Slightly disappointing

Another ‘double disappointment’ day, but nothing too serious and the disappointments were also offset by a couple of positive developments, I’m glad to say.

Firstly, my home-made fuel rig. The fuel resistant grease arrived from the USA the other day and today I was able to pack the leaky fuel pump with it to see if it could seal the leaks. Not unsurprisingly it didn’t work and I thought it prudent to switch the power off when fuel started to leak from around the top of the pump where the electric motor’s brushes and commutator are located.

So the pump is now proven to be not only absolutely useless but also dangerous and with my determination fortified by this new information, I got in telephone contact with Ebay customer service later in the morning.

I had already been offered a partial refund for the pump which even now I haven’t received in full, so today I wasn’t prepared to brook any nonsense. As far as I am concerned, I am entitled to a full refund of all monies paid including carriage and customs dues under the terms of both the Ebay Money Back Guarantee and PayPal Protection and when the young lady agent tried to fob me off, saying that the claim had already been closed, I refused to play ball.

To cut a long story short, a 30 minute phone call between France and the UK to be exact, that’s what they eventually also agreed to, so I’m now looking forward to the monies arriving back in my bank account in the next few days. So at least I won’t be out of pocket as far as this awful pump is concerned.

I’ve already ordered a replacement direct from China (a knock-off Bosch type) which doesn’t have as high a rating as the faulty one, but now it’s just a matter of waiting for it to arrive and seeing how it turns out.

In the meantime, I fitted the old Facet pump that was originally in MYRO. As expected, it worked fine and demonstrated that the principle of my rig’s design is fine but it’s far, far too slow to continue using permanently.

After I’d sorted out Ebay, it turned out to be a pleasant afternoon so I decided that I’d nip over to Malbec and top up 77ASY’s tanks with fuel that I already had in readiness. Having done that, I then clipped a ferrite bead onto its radio power lead and with Philippe’s help, who was bleading his Citius’s brakes assisted by Victor, I checked to see how good or bad its transmissions were with 77ASY’s engine running by listening in at a distance on my Vertex handheld.

I had been told by a chap at Sarlat a few weeks ago that the interference was quite bad but today I found that although there is still a bit of background engine-type noise, the transmissions were quite intelligible. So that’s a problem that I’m not going to worry about any more, for now at least anway.

So what was the second disappointment? Well, tomorrow and Saturday we expect to have two glorious flying days with a high of 20 degrees Celsius and clear, almost windless, skies on both days. So what’s disappointing about that?

Unfortunately the runway at Malbec is so waterlogged after the recent stormy weather and heavy rains that it’ll be unusable for at least a week. And with more rain expected on Sunday and during the coming week, it could be even longer before we’re able to get back into the air 🙁