So, as the colder days begin.. the battery had decided to play up and starting has become a slight ‘fingers crossed’ affair !

Way back when I put the first battery in i selected a motorcycle unit that fitted neatly into the TLAC kit supplied tray.

This was mounted in front of the passenger seat but, on getting around to weight and balance, I realised I needed a lump of lead in the tail to get CofG in right place.

Having made a small mount for the lead and fixed it.. the LAA decided they didn’t like a lump of lead in the tail that could head forwards in a nose in crash so rejected my plan.

I then realised that the lead weighed the same as the battery I had, so had the brainwave of removing this pointless excess weight and putting the battery in the tail with a proper supplied battery mount. So, nice and secure but hey presto I didn’t need any additional weight to achieve equilibrium.

This meant I needed to run quite long power cables up to the starter solenoid and also an earth to the engine… and this, over time, proved problematic as the power loss over some 4-5m of cable was evidential

I started to look at the lead into the fin post idea but then hit on the idea of using the priginal front battery location AS WELL and connecting the batteries together… in series..

This gave superb starting and you just had to breathe on the push button starter and boom into life !

Roll forward through the years ..and motorcycle batteries aren’t great. They definitely have a shelf life after which you simply need to cycle them.

I checked back on the one that i had in the front yesterday and it’s 5 years old !

The £100 ish to replace far outweighs the disappointment of a none start !

The tail one i believe was done after I got to the UK and, the last time I did it, I made a small cut out Oratex panel that will allow easier replacement (the whole side of the aircraft being one complete piece of Oratex).

Having had a the dreaded flu for a few weeks it was time to check the torque settings to update the log book during these early test flights and getting her ready for the air test.

With torque set to 32nm pretty much every bolt was spot on .. one or two took one extra crank to bring them up to spec.

Jabiru are renowned for wandering out of torque and it only takes about 20 mins to check all the bolts .. remembering the hidden one inside the rocker cover behind the small grub screw.

One thing I’m not mad about is the lipstick

Its calibrated for the Jabiru 2200 BUT in trike mode … and the Ranger obviously sits on the tail. This means you are constantly making that mental switch on reading.

The sunp is so pitifully small anyway and James (the Chief engineer at TLAC) always used to say just put a piece of thin wood down to the very bottom to see what is actually in there !

Keeping a very close eye on oil levels as I run-through the first high powered climbs and check it on cool down EVERY flight

Over the years its been great to have the chance to fly lots of places with many many people …

Even though the advent of airborne GPS was a relