it would probably have swayed my decision.

So, so far we have clinic 1020€, air fare 246€ and hotel 38€, but this is only for stage 1 of the treatment. The clinic has said that at this stage they can’t tell me when I will need to return for stage 2 as that will depend on what they see when stage 1 has been completed. However, I think it’s reasonable to assume that it will be some time in early March 2025 and on that basis the air fare and the hotel cost can be estimated.

I’ve found that at that time a return flight from Bordeaux with Air France/KLM (again, good baggage allowance) could be booked today for 275€ and a 6 night hotel stay for something like 216€ and with those figures it’s now possible to compare treatment in France with treatment in Turkey.

Treatment France ………………….3880€

Treatment Turkey ………………..1020€
Air fare stage 1 treatment ……..246€
Hotel stage 1 treatment …………38€
Air fare stage 2 treatment ……..275€
Hotel stage 2 treatment ………..216€
TOTAL TURKEY ………………………1795€

So there you have it. I’ve already booked for stage 1 of my treatment in Istanbul in the first week of November and anticipate returning for stage 2 in early March of next year. This just happens to coincide with the time I usually go off to Egypt for a bit of winter sun so who knows, as it’ll be slightly later I might also get a little bit of a sunshine break in Turkey next year. But in any event, I’ll keep everyone posted on how it all works out 🙂

A quick addendum to the above. All of the Turkish clinics said they’d like a copy of my panoramic x-ray and the French clinic that charged me 100€ said they’d send me one on DVD to forward. However, the Turkish clinics also all asked for multi-photos – front, each side, mouth open, top, bottom – and in a case like mine that’s relatively straightforward they can work and quote from those. After that the Turkish treatment is all-in, including another panoramic scan etc, everything required to complete the treatment. Can’t argue with that.

At last, after three years and one month the storage that I’ve been renting for the stuff that I brought with me from my old house in Plazac is empty. I’m out of there. All that has remained in there for the past few weeks has been stuff from my old workshop and heavy tools and it was the latter that made today challenging for me working single-handedly.

They included an electric concrete mixer, a garden roller, a heavy electric tile cutter, a bench drill, a large bench vice and a bench grinder, all of which I had to get up onto my trailer – and off again when I got home. And it’s surprising how heavy a full old bag of cement becomes after it’s taken on water from a damp atmosphere and turned solid!

After putting racking into my ‘abri’ I was surprised and pleased to find that everything went in. For now I’ve just put things that I shouldn’t need to move on the left and things that I will need to get at over on the right. Here’s how things turned out after quite a long, hot, tiring day.

There are one or two things on the floor but that won’t matter as there’ll be more space available when I’ve sold the electric concrete mixer (I bought a motor powered one many months ago that’s also in the back of the ‘abri’) and also the tile cutter which I shouldn’t need after I’ve done the tiling in my kitchen and ‘cellier’. But at least I can now think about other things – my aircraft, painting my shutters and hopefully selling my old caravan.

A lot happened very quickly after I’d filed the claim for a refund for the unsuitable coolant expansion tank for my Savannah that I’d purchased from Ebay. The seller contacted me first thing this morning to say that there are two versions of this item and they’d supplied (ie I’d ordered) the wrong one. They said that if I’d been in the USA it would have been easy for me to have returned it for them to supply me with a replacement, but not so in France.

Under the circumstances they said that if I just paid for the Shipping ($40, about 35€) they would ship the other item and I could keep the one that I’ve already got. I thought that this was a very fair offer and there was only one complication – I’d already placed an order on Loravia for the Rotax part at a cost of 300€. I decided to see if I could cancel the order for a refund and Loravia agreed for a 10€ charge plus 12€ to cover the Paypal fee to return the remainder (290€) direct to my Paypal account. I agreed to that as the ‘fault’ was down to me and I’ve already received the refund.

The Chinese seller said that tomorrow they’ll give me an Ebay link to pay the $40 shipping charge which I will prefer compared to a direct Paypal transfer which will incur a charge, so after a bit of toing-and-froing (had a lot of that lately) the deal has been done. Now I’ll just have to wait a bit longer for the correct part to arrive. What a relief 😕

It appears that my celebration was premature after all. The ‘cheap Chinese’ radiator expansion bottle that I bought from Ebay for my Savannah turns out to be absolutely useless and a total waste of money. What a surprise.

