The best laid plans

Today was forecast to be another very hot day and as I can’t afford to keep losing one day after another, I made the effort to get over to Malbec by 7.30 am this morning in order to finish off the work on my Xair. And everything went very smoothly indeed. Not only did I get the aircraft thoroughly cleaned inside and out – the best it’s been since I’ve had it actually – but I also managed to clean its outdoor covers in which it’s been stored in the barn and which were filthy, and lube all of its control hinges and pulleys.

So as it had then been fully serviced and checked over it was ready to carry out some taxi trials, but before doing so I took some photos after I’d moved it onto the top of the runway.

It was just gone 1.30 pm by the time I’d done a few taxi trials up and down the runway including some high power runs and I was very satisfied with the results. As by then it was much too hot to think about flying – it would have been extremely thermic and bumpy and the approach back into Malbec over the trees would have been very challenging indeed – so I decided to park the Xair out of the sun (and UV) in the shade of the tall trees on the other side of the runway, go off for the afternoon and prepare a flight for when it had cooled down this evening.

My idea was to take off and fly around the airfield as far as Rouffignac and high enough so if I needed to return I’d be able to make it back safely and I also planned to set up a couple of Go Pros on and in the aircraft to record the flight. I also made up 20 litres of new fuel and by 7.30 pm after setting everything up and carrying out some more taxi runs I was all set to go, so I stopped the engine at the top of the runway to start the Go Pros recording. But when I came to restart the engine the battery was flat.

So that was it. I’ve left the Xair out overnight with the battery on charge and I’ll be very annoyed if the battery is giving up the ghost because the one it replaced is still going strong on my ride-on mower despite notionally being too small to start its engine. The other thing is that having made such an early start this morning I don’t think I want to do it again tomorrow and if I try flying later in the morning it might be too hot as it’s forecast to be even hotter than today with a top temperature of 36 degrees C or possibly higher. But anyway, I’ll just have to wait and see.