MYRO – what now?

Up to now, I’ve purposely avoided posting pictures of MYRO since the accident because I’ve always thought that doing so would somehow validate the spiteful invasion of my privacy perpetrated by the despicable Bob Thompson and his wife when immediately afterwards they plastered pictures of it over the Internet and the microlight forums. I made my views on the matter pretty clear at the time and as far as I and others are concerned, they can now stew in their own juice because the nastiness that they stoked up has more to say about them than anything else. However, although I will stick to my original decision not to publish any pictures of the accident itself, as I am considering what my next steps will be for MYRO, I have now decided to show some pictures of it. Anyone who has been following my postings about events down here will know that ever since the accident, around ten months now, I’ve kept MYRO safely under covers in my back garden until I get around to deciding what to do with it. And I’m pleased to say that it hasn’t fared too badly in that time, as the following pictures show.

I did have to clean it up a little bit before I took the pics because as I found when it was parked under covers at Linton when I first acquired MYRO, the passage of air through the airframe when it’s parked outdoors deposits a weird black greasy film over everything. This affects the inside of the covers, the upholstery, the panel and instruments, the screen, in fact just about every surface. The situation was made worse because although MYRO was covered by a tarpaulin, the doors had been left off and the cabin was therefore completely open. The black film comes off quite easily when washed but looks awful, especially if it’s had the chance to build up a bit as now. We had a lovely day today – sunshine all day and 26 degrees Celsius – so I thought now was the time to sort MYRO out a bit, especially as I need some gauges out of its panel and the panel needed to come out in any event.

So today I gave everything a clean up, removed the panel and also emptied the tanks which still had the best part of 15 litres of fuel in them. My aim then was to seal MYRO up as far as was possible (that’s why I taped the broken nose back on again – to fill the hole up), replace the doors and wrap it up in a kind of cocoon to stop the air blowing through it. Hopefully that will then do the trick and MYRO will be preserved in its present condition until I decide what should be done with it.

The next two pics show the cabin after I’d taken the panel out and MYRO all wrapped up and replaced in the corner of my back garden. It’ll be interesting to see if fixing the cover in that way does the trick and keeps MYRO cleaner than it did up to now.

So what are my thoughts about the future of MYRO? Well, as I now have the X-Air which is much more suited to the Dordogne than the little AX3, the easy thing would be cut and run, get rid of what remains of MYRO and get on with my life down here. I may still do that, but there’s another interesting idea for consideration. In France there is a large number of very cheap Weedhoppers, which is what the AX3 actually is, without engines, many of which are being offered for sale as parts, and the longer time goes on, the more of them there are, of course. So repairing MYRO would be a real possibilty and as AX3s are a bit like Trigger’s broom, it would be quite an easy and cheap proposition. There might be a question-mark over covers because some of MYRO’s were damaged in the accident and repairing Ultralam covers can get quite expensive, let along buying new ones. The repair itself would be quite straightforward without the intrusive presence of the BMAA Tech Office and all the rigmarole that goes with it but at the end of it, MYRO couldn’t be registered again as a British permit aircraft. That would not be a problem, of course, because my intention always was to transfer MYRO to the French register and as things are, the UK register merely records MYRO as having been exported.

So what now? Well, nothing actually because I can afford to bide my time. When I’ve finished getting the X-Air sorted, I’ll strip MYRO’s wings down to the tubes the way the X-Air’s were for easier storage. Then I’ll contact a few of the Weedhopper sellers – there’s one offering one for parts only about 20 kms away down here in the Dordogne – to get an idea of what’s actually available and what the repair will cost. Then we’ll see … 😉