The pipework configuration is totally wrong and there’s no way it can go onto a 912S engine. The reason is that it can only fit ‘one way’ due to there being a large electrical connection next to it and then none of the pipes except one points in the right direction to connect to the rubber tubing of the cooling system.

The Ebay ad says ‘no returns accepted’ but I’m hoping that when Ebay and Paypal see the images I’ve filed comparing the new version with the existing one they will agree that the differences are so major that a refund is fully justified.

I’ve now had to order a Rotax original item but luckily I found after a new search that a supplier who I’ve actually used several times in the past (Loravia) is listing it on its web site for 100€ less than other suppliers so even if I don’t get a refund I won’t be out of pocket compared to if I’d gone ahead at the beginning and paid the higher price. And if I do get a refund, it will work out better for me.

I went to check on the new part for the Savannah’s cooling system yesterday as I thought it wasn’t quite the same as the part it’s replacing and I was right. Its makers have changed the design slightly, presumably so as not to infringe Rotax’s patent or registered design, and although it will fit, installing it won’t be totally straightforward. The reason is that the configuration of the pipework has been changed and possibly the diameter of one of the pipes is different, so I shall have to work out how to hook the water pipes up to it.

So I couldn’t do anything – that’ll be for the coming week – and as rain was forecast for later in the afternoon, which eventually materialised, I thought I’d use my time by printing off and hanging pictures in the dining area of my living room.

I have a large Epson A3 printer from when I did my house’s design which means that I can print off images up to 40 x 30 cm in size, either landscape or portrait. There are several sites on the internet from where you can download very high quality copyright and royalty-free photographs of almost any subject you can think of, so my idea is instead of buying pictures for the walls of my house, to print off images that I like, frame them and hang them where I want them to be.

I used white wooden frames in my bedrooms but for this area of the living room at least, I’ve used black. Each frame comes with what’s called a ‘passepartout’, which is the white card that fits in front of the image to give it a white border inside the frame, but they all have to be marked out and carefully cut to size using a scalpel and straight-edge and this is what takes the time. I ended up hanging nine prints and am very happy with the results. The choice of image, though, is a very personal thing and my choice might not be to the taste of everyone. What do you think?

Everything in the above images except the pictures I brought with me from England and the dining space I designed with dimensions to accept the table, chairs and cabinets. The table and chairs were never used in my old house at Plazac because the table was too big so this is the first time for over 12 years that I have a proper dining area that meets my needs. And I also rather like the way it looks 😉

And this is why I designed my house the way I did. It has been a gorgeous day today right from the time the sun came up, so first thing this morning I opened the east and south facing doors in my living room and my kitchen window to allow the sun to flood in.

This afternoon I had to drive north to a small town near Limoges to see an ‘implantologue’ which is what they call a dentist who can do dental implants over here. I decided to take the ‘back’ route ie not the main autoroute and was thoroughly rewarded for it. There was little traffic of any sort to speak of and with most of the road having a speed limit of 90 kmh it was a privilege to do the drive there and back in the gorgeous weather.

We’ve got a bit of drizzle forecast for tomorrow followed by a series of hot, dry days so I should be able to make good progress on getting my storage cleared out and my aircraft back to flyable again. The weedkiller that I ordered was also delivered today so I should also be able to get cracking on getting rid of my weeds. I can’t wait 🙂

I’ve been feeling a bit cheesed off for some reason, I’m not sure why. We had drizzle for most of this morning that meant I couldn’t get stuff out of storage which is what I wanted to do. Best laid plans and all that. The delivery date of the weedkiller I ordered has been put back for some reason so the weeds I strimmed back are having a field day and coming back with a vengeance before I can hit them with it, which is annoying to say the least.

I think what may also be getting at me is that we’ve passed the summer solstice and the summer hasn’t even really properly started. OK, I know that has affected everyone but the stop-start weather has really disrupted my plans and I seem to have been sitting around a lot and marking time for far too long. The other reason for that beside the weather has been the time it’s been taking for things I’ve ordered to be delivered and as well as the weedkiller, I’ve been waiting weeks for the part I needed to service my Savannah to make it flyable again.

