{"id":4383,"date":"2013-03-27T19:20:38","date_gmt":"2013-03-27T19:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=4383"},"modified":"2013-03-28T09:33:26","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T09:33:26","slug":"pressing-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/pressing-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Pressing on"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t want to sound as though I’m crowing, so I think I ought to start by expressing sympathy for everyone in the UK who’s having such a hard time with the appalling weather that has hit many areas and caused such widespread disruption. It won’t make them feel any better when I say that although the morning here started off clear and chilly, I’ve been working outside today in jeans and tee-shirt and it’s been glorious. I checked my car temperature gauge and it showed 20 degrees Celsius and although I don’t think it was quite that high because the car was standing in the sun, I doubt that it was very far off. And also there was no wind, so it meant that things that you put down weren’t getting blown around either.<\/p>\n

So as a result, I was able to make a bit of progress on the X-Air. I started by fitting the new elevator trim cables. The job went very smoothly and it was soon done. When I connected Ken and Peter’s X-Air’s trim I tightened down the clamping screws and then, because they were non-standard and seemed a little bit dodgy, turned the cable ends up and down and clamped them again with two small jubilee clips. Because my screws are fine and clamp the cables perfectly, this time I did a similar thing but just secured the cable ends with two small cable ties to give a nice neat job, as you can see below.<\/p>\n

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Then I turned my attention to the main wheels. I wanted to remove the hubs and check the bearings and brake linings and then fit the new brake cables when I replaced them. The bearings and brake linings were OK, although the brake linings will need replacing at some time in the near future as both sides are getting a bit thin. But I had a problem when I came to fitting the new brake cables. Raj Hamsa have supplied them without the little cable end adjusters that attach the cables to the wheel hubs and when I tried to re-use an original, I found that the cable end was firmly stuck inside. I tried to pull it out but there was a danger of damaging it and on inspection, the original cables were nowhere near as bad as I’d first thought and were perfectly serviceable anyway. They looked worse than they actually were because they had never been cut and the excess cable had been wound into tight little coils close to the brake operating levers on both sides and this is what had become corroded. After I’d cut the excess off and sprayed with ACF-50, both sides looked quite OK, as the following pics show.<\/p>\n

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So then it was time to start on the job I’ve been looking forward to, the panel. I had to lie on my back across the cabin to get the screws out that attach the panel front to the top, but the X-Air cabin is quite a lot bigger than the AX3’s, so it wasn’t too difficult. When I dropped the front down I found what I’d expected – a bit of a dog’s dinner with wires and cable ties all over the place.<\/p>\n

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But things are not as bad as they look. There’s an Icom intercom\/interface in the centre of the panel that used a big, heavy separate battery on the cabin floor behind the panel as a power supply. My radio and headsets aren’t compatible with it and even if I use my headsets without the radio, they each have two long-life AA batteries on board which last for months and make the current X-Air arrangement look a complete joke. So it was great to pull the battery out and when I’ve also removed the intercom and its cables, the panel wiring won’t look half as bad as it does now. But I’ll be changing it anyway and the finished article will look much better I’m sure.<\/p>\n

So that was it for today. I covered the aircraft up again a short while ago and it was still quite warm outside. I can’t see me getting anything done tomorrow as I’m helping Wim out and then going off to the doctor in Rouffignac later on to sort out my French medical paperwork. The weather forecast is for rain on Friday and Saturday but as we now know, forecasts here are not that reliable. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for fine weather so I can carry on and get the panel finished, which will mean that the X-Air will be almost ready to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t want to sound as though I’m crowing, so I think I ought to start by expressing sympathy for everyone in the UK who’s having such a hard time with the appalling weather that has hit many areas and caused such widespread disruption. It won’t make them feel any better when I say that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4383","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\/4383","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=4383"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4392,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383\/revisions\/4392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}