This is the *second* time the Elder has come home with busted U.C,
recently! :-(

Last time, three of the four solder joints broke, and a main member was
badly bent. I opened the remaining joint, and after straightening the
bent leg, I re-made each of the four joints, putting the gear back into
shape. I was flying around today, doing loops and stall-turns and the occasional roll (tried a snap, but everyone laughed at the result) and
having some fun. The Saito was running with a nice, slow, pop... pop... pop...

I pulled back into a slowly steepening climb, and as the Elder came
vertical, I cut the throttle, and whacked on full rudder. She switched
around very neatly and as I lifted the nose out of the dive, I opened the throttle... dead-stick!

I made tyhe downwind leg fine but the sink-rate was high with the draggy airframe. When I turned sharply for the base leg, it nearly stalled on
me, so I knew the turn on finals would have to be slow and smooth if I was
to keep it flying. Trouble was, the slow turn brought *directly* into the sun... Everyone shouted, but even though I'd completely lost sight of it,
I was flying by sense of smell, and I held it on the edge of the stall and crossed the threshold. The guys tell me that while I was unsighted it
settled it's undercarriage into the long grass, but then I lifted it out
again and made it back to the strip. At that point there was very little forward velocity, and with the high-drag design she came down very steeply onto the U/C, which buckled in exactly the same place as last time. And
bent the axle, putting a wheel out of line, too.

<shrug> I'll hit it with something heavy tomorrow, and get it back in the
air again. I want to do 20 more good greasers with that airframe and then
on the next good day I'll take the Big Red Fokker for a long-overdue spin!

No, actually, I hopefully *won't* take it for a spin....

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þ Synchronet þ Made of wood and glue, but mostly glue!

I haven't been flying in months, due to my dedicating most of my free time
to looking after an elderly relative.

Last Saturday, determined to get in some stick-time, I charged up my
Elder, the transmitter, and my glow-igniter and set off for Congo Road. I
set up the aircraft, and did a range-test on the radio to discover that
the radio was... completely dead! Chief suspect: Battery pack for the
Rx.

Refer to this photo http://tinyurl.com/hmmdp taken during construction,
and you will see the nose of the fuselage before the outer sheeting was attached. In the front bay, you can see the engine-mount (black) attached
to the firewall. The fuel tank goes in the second bay, behind the
firewall, and th photo shows the tank sitting in th third bay, under the
wing saddle, just poking into the second bay from behind. The two holes
for the dowels in the leading edge of the wing are clearly visible in the domed former just above the tank.

Due to the need for proper balance, the battery pack is located in the
domed top of the second bay, above the fuel tank. With the entire nose
now sheeted with wood, the only way to access a bad battery pack is to
remove the fuel tank by pulling it back into the third bay, and lifting it out. Then, with much cussing and frustration, you can reach in and remove
the pack.

But as this photo shows http://tinyurl.com/zdrqf the tank is connected to
the ngine by two silicone tubes. The yellow line brings fuel from the
clunk to the carburetor, and the pink line carries hot exhaust back into
the tank to provide a pressure-feed for the fuel system. If you remove
the tank, you remove these lines as well. And when you're putting the
tank back together, it's an absolute *bitch* to get these fuel lines back through the two holes in the firewall, since these holes are deliberately
a snug fit to prevent fumes leaking back into the fuselage.

All that wasn't a job I wanted to do at the field last Saturday without my full array of tools, so I packed the aircraft back in the car and came
home.

Today, I took the tank out, fiddled around cussing until I got the battery pack out, to discover that... it was in perfect working order! WTF? It didn't take long to discover that the problem was where the battery
connected to the switch! The connector was loose. I snapped it back
together properly -- a job that would have taken two seconds at the field
last Saturday -- and all was working fine again! All I had to do was
spend another hour and a half reinstalling the battery pack, and getting
the tank back in place with both fuel lines through the firewall and reattached to the engine without any kinks or leaks..... :-/

While working on the model, I took a look at it all over and noticed that
the flying wires http://tinyurl.com/kbej3 (which are only made of elastic) had lost their stretch, so I made up another set. These are unnecessary components, and would be classified as 'scale details' if it were a scale model. But I equipped the model with them originally, and I do think they dress up the model nicely http://tinyurl.com/kzetz don't you think?

So today, I was ready to try again! The weather wasn't so good, but I was prepared to fly on my own, if nobody else showed up at the club. Off we
went, Dotty very excited (he loves to run around in the bush!) with all
our gear in the car. Arrived to find nobody at the club, set up and range-checked the model, and all was perfect! Fuel up, igniter in to heat
up the plug, applied the starter, and... completely dead! Damned flight
box battery dead this time! And nobody around to borrow a starter from!

Sat around playing with Dotty for a while, and Sam arrived on his bike.
He didn't have a flight box or starter to borrow, but with his help I connected the starter to the lawnmower with a set of jump-leads, and got
the starter whizzing around a treat!

Reconnected the igniter to heat the plug, and.... it wouldn't start.
Plenty of revs, fuel vapour in the exhaust, so was the plug heating? Connected the igniter to a spare plug to confirm that it was working and discovered that it was..... completely dead! That's the THIRD $%#!@ time I've been laid low by a battery!

Thing is, I know I charged it a week ago, and I haven't used it since!
That means the cell is probably bad. Not surprising. It's a Mexican made Sanyo Cadnica KR-1300SC that I bought in the early part of 2000! Trouble
is, it's a sub-C cell. And believe me when I tell you, there are NO sub-C cells ANYWHERE on this island, rechargeable or not. I've been looking for over five years, and I know!

So there my Elder sits, all dressed up and no way to glow!

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Playing: "Lazy calm" by "Cocteau Twins" from the "Victorialand" album

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þ Synchronet þ Made of wood and glue, but mostly glue!