Well the good news is that it has at last arrived, see the image below, so as it looks as though we can expect a decent bit of weather, as soon as I’ve emptied the storage I’ll be able to go ahead and do the work on the Savannah.

The other bit of good news is that as I mentioned yesterday, I met up this afternoon with the prospective buyer of my old ‘coffret de chantier’ in Condat on the other side of Montignac and he took it off my hands for my asking price.

His name was Xavier and he is in the same position as I was a couple of years ago, having designed his own house and is now at the stage when he needs to have electricity on site. I’m glad to say that he was very pleased with his purchase and I said that I hope that it works as well for him as it did for me. I’m sure it will.

But thank goodness, the logjam is beginning to break and I can at last begin to see myself moving forward again and getting things done. I don’t mind being idle by choice but I hate having idleness forced upon me 😐

Despite trials and tribulations and somewhat disappointing weather for the time of year, things are still moving on. I’m still waiting for the parts I need to complete the service on my Savannah for it to be airworthy again and although I could have been servicing my X-Air, I decided to concentrate on my house and garden while the weather permits it. The grass needed cutting again before it got out of control and the hump behind my house had become totally overgrown again with enormous thistles and other weeds and something needed to be done about it.

Cutting the grass was the easy bit and I did it a couple of days ago but as I’ve found previously, the stems of the giant buttercups that infest the lawn are almost impervious to the blades of my mower and even though the grass has been evenly cut, the stems still stick up proudly all over it. I may have to try sharpening the blades to see if that will make a difference or even investing in new ones, as the existing ones have given good service over quite a few years now.

As for the hump behind the house, it will need to be seeded but I’ve decided to treat it with weedkiller beforehand. I’m waiting for some weedkiller that I ordered several days ago to arrive and in preparation I’ve been over the whole area to be treated with my heavy strimmer to reduce all of the weeds to ground level which I hope will increase the effectiveness of the weedkiller solution.

At the same time I’ve been manually removing and disposing of a large number of the large stones that were brought to the surface when the builder disturbed the ground and are now on the surface. They will all have to be removed in due course but the task will be made easier when the weeds have all gone.

If the weather becomes as hot as it should do for the time of year, I will be able to leave the seeding of the hump until it gets cooler again in the autumn, if necessary giving it another treatment of weedkiller beforehand as the solution breaks down quite quickly in the soil.

So here are some shots of what the house is currently looking like. I’ve still got all my plant tubs and pots that I brought with me from Plazac but haven’t yet filled and planted them. There’s still time and although watering them every day will increase my workload, I doubt I’ll be doing anything more major to the house’s exterior, beyond painting the shutters, and a good array of plants would add considerably to the house’s appearance.

The stone laid around the house is beginning to fall into the void below it as I always suspected it would. There wasn’t enough earth for a proper backfill despite the builder saying there was. The terrace at the house’s rear and the path up the side leading up to it are falling away a bit but are not dangerous and are still usable but I don’t intend to do anything about the problem this year as I’ve not decided what to do for the long term. A solution that I’m considering would be a decking platform at the house’s rear with stairs down onto the lawn so I don’t want to lay anything solid and semi-permanent that would then have to be ripped up again.

I’ve also received two more excellent pieces of news today. Firstly, it’s been confirmed that I’m receiving a full refund including bank charges for my electric bike that I packaged up a week or so ago and returned to the supplier in Poland because it could not be registered to be legally used on public roads in France. That’s a relief because I always hoped that there wouldn’t be a dispute over the amount involved and much as I regret not being able to keep the bike, I’m glad that the matter is now over.

