{"id":10889,"date":"2016-04-07T21:59:33","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T20:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=10889"},"modified":"2016-12-31T14:20:42","modified_gmt":"2016-12-31T14:20:42","slug":"strobes-and-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/strobes-and-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Strobes and stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn’t get to Brant\u00f4me yesterday. It hardly even came as a surprise, really, with the way the weather has been behaving. First mist and low cloud and then gusting wind that would have taken the pleasure out of any flight even if I’d wanted to take off in it. It did become quite nice later on in the early evening, but much too late to think about a flight of that length, and in any case, Wednesday is when we meet for the odd glass (or two) of red wine at Wim and Sophie’s.<\/p>\n

So that was that and looking at the long-range forecast, who knows when it’ll be possible to do the flight. If the forecast is anywhere near correct, it could be two weeks or even longer as yet again all we can see for the coming 14 days or so is yet more wind and (almost) non-stop rain. Thank goodness ASY is now in the barn at Malbec but it’s annoying that 56NE is outside under covers at Galinat with no chance that I’ll be able to get it ready for sale all the while this weather persists.<\/p>\n

On the way back from Wim and Sophie’s, I dropped into Malbec to take a closer look at the strobe that I damaged at la Fert\u00e9 Gaucher before flying ASY down. Here are a couple of shots that I took of ASY in its new home when I arrived at Malbec.<\/p>\n

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As soon as I saw the damaged strobe, I knew that there was no chance of doing any kind of repair and that got alarm bells ringing, because I’ve no idea how old the strobes are or where they came from and ISP (the manufacturer of the Savannah) had already confirmed that they hadn’t come from them. Here are a few shots that I took of the damaged and undamaged light units.<\/p>\n

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The strobes are obviously ‘old technology’ units that need a separate control box, of a type that used to be fitted, maybe still are, on Group A aircraft like Cessnas and Pipers. Modern strobes use LEDs that need no separate control box, and are therefore lighter and simpler to install, and are also ‘all-singing-all-dancing’ incorporating coloured nav and white positioning lights in the same tiny light units as the strobes themselves. So after seeing the old ones, I was not very optimistic of finding a replacement for the damaged one and was resigned to having to look for a complete replacement LED system coming out north of $500 (the US is the place to look for things like this) and having to do a complete rewiring job to fit it.<\/p>\n

But it appears that my pessimism was not justified on this occasion. I had more or less given up on finding a replacement part and was searching for a new set of LED strobes when I came across the name ‘Kuntzleman Electronics’. I initially dismissed their product range as being ‘old hat’ and not worth considering for a new system, when I came across the following image.<\/p>\n

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It appears that Kuntzleman Electronics Inc of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, was the original manufacturer of the strobe light system installed on my Savannah, and not only are they still selling either the same, or a very similar system, but they also supply spare parts and accessories to customers world wide. To cut a long story short, this afternoon I purchased a new Standard Streamline Bulb Unit (less lens) for the princely sum of $40 dollars plus $15 for UPS shipping, which I think is a lot better than $500 or so for a new complete system, even if it leaves me with an ‘old’ technology system, especially if I can get it working.<\/p>\n

When I bought the Savannah, Robert told me that the strobes weren’t working and, of course, I haven’t had a chance yet to find out why. While I was at Malbec, I looked ‘under the hood’ to see if I could find the strobe control box and also, briefly, under the instrument panel with a torch, but without luck. I was also going to look behind the overhead switch panel but it seems, after removing what looked like the three securing screws, that it’s pop-riveted along its top edge, so I left that for now. But at least, working or not, I’ll be able to replace the damaged light with a matching unit and all I’ll need to do is a quick bit of spray painting to repair the surface scuffing that my little ‘accident’ caused. I think I was fortunate that the outcome was nothing more serious, both to ASY and my wallet.<\/p>\n

While I was at Malbec today, I also replaced the duct tape that we covered the damaged strobe with at la Fert\u00e9 so I can fly ASY should the opportunity arise, and here are some shots that I took afterwards.<\/p>\n

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When I took the top engine cowling off during my search for the strobe control box I noticed that even just the flight down to Galinat and a month standing outside under covers have already rather tarnished the ‘clean and tidy’ look of the engine that had particularly impressed me when I bought the aircraft. It’s nothing serious, just a bit of dust and grime that I’ll have to put a bit of time and effort into to clean off to get it back to as it was, and how I’d like to keep it, as the following shots show.<\/p>\n

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But that still wasn’t quite it for today. I found after flying ASY into Galinat and trying to lock the passenger door that the lock didn’t work. The key turned OK in the handle but it didn’t secure the lock, so I thought that I’d investigate that before leaving for home. Nothing appeared to be wrong so I refitted the handle and lock mechanism and this time all was fine. I think that someone had inadvertently put the handle in upside-down so the locking peg that emerges from the spindle when you turn the key did so when there was nothing for it to butt against. Anyway, all’s well now, so that was another small victory.<\/p>\n

Here are two final shots that I took before leaving for home showing ASY in its barn.<\/p>\n

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I already found today how useful this will be, because as well as being able to get to Malbec from home and go flying in well under 30 minutes, which will be a big improvement compared to having the X-Air at Galinat, I was also able to potter about doing things on the Savannah while the rain was gently falling outside. This would have been impossible at Galinat so although not exactly bliss, at least it meant that rain won’t in the future have to totally stop play \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn’t get to Brant\u00f4me yesterday. It hardly even came as a surprise, really, with the way the weather has been behaving. First mist and low cloud and then gusting wind that would have taken the pleasure out of any flight even if I’d wanted to take off in it. It did become quite nice … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10889"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12483,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10889\/revisions\/12483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}