Penultimate or what?

After a very successful day today, I should be completely finished tomorrow and MYRO will be ready for permit inspection. We had the first frost of Autumn last night because we’re heading into high pressure and the skies were completely clear, as they were this morning. The frost soon melted in the morning sun and we had glorious sunshine all day today. And it was surprisingly warm too – I was still able to work on MYRO in just a tee shirt.

Fist up I re-did the steering arms and they came up perfect, just as I wanted them to. They are now at least as good as the ones I got off G-MYME when I acquired the engine and stuff so as far as the books are concerned, they are the ones that are now fitted. In fact I think mine are probably stronger after seeing how the track rod end on one of MYME’s arms snapped when I was trying to remove it. I can’t see that happening with mine as I’ve used 316 stainless steel – so no corrosion either.

The next job was to look into MYRO’s starting problem. Whereas MYRO used to start on the button, last week it took quite a while to get the engine to fire up. I noticed that there was  something weird about the choke cable – every time I applied the choke, when I released the lever, there was more ‘spare’ cable than there was before. I suspected that there was a fault in the ‘1 into 2’ cable assembly and the choke wasn’t being fully applied and my suspicions were confirmed when I had a closer look and found internal damage. This could have been a bit of a disaster but fortunately I had a spare. The one I was using was MYRO’s original cable that Rosie had left on and I also got another with MYME’s engine. The reason I hadn’t used that one was because the cables were white and MYRO’s originals were black, but now was not the time to worry about that. Suffice to say that after I’d shortened it to match the old one and adapted it to use MYRO’s lever, when I used it for the first time MYRO started immediately. That was a result!

The last job I had time to do today was to refit the top and bottom covers between the wings. The velcro is a bit tired now after all these years especially towards the wing trailing edge end. I found that by roughing it up a bit, its effectiveness improved quite considerably, so after I’d fitted the mandatory cable ties connecting it to the wing trailing edge plus another couple, I ended up with a better job than  I had originally. So another reason to be pleased. So that just leaves the ties to be re-done between the fuselage rear cover and the back edge of the pod. I’ll buy some more cable ties tomorrow morning and it then shouldn’t take long to do the job. And that’ll be MYRO all finished and ready for permitting. There will always be the odd job – for example, I doubt I’ll have time tomorrow to touch in the little chips and scratches that have occurred during the work – but they won’t delay the permit inspection which I’ll then be able to go ahead and arrange with Chris. And thank goodness for that – about time 😀

Just to conclude this post, all of my original videos were done using Windows Moviemaker, and pretty good I found it too. However, earlier this year I treated myself to Corel VideoStudio Pro X4 and I’ve used that for my more recent ones, although for obvious reasons, I’ve had less opportunity to use it than I thought would be the case when I bought it! Funnily enough, I think that Moviemaker has better scene transitions and title effects as ‘standard’ than many of the paid-for packages, including VSP X4 I might add, but the Corel software has quite a lot going for it, not least that I found that by purchasing it via download, it only cost me $40 or so compared to something like £90 when you purchase it from Corel’s UK online shop! I also find that the quality of the finished video is better using VSP X4 than Moviemaker, so when I’ve had time, I’ve been going back and re-making some of my earlier material. I’ve just finished the video of my landing on Stoke runway 06 which was quite murky originally because although it was a bright day, it was very, very hazy. The result is now up in the Video Gallery and you can also see it by clicking on the picture below.