The other piece of news is that I’m seeing a buyer tomorrow for my ‘coffret de chantier’, the box with a meter that you need for a temporary electrical connection while your house is being built, for the price I advertised it for a few weeks ago. This was 40€ more than the amount I’d budgeted for, but even so, the buyer will I hope be well pleased with it since it is in excellent condition compared to those being advertised by other sellers and is complete with the accessories needed for it to be connected up and used immediately. So big smiles all round if the sale goes through 😀

I am devastated. I watered all my trees yesterday evening as usual and everything was fine. When I looked out of my window at 6.30 this morning I could see foliage on the ground next to the first new apple tree and when I went outside I found that both apples had been attacked and all the fruit and new shoots taken off them. The largest apple on the first tree was 5 cm or more in diameter and a few more weren’t very much smaller.

But worse still, the two main branches on the first one had been ripped off and its shape totally destroyed. I can’t believe the timing. I was going to get fencing today to put around all the trees after finishing the work in my ‘abri’ and it’s almost unbelievable that they’ve beaten me by a day after all the time the trees have been there.

It’s absolutely sickening. I can only hope that the both trees, especially the most damaged apple, will be able to recover for next year 🙁

Previously, apart from two or three rotten old tarps that I threw away, everything in the following pic filled the whole of my ‘abri’. In fact I’ve actually added a few things to what was in there originally.

I fitted out my workshop in my old house with racking but had to leave it all behind as I didn’t have anywhere to put it when I moved. I had a couple of unused double packs left over though and I put them into storage with a lot of other stuff.

I got them out a few days ago and although it’s taken a couple of days working outside in quite intense heat I’ve now assembled them, cleared out my ‘abri’ and put the four racks in along one side, chasing out a couple of mice in the process. They’ve filled the space nicely and taken everything that was in there with a lot of space left over for more, which I’ve got waiting in my car.

I don’t know whether I’ll have enough space for everything that I had in storage – after all, I’ve got another concrete mixer in there which I intend to sell plus a rotavator – but it could be a close run thing. I should be able to get a good idea tomorrow afternoon when I return from my next dental appointment.

After all the toing-and-froing I managed to resolve the photo frame problem. Because of the inconvenience the supplier gave me the second 10 photo frames with plastic fronts for free so I was able to source 10 sheets of glass myself locally and I’ve spent the last few rainy days printing and framing photographs to put on the walls in my bedrooms.

All of the photographs I’ve used are free, royalty-free images downloaded from the internet which I’ve printed A3 size using my large Epson printer. The quality of all of them is outstanding and I’m delighted with the results. Here are the images I’ve chosen in order for bedrooms one, two and three.

And here’s how they look in the rooms themselves.

I’m so pleased that I’ve decided to place a second row in each bedroom above the existing ones and despite the problems I’ve had with the frames arriving with plastic rather than glass fronts I’ve ordered 10 more white and 10 black of the same size from the same supplier. If they come with plastic fronts I’ll just have to bite the bullet and replace them with glass as I’ve searched the internet and cannot find suitable alternatives even at the higher cost. I’ll be using the black frames for more pictures on the white bedroom walls and also in my living room of which more when they are delivered.

With my bike having been picked up yesterday ready to be shipped back from whence it came I was at last able to return to servicing my Savannah which had been standing once again for one day short of a fortnight with no work having been done save for giving the aircraft an initial wash. My aim was to remove the lower engine cover so with the top cover already having been removed I could get free access to the engine.

When I’d left it last time I’d found that the overflow outlet from the radiator expansion header tank was blocked, so the first job was to stick a point into that and unblock it. When I did so I found that unfortunately the problem was more serious. Not only was the outlet blocked but the metal outlet tube was also corroded away, meaning that when the engine became hot the coolant would not overflow into the plastic bottle that was connected to the outlet by a rubber tube so it could return to the system when it cooled down again but would instead spray out to the atmosphere and be lost.

That meant that I’d have to order a new expansion tank and radiator cap as even though I’d cleaned it up, the old cap was still in poor condition. It also meant that I couldn’t start and run the engine for any length of time, and certainly not long enough to warm up the oil so I could drain it out and change it, so a full engine service (oil, oil filter and spark plugs) was again out of the question.

So that gave me time to give the exterior of the engine a thorough clean and it certainly needed it. It could never be made to ‘look like new’ again due to the age of the aircraft but there was plenty of scope for removing the light surface corrosion that was on some parts of the engine (not serious) and the grime that had also built up, using WD40, fine wire wool and an oily rag. It took well over an hour but the final result was well worth the effort.

