Day: October 14, 2009

Here’s a picture of my prop

I love this prop. When I last flew MYRO it had the standard wooden 2-blader and I’ve been told that this one will give it a distinct edge in performance and/or fuel consumption. I got it off Ian MacAdam, a microlight instructor at Damyns Hall in Essex, who got it off a Rotax 503 like mine that was on a Spectrum which was blown over in a storm (sounds a bit like MYME, doesn’t it). So I more or less knew that it was going to be OK but had to make a quick decision to buy it because it was on offer at a very attractive price and would soon have been snapped up by someone else. Then the fun began.

I contacted LTS Ltd in Hampshire, the UK agents for Arplast. After some faffing around at my end I followed the instructions I was given and found the prop serial number which confirmed that the prop was indeed the correct one for my engine/gearbox/airframe combination. Then I looked on the BMAA web site and located the relevant MAAN for the approval only to find that the prop it specified was different. Back to LTS who confirmed that my prop is indeed the correct one and that there is therefore an error in the BMAA documentation! So onto the BMAA Tech Office who were initially sceptical and asked for a certificate of conformance. Back to LTS again who said that they were unwilling to issue such a certificate as although they do so now, they didn’t when my prop was sold (9 years ago).

Hmmm… decided I needed to be a bit more assertive as otherwise it looked as though too many petty barriers were being erected that could well have prevented me using this prop – and I was also by now getting a bit annoyed. Ian came back to me and confirmed the registration of the Spectrum that the prop had come off. I had already established that there was only one such aircraft on the G-INFO database but it was good to have the confirmation. I then found who the owner was when the prop was sold and – voila! – LTS managed to locate a copy of the actual sales invoice proving its bona-fides. I then suggested that Tech Office talk direct to LTS to confirm all this and back came an email in a day or so confirming that the prop had now been approved. Oh, and could I add an aircraft registration to the paperwork in due course as a precedent – that aircraft, G-MYME 😕

I was not amused by this. I knew that Mark had the prop hub and a single blade off MYME but it had proven too expensive to buy two more new blades to make a complete unit. It turns out that they are for exactly the same model prop as the one I have. My question is, if BMAA Tech Office knew that, why did I have to go through all that rigmarole to get THE SAME PROP accepted for MYRO? Just not an acceptable way to go about things in my book 🙁

Anyway, it’s done bar sending in the paperwork – oh, and a fee for £40 for the privelege!

PS… Want to hear a weird story? The person in whose name MYME (storm damaged, written off) was registered was also once the owner of the Spectrum (storm damaged, written off) that the prop came off. Strange but true 😯