2012 - Another Year of Blue Sky Thinking

Well the weather over the Christmas period was pretty poor so no flying there but within a week of the New Year (after some of the strongest winds for a decade or two) things had started to improve.

With all the various service works and inspections completed & with a little bit of arm twisting Les agreed to G-CEDI coming out of hibination a little earlier than normal. By the 8th of Jan I'd managed to take her for her maiden flight of 2012 and since then have manged to get out and play on a couple of further occasions including a lovely circuit bashing trip to Headcorn (sorry for overusing the radio Mr controller).

In addition to the above I've also managed to squeeze in another flight in Rob Grimwoods Eurostar (G - CGZY) up at Plaistows in preparation for my Assistant Instructors training course which I'm due to start in Feb. Please check out my other blogs for the story on this one.

G-CEDI - 2011 The plan so far

Well what a start to the New Year, to say it didn't quite go to plan would be a major understatement.

The idea had been to take her out for a quick buzz around the block on Monday 3rd Jan before putting her away in order to carry out some routine maintenance and a number of mods i.e.

• External fuel filler capability
• Split doors
• New (comfortable seats) from the Nynja

Well she started up OK after only a little persuasion. Warm up seemed fine, all the dials reading normal etc. Nothing in the circuit so we lined up on 06 and hit the throttles. Everything seemed absolutely fine till we had just crossed the airfield boundary at about 300 feet when the engine started spluttering and losing power. I throttled off and reapplied power. Although the engine didn't stop there wasn't a lot of power there so checking my height again, 300ft still I performed as tight a 180 as I could and headed back to the field this time coming in on runway 24. Although it was tight I'd managed to get on the centre line, cut the throttles and glided in. Once on the ground the engine ran smooth and clear, strange. OK time to return to the hanger and have a good look round to see what had happened!

Unfortunately this was were commonsense deserted us. After taking the covers off and test running the engine for a good 30 mins and not being able to find any specific problem we decided the problem was probably caused by carb icing. Not wishing to risk all quite so soon we decided to carry out a number of test runs down the runway to see if the problem returned.

After two uneventful runs and much debate we decided to give it another go, big mistake. After further warming up and additional checks and a plan of what we would do if the problem reoccurred we lined up on runway 06. Full throttle everything fine, wheels off and still looking good. Unfortunately at around 150 - 200ft the problem reoccurred. We had drifted slightly to the left on take-off so our initial plan to land straight ahead had to be dumped. Once again I put the plane into a sharp left hand turn putting us right on the edge of a stall. The engine was still delivering some power and I was able level out and head back towards runway 24. After a quick assessment of the situation I decided that we weren't going to reach the field this time so I put her down pararell to the runway about 50m to the west of the strip in a ploughed field.

Although I would certainly have rather made the runway under the circumstances I couldn't have wished for a better landing. Straight in on little power holding off for as long as possible, main wheels first quickly followed by the nose wheel, full stop in less than 30m.

Of course on the ground the engine seemed fine again....bloody typical. From what we could see there was no damage to the aircraft, not even a bent front wheel, amazing considering the state of the soft ground.

Now we had the fun prospect of getting the plane out of a very muddy field and back to the airfield. Bearing in mind that the flight was less than a minute it took over 3 hours to move the plane 50m across a ploughed field , though a barbed wire fence and over a couple of ditches. I would like to say it was a fantastic bonding exercise and great fun but basically it was very hard, dirty work but we managed it.

After a quick wash down we were even able to fold the wings and get her back in the trailer before the light eventually failed on us.

The Blue Box has landed – The arrival of G-CEDI’s new home @ Deanland.

So there we were Les & I, the proud new owners of G-CEDI.

The next problem was where to hanger it. Hanger space at Deanland is rarer then hen’s teeth or rocking horse poo combined so we knew that was pretty much out of the question. We didn’t want to leave it outside all year round even with a good set of covers on.