When I came home I had to get straight onto the computer to order the parts that I needed and when I did so I was shocked. I already knew that the Rotax parts were going to be expensive but I had no idea just how so. Take a look at the following image that shows the parts that I needed from the Rotax parts list together with their prices.

The radiator cap alone was 88€ – I ask you, just for a radiator cap – and the expansion header tank another whopping 127€, giving a total for the two of 215€. I didn’t investigate to see whether those prices included VAT but I’m pretty certain they wouldn’t have included shipping, so the actual total was probably closer to 230€ or possibly even more. And if the header tank was of similar material to the original, it would also be subject to future corrosion over time, as the old one had been.

But as usual, Google is your friend and it threw up an alternative source of supply on Ebay, as shown by the next image below.

This was in the form of a welded aluminium header tank, which seems to me to be of considerably higher quality than the Rotax original and also comes with the radiator cap and all for the princely sum of $99. So what do you think of that? I ordered these rather than the Rotax originals which I think are grossly excessively priced. How can a simple radiator cap be worth 88€? Answer, it’s not, but the Rotax design is exclusive for the engine and they are charging what they think they can get away with just because they think they can.

But now they can’t. This time the Chinese manufacturer can’t be accused of dumping a subsidised product – it’s not like a car, it’s too small and specialised. What they are doing is manufacturing what appears to be a superior product more cheaply than Rotax and selling it at a realistic price that customers are only too willing to pay. I can’t see how, given the time they’ve been manufacturing their original items, Rotax can possibly justify the prices they’re asking for them. I think it’s just profiteering. What do you think?

But not forgotten. As of 1.20 pm today my electric bike has disappeared from my life in the back of a carrier’s van. All I am waiting for now is my refund.

Earlier I checked the CDiscount web site from where I bought it and now find that although the ‘seller’ is still there, they are not now offering either of the two Dakeya models, the DA06 ‘hard tail’ with no rear suspension that I had, or its sister DA03 with rear suspension.

There are, however, a few other similar bikes on offer there which, as I’ve mentioned previously, have different brand names but probably come from the same factory. I assume that they will also come without Certificates of Conformity and I can’t understand why CDiscount is continuing to allow this to happen after I’ve alerted them to the situation.

As expected, I have heard nothing from the DREAL, the French authority responsible for individually registering my bike, and I’m sure they will continue to drag their feet for as long as they can, possibly avoiding coming back to me at all if I don’t rattle their chain and chivvy them up. Such is the way of state bureaucracy in France.

It’s been cool again today and I’ve wasted almost the whole day because the weather forecast was for continuous rain that never materialised. So I couldn’t start on servicing the Savannah or cutting the grass, which is becoming somewhat urgent once again, because of the risk that it might start raining in the middle . However, I’ve just come in from my garden where I’ve been seeing how the new trees are coming on – the answer is fine – and disposing of a few more big stones that were lying on the surface of the ground.

I retrieved a small length of wood that was missed when the builders cleared away the old roof timbers and took it round to the front of the house to keep it as it might be useful as a ground peg when I eventually come to mark out for the base of a garage. I was going to put it down next to the ‘abri’ (tool shed) and as I was doing so the sun was shining quite brightly and making it quite warm. And there, in a small bush front of the ‘abri’ was an adder enjoying the warmth. I think it was quite a young snake from its girth but it had the typical adder colouring of a dark zig-zag along the length of its brown body.

Where I live is outside the boundaries of the areas of France said to be inhabited by adders so this came as something of a surprise to me. I know from my old house that there are lots of grass snakes that are disturbed when the grass is cut for hay but this is the first time I’ve seen an adder. This one looked to have made its escape by disappearing into a hole under the concrete base of the ‘abri’ and if so, I’d guess there must be a nest there.

The question is, if there is, will any more young snakes emerge, and if so, how many? But although adders are more scared of contact with humans than we are of them, I’ll watch my step (literally) when around and about the front of the ‘abri’ in future, especially if I’m wearing flip-flops, which I very frequently am, which I very frequently am, and was when I spotted the snake.