For most of the summer we had non-stop strong westerly winds down here in the South-East and for the last week or so we’ve had non-stop strong easterlies. The difference is that because the easterlies come to us from over the North Sea they tend to be cold and also accompanied by low level cloud, both of which we’ve had. So the weather has not been very nice at all for several days.<\/p>\n
Even so, I’ve tried to do what work I could on MYRO despite the unfavourable conditions. Last night I decided I’d attach the new cabin top plastic in readiness for fitting the doors so I began by doubling up on the padding on the upper parts of the cabin tubes to which the rear of the screen is attached, as had been done originally with MYRO. I especially thought that the extra thickness on the very top sections would be advantageous in helping to encourage the top edge of the screen to sit up, allowing the top edge of the door to tuck under, so that’s how I did it.<\/p>\n
After a fair bit of fiddling around with cable-ties the job was completed so before I cleared up and headed back indoors I thought I’d see how a door lined up. I offered up the left-hand door and was stunned to find that it seemed to be a mile out! This was not only unexpected but was also the nightmare I feared most after all the work cutting and assembling the new plastics. After the inital shock had worn off I looked a bit more closely and came to the general conclusion that although the double padding was a good idea, maybe the amount I’d fitted was a bit over the top. So I decided that next time I’d take the double thickness off, fit the doors, and then add the double thickness afterwards rather than before.<\/p>\n
So that’s what I did this evening. Off came a whole bunch of cable-ties that I’d only stuck on last night – I find that I keep doing this and the number of cable-ties I’ve wasted must now run into dozens – and off came the extra tube padding. Then I refitted the ties securing the front of the cabin top plastic and tried offering up the left-hand door again. This time it all looked much better – a huge improvement actually. Even so, despite using the old parts as patterns, there were one or two small differences, but nothing that was unacceptable or, more importantly, unsafe.<\/p>\n
So I held the door in place with several lengths of wide masking tape, took a deep breath and drilled the screen for the hinge plate. Then I fitted it and attached the door. I could hardly bring myself to try closing it for fear that it wouldn’t, and indeed it didn’t. But nothing too much to worry about. First, my idea of extending the top edge of the door was a good one and looks effective, but I’d taken the extension a bit too far down so it was digging into the tube padding before the door was fully closed. A few minutes work with Stanley knife and file solved that one. Then I found that due to a slight misalignment, the bottom edge of the door was not always tucking in behind the edge of the screen and the pod, so I jiggled things a bit, carefully applied a bit of pressure to the door tube and that seemed to solve that one. If not, I can do a little bit more of the same.<\/p>\n
To cut the story short, in the end the door didn’t look at all bad and seemed to open and close at it should, so to finish I cut down the extra tube padding that I’d removed earlier and refitted it. And that’s where I left it. I’m going to add a couple more cable-ties to the rear edge of the screen on the cabin tube to tighten it up and bring it more into the desired shape which will also have the added benefit of encouraging the bottom of the door to tuck in as it should do. So am I relieved? You bet! This was a job that I was a bit worried about as the door fit is absolutely crucial to safety. Was it the nightmare that I expected it to be? No, not really, but it was definitely a bit tricky and needed quite a bit of working out beforehand. In the end I think it could have been much, much worse – but I mustn’t speak too soon as I’ve still got another door to do \ud83d\ude15<\/p>\n
Oh yes, a bit of good news to finish on. Having tracked down the provenance of my Arplast prop and liaised with LTS (the UK Arplast agent) and the BMAA, I received an email from Rob in the BMAA Tech Office today saying that the prop has now been approved and I can go ahead and fit it. So just the small matters now of the paperwork and \u00a340 Mod Fee…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For most of the summer we had non-stop strong westerly winds down here in the South-East and for the last week or so we’ve had non-stop strong easterlies. The difference is that because the easterlies come to us from over the North Sea they tend to be cold and also accompanied by low level cloud, … 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-733","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\/733","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=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}