Moving forward again

And in all sorts of directions, which I’ll come back to later. After some to-ing and fro-ing, it seemed that there was a chance that MYRO’s test flight could happen today. The day dawned bright and freezing cold with hardly a breath of wind and having given MYRO a general check over yesterday following the very high winds that we had a week or so ago that blew over and destroyed John’s AX3 that had been tied down next to MYRO, I decided to get down to the airfield bright and early to re-attach the pitot tube that had been broken off (just two small cable ties) and make sure MYRO was all ready to go just in case.

In fact Martyn, the test pilot, arrived by air at about the same time as I did and it was agreed that today would indeed be the day. The first thing we found was that as had happened down at Linton, rainwater had been blown into the right elevator which this time had frozen, so time had to be allowed for that to thaw out and drain away before MYRO could be flown. I also found that a safety ring had disappeared from one of MYRO’s aileron attachment bolts (the second one) which was a bit of a mystery, but luckily I had a spare. An inspection revealed that the only damage that MYRO had suffered was a small nick in the rudder fabric where the wind had forced it against the elevator trim operating lever, so I could really count myself lucky given that John’s AX3, which had been only yards away from MYRO and facing the same way, had been blown over and Ken and Peter’s X’air had suffered slight damage to its elevator bracket from having been blown backwards until it had made contact with a wooden fence. Unfortunately I couldn’t say the same about my home-made wing covers which had been given a fair old pasting by the wind and quite a few of the eyelets had been ripped out. I rolled them up after getting as much of the hoar frost, which was a good centimeter thick in places, as I could off them so I could bring them home to repair in the coming week.

Eventually I took off in MYRO with Martyn as pilot and me as observer and it was great to be back in the air in it again. The air was cold and very calm and we both noticed how well MYRO flew. In fact MYRO behaved impeccably and actually there were two test flights, one with and then one without doors on. What a day to be flying without doors! Brass monkeys had nothing on this, especially when we had the doors off. There is a speed for all aircraft called Vne, which is the speed that should never be exceeded because of the chance of damaging the aircraft in flight. In the case of the AX3, this is 90mph. I had never taken MYRO up to that speed before but I felt quite relaxed with the doors on because it was pretty obvious that MYRO was flying very well without any vibration or control flutter of any kind. When we came to check out Vne with the doors off, Martyn said that I had the option of selecting a lower speed but I said that we should give it a go and decide what speed to go up to depending on how MYRO felt. Well, to cut the story short, we ended up at 90mph again with the doors off and MYRO felt just as stable as before. The only trouble was that the blast of air blowing round the sides of the screen was icy cold and whereas I could raise my arm to protect myself, poor Martyn couldn’t. As we dived earthwards to allow the speed to build up, he said that the side of his face was beginning to freeze and he couldn’t speak properly. Quite honestly, I’m not at all surprised. The price those poor test pilots have to pay to ply their craft 🙂

So that was it. MYRO passed with flying colours and I hope to be able to pick up the paperwork from the airfield tomorrow. I’ll then be able to get it off to the BMAA and hopefully MYRO should then be permitted in time to fly next week end.

So what other progress have I made? Well, the most major is that I have taken the decision to sell up and move to France. I’ll go into the reasons for this in another post in the future but suffice to say that I now want to stop working and retire in order to enjoy the rest of my life, and whereas I can’t afford to do so in the UK, I will be able to in France. I have friends in the Dordogne who I visited for a week, returning home last Wednesday. I originally only intended to scout around the area and check the availability of suitable property but in fact ended up finding a house, a converted stone barn, that I want to buy. So now all I need to do is sell my house to make the move. This also coincides with the conclusion of a divorce which has ground on for the best part of two years so at last I can now look forward to a new start and a new life. And to be honest I can now hardly wait 😉