Slowly coming together

Everything went according to plan yesterday – with one excellent addition. When I picked up the pod, I was talking with Richard who I got it from and it turned out that he also had a brand new AX3 nose strut that he had bought for his aircraft that the pod came from, but hadn’t used. That was great news because I was going to have to buy a new one myself for MYRO, so we did a deal and I came away with that as well! Richard also still has the main gear and the pedal assembly and the latter is handy to know because I don’t know yet whether MYRO’s has been distorted.

Then I went straight up to Sandy in Bedfordshire to get the other bits. Apart from taking the ‘short-cut’ slip off the A1 before the Sandy roundabout, which brings you out in the wrong place, so I couldn’t find Bedford Microlights initially, everything went pretty smoothly. The parts were on the wing rack just inside the hangar door where I’d been told they would be, so it was just a matter of getting them loaded up onto the roof of my Astra Estate. Many thanks to young Lewis who gave me a hand to do so. I was especially grateful because in the process, after the long spell of dry weather we’ve been having, while we were loading the stuff up it began to rain and we both got soaked.

The stuff I picked up comprised two wing leading edge tubes, two trailing edge tubes complete with ailerons attached and a set of wing struts. I need just a trailing edge tube and aileron from them so I’m really pleased about that and the other items I’ll be taking down and dropping off shortly to go ‘into stock’ where I’m hoping to obtain the other bits I need from.

So things are now beginning to come slowly together. I now need to start thinking about a Repair Scheme which I will have to put up for approval to the BMAA Tech Office and get a ‘letter of no objection’ for from P & M. I can’t see how there will be any problem with that because I will be using all approved parts from a similar aircraft which will be individually inspected before being fitted, so it will just be a matter of conforming to procedures I think. I don’t mind that because in the final event, I’ll be up there at a several thousand feet in MYRO once it’s been repaired, so I want to know that I can trust it just as much as I did before the accident. I’m sure that will happen.

So now it’s Game On!