{"id":14178,"date":"2018-08-08T22:00:04","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T20:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=14178"},"modified":"2018-08-08T22:10:17","modified_gmt":"2018-08-08T20:10:17","slug":"some-good-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/some-good-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Some good news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cooler weather forecast for today – 30\u00b0C, down from 36\/37\u00b0, still pretty warm but not scorching as it has been – so a good day to get myself over to Malbec and finish the varnishing on the X-Air. I can’t sell it until it’s done and I must get it advertised on Le Bon Coin ASAP while there’s still a goodly bit of the season still to run.<\/p>\n

There’s no point keeping it. I can’t fly three ULMs and the longer it stays holed up in the barn the older it gets and the more it deteriorates. ULMs like all aircraft, need to have the air under their wings and flowing through their structure. They just get dirty and more shabby the longer they stay hangared and that’s why it was so important to get the varnishing work done on the X-Air, so it looks as fresh, clean and bright as possible for the old aircraft that it now is.<\/p>\n

The morning started off refreshingly cool with a bit of cloud but this was a trap for the unwary or foolish, like me, with work to do who should have started early to take advantage of the cool conditions. However, I didn’t and didn’t start work until gone 11.00 am and it wasn’t long thereafter before the sunshine broke through and things began to warm up quite a bit.<\/p>\n

The only advantage of this was that the varnish I was using soon dried and I had no worries about insects or other flying matter landing on my work and spoiling it. I soon finished off the small amount of yellow that was left to do, mainly on the rear fuselage cover, and then I wanted to re-do the blue cover between the upper wing sufaces and re-touch small areas on the aelerons that were showing signs of wear.<\/p>\n

I’d found a small amount of blue left over by the previous owners that must be over six or seven years old but still appeared to be in good condition and I was just hoping that it would be enough. In fact with thinner added it proved to be more than ample and by early afternoon the X-Air was standing before me looking spick-and-span in its bright yellow and blue glory.<\/p>\n

It didn’t look half bad and if this coat lasts as long as the last one has done (six or seven years by my estimation) then the X-Air’s next owner will be getting a bargain with the selling price that I’ll be putting it up for, especially when you bear in mind that the varnish will also be protecting the dacron covers from the effects of UV.<\/p>\n

Because of the temperature, when I’d finished I was able to completely cover the X-Air up immediately to protect it from dust, dirt and animal waste, mouse and wasp droppings mainly, that are a bit of a problem in the barn. I haven’t used the black PVC covers that I made when I first acquired the X-Air for the last few months because they are beginning to fall apart a bit due to the effects of UV when it was standing outside. This wasn’t a good idea, however, as they can still provide enough protection against the muck in the barn, so today I replaced them as the shots below show.<\/p>\n

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As I said to Wim today, I already have some suitable pics of the X-Air to be used in an ad on Le Bon Coin, so all I need to do now is give it a test flight in the next few days and put the ad up. Then it will just be a question of waiting to see what happens. We are expecting a little bit of rain over the next couple of days after which it should be a bit cooler but still with only light winds. So ideal weather for a test flight and I look forward to getting the old girl back in the air again.<\/p>\n

And I’ve just received another bit of good news too. My local mechanic has now had a chance to look at my car and come to some conclusions about the repair. He has told me that it doesn’t need any new parts at all, so so much for the 1,600\u20ac quoted by the pirates in Paris to fit a new turbo. He has told me that the only problem he has found so far has been an internal problem with the fuel pump that was causing fuel to be pumped straight into the engine and was caused by a fault with three bolts inside the pump.<\/p>\n

He didn’t have time to explain exactly what the fault was, but I suspect it was something to do with high pressure fuel being fed in volume into the particulate filter as I described in my previous post, although I’m not sure. But in any case, he said that after rectifying the fault he has run the engine for the first time since the incident occurred over a month ago, but only briefly to prevent any damage.<\/p>\n

Before he can declare it a complete fix, however, he has to clear all of the old oil and diesel out of the engine and run the engine for longer. I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that it will run as it did before with no nasty fumes or noises. Now that really will<\/em> be good news and music to my ears \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cooler weather forecast for today – 30\u00b0C, down from 36\/37\u00b0, still pretty warm but not scorching as it has been – so a good day to get myself over to Malbec and finish the varnishing on the X-Air. I can’t sell it until it’s done and I must get it advertised on Le Bon Coin … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14178","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\/14178","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=14178"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14195,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14178\/revisions\/14195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}