Day: May 22, 2015

A ‘compte tours’, by the way, is a rev counter. I breathed a small sigh of relief this afternoon. 56NE’s rev counter has been playing up ever since the flight I did last winter when I thought that I had carb icing (unlikely I know). At the time, I couldn’t get the indicated engine revs over 5500 rpm and I was worried that the engine was losing power and that I might not be able to make it back to Galinat from overhead Le Bugue.

It turned out that the engine was developing the required power and revs but that for some reason, the rev counter was under-reading. I naturally assumed that it was a rev counter problem, until Victor told me a few days ago about the similar problems he’s been having with his Rans S12’s engine. This is also showing an under-reading on its rev counter while still, apparently, developing full power when the throttle is fully opened.

I lent him my old rev counter (that I discarded because it has a dead fly under its glass) over the week-end and he said that that was also under-reading, and as a result he’s been advised that his engine has a stator plate problem. Put simply, there’s a fault in the circuits that generate electricity when the engine’s running. This, of course, caused me some concern, because although I’ve been flying 56NE ‘by ear’ and airspeed ever since the problem started, a replacement stator is well over 300€. And we have our west coast flight coming up…

I picked up my old rev counter yesterday from Victor and went across to Galinat this afternoon to see how it compared to the Avia unit that’s currently in 56NE. It took me quite a while to swap them over and ended up having to remove the whole panel front, but eventually the switch-over had been made and it was time to fire up the engine. I’m glad to say that although I could only do a static engine run (it was too windy to fly today), when I opened the throttle fully the rev counter reading rose to just under 6000 rpm. This was way better than the Avia had been showing, and bearing in mind the age and condition of the old unit, I think it showed that my problem is only with the rev counter and that I’ll be able to solve it merely by purchasing a replacement.

This then left me in a bit of a quandary – did I leave the old unit in place, which meant completely refitting the panel front, or did I wait until I’d received a new one? My mind was made up for me, really, because the new airfield at Malbec is having its official opening on Monday and as I’d never be able to get a new one by then, it would mean that I’d have to drive in by car and not fly in. So back went the panel and I ended up not getting back home again until about 7.00 pm.

A brief footnote to end with. Although I caught a mouse a few days ago, I’d left two traps set ‘just in case’, one outside next to a wheel and one inside 56NE’s cabin. I was slightly saddened when I removed the covers before starting work today to find that I’d caught another mouse, this time inside the cabin. So it looks as though I can’t relax my vigilance after all, and that I have no alternative other than to keep both traps in place. Pity really, as I take no pleasure in killing mice for the sake of it, but I can’t have a repeat of the seat-chewing episode if I can avoid it 🙁