Back on the piste again

We had another glorious day today with a clear blue sky all day and warm sunshine but with just enough wind to keep things a bit fresh. So it was a good day to pull the Weedhopper out of the back of the barn and give it a good wash and clean. And it really needed it. I only gave it a cursory clean while I was repairing and renovating it back in 2016 and with its having been stored in the back of the Savannah’s hangar for the whole of last year, it had built up a good coat of grime both inside and out.

Here are a couple of shots of 2/3 of my ‘fleet’ after I’d pulled the X-Air and the Weedhopper out of the barn before I started work.

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And here’s a shot of the Weedhopper just before it got its first dose of clean water for at least three years or so. Not that it stayed clean for very long as soon as I got going with the sponge.

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I took my house broom over to Malbec with me because I wanted to give the wings a good brushing to remove as much dust and other muck as I could before starting on them with the sponge. I’d spotted a lot of ‘debris’ on the left one and when I brushed it off I realised that it consisted of mouse droppings. I don’t know whether they had fallen from the roof or the mice had been spending time on top of the wing but I counted myself fortunate that they didn’t appear to have done any further damage.

It took me between two and three hours to finish off the job as I gave every surface a going over with the sponge and the screen, pod and the interior a further wipe with the wash leather so I didn’t leave any smears behind. But it was well worth the effort and it was a sight for (my) sore eyes to see the Weedhopper eventually glistening in the sunlight back again at the top of Malbec’s runway.

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Even MYRO’s old panel had a good shine on it in the sunlight, although it was practically impossible to take a good picture of the Weed’s interior because of the redness caused by the bright sunlight shining through its Ultralam covers.

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As its engine hadn’t been run for a few weeks, I wanted to give the Weed a few fast taxies on Malbec’s runway, which I did with nothing going amiss. A flight, though, was out of the question because although the wind direction would have been basically on the nose for landing, the air would have been very thermic due to the quite intense heat of the day and from time to time there were also some unpredictable powerful gusts of 45kmh (28mph) which could have made things a bit too tricky.

Here are some final shots that I took before taxying the Weedhopper through the airfield entrance and back up to the area in front of the barn.

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Although renewing the yellow varnish on the X-Air is next on my list of jobs, I put it at the back of the barn as I’d like very much if I could to do a bit of flying in the Weedhopper over the week-end. That’s if the weather plays ball, of course, because the hot weather and strong gusting winds are forecast to continue into next week. However, under such conditions, things are usually much more settled in the morning and early evening, so that’s when I plan to go. Now it’ll just be a matter of seeing how things work out.