It’s been a busy time with work and also a lot going on around home so great to finally get signoff from the annual anda short flight back to base.

With some fresh locking wire on the turnbuckles … James not liking my slightly’limp’ efforts … it’s time to see if the batteries are still up to giving a good start …

Started first couple of turns and settled into a nice rhythmic hum in the ever cooling (and darkening !) Norfolk skyline

The departure had been slightly delayed by getting 4 other aircraft out of the hangar.. and then carefully putting them back .. thanks Will for the hand 😊

The wind looked to be picking up its strength from the South meaning a headwind all the way home .. also, with a mainly E, W runway .. it was going to be a pain to taxy all the way down to the upwind end, backtrack and then line up. The taxiway is pretty short but has the advantage of a tree line on the S side so slightly sheltering the breeze.

Oil up to 48 so started to pull forward past the line of parked cars and then brake .. final check of wind, oil 50, into wind aileron and full power .. tail up almost immediately, followed by main .. always a joy to open up post some down time … just past the sheltering tree line before crabbing to take account of the side breeze … and climb away.

Settling into the now well setting sun at around 1200’ to maintain a listening watch on Norwich and spot that the ground speed is a mere 42 ! Windier than I thought

Decided not to thrash her but just cruise at 12-1500’ at 2,700 RPM … and feel glad I’ve started wearing gloves ❤️👏

Overhead turn back at Priory to check field condition as so waterlogged in surrounding fields … happy with the descending right turn and power coming back all the way to an almost 3 pointer in a quite dark, soft, strip …

That will be a muddy bottom 🤣

The annual is nearly there … a few things came to light that required completion …

Renewing the fin post leading edge had made the upper rear pair of tail bracing wires slightly slack. These can normally be very easily tightened by removing a washer from under the tang… a really clever and simple way of increasing the distance and so tightening up he brace.

The problem was, that I had no remaining washers and so I would either need to re manufacture new slightly shorter cable or, do 2 turns on the cable to tighten … hey presto and even enough to put a washer back under.

We also located some small cuts and one longer 4” cut in the underside. I have no idea how the longer one got there but some of the smaller ones were from protruding edges on the footwells. I’ve now put doubler tape overlaps on these now.

We also found that some of the tape overlays I’d completed last year had not stuck as well as they should. This was probably due to the cold and damp hangar I applied the glue in. Def NOT ideal situations to apply glue.

Re applied sections and new freshly glued edges with a good use of heat gun to warm the entire area.

The final piece was to increase the amount of up and down elevator which was found to be about 2-3 degrees short of full throw. This is achieved by removing the spacer washers from one side of the stop bolt (located at the bottom of the front joystick) to the other side of the bracket.

With 2-3 degrees more up and down I’m going to have to take it steady the first few flights post the annual.