So we needed a truck body or a trailer but unfortunately we had managed to choose a plane that even with the wings folded and everything stored was too big to fit into any standard sized unit especially a trailer. So the search was on for a non standard truck body that was big enough to take DI but could still be made to look like a trailer. E-bay, auto trader, Gumtree, we tried them all and bid on a few as well.

Les came up trumps after a couple of missed offers when we eventually managed to win an auction on eBay. OK so along with a lovely Skyranger Microlight we now owned a very large (27ft x 8ft x 8ft) blue truck body. OK problem number two. The truck body was in Essex and we needed it in Deanland. Now you wouldn’t have thought that it would be that difficult to get a big box from Essex to East Sussex, wrong. After much haggling and persuading and drawing up of plans and promises of assistance I found a company willing and most importantly able to transport something this big on something that would be able to get down the lanes to our airfield.

OK the big day arrived and the weather was great. We were told that we wouldn’t be required at the Essex end so we waited back in Sussex hoping that the driver was able to find the pick up site OK and that it fitted on his truck OK. We had hoped that it would be with us by 1200 but in the end it was gone 1400 by the time it arrived at the entrance to the airfield. I was rather shocked by the size of the truck that delivered our container but very impressed with the skill of the driver being able to manoeuvre it through the gates and into the airfield without removing too much of the overhead foliage. The next challenge was to drop our container in between two existing units preferably without causing too much damage!

Well it took at least another hour to get it on the ground but in the end we managed it. For now it was balanced on bricks, breeze blocks and blocks of wood but at least it was down.

Bearing in mind that the container had cost us £300 quid and more again to get it transported this was the first time we had seen it so it was a great relief to find that it matched all the descriptions and pictures we had been sent.

Of course this wasn’t the end of things as the trailer now had to be made fit for receiving our aircraft.

Alterations and amendments required included:

Construction of a lower tail gate
Fitment of a tow bar
Fitment of a set of axels and wheels
Cutting out a section of the front supports to fit side tunnels to allow the passing of the rear tail-plane and elevators
Fitting of a side door
Painting of the floor
Construction of a work bench and cupboards

By late September all the above work and much more was complete and G-CEDI was ready to be put away for the winter….yippee.

G-CEDI – Plans for 2010

Well it’s been a while since I last posted, over a year I think. Going to try better in 2010, that’s as close to a New Years Resolution as I’m going to get!

Well lots of changes to report, the key ones being:

Bought a 50% share in a Skyranger – G-CEDI with Les C.
G-MVCC is about but about to go up for sales having now sat in a corner of Lew’s field for a few months – anyone want to buy a 30yr old Shadow?
The Skyranger boys now have the biggest trailer on the field, even surpassing Tony’s monster!

The Skyranger is a side by side two seater powered by a Rotax 912u engine. The weight limit is a full 450kg which now means I have the option of carrying a few slightly heavier friends than had previously been the case and lots and lots of fuel, especially with Aaron riding shot gun.

Memorable trips in 2009 included:

Numerous jaunts over to Sandown on the IOW
Popham
Andrewsfield and
Maypole

Since purchase we have carried out lots of cleaning and tidying up work with the main undertaking being the modification of the front cowling to include an oil inspection flap, just a minor mod! We have also just completed the painting of the spinner and spats in a really fetching bright red!

Plans for DI in 2010:

Extend the repainting to the bottom cowling and door edges
More draft sealing, endless project of Les’s
Get the GPS officially mod’ed
Carry out the mod for fitting an external fuel filler system, no more nasty smelly accidents hopefully
Fitment of split doors, a possibility

As for flying plans for 2010 we do have some quite ambitious ideas but alas neither the time nor money to probably bring them all to fruition. Basic target to include:

1st flight across the channel
1st flight to France from IOW
Take part in at least a couple of rounds of the BMAA National Microlight comp
Try to take in a few more BMAA events this year i.e. Popham and Spamfield!

Well those are the ideas for this year; we will as ever just have to see what happens!!

Let’s hope for lots of BLUE SKY days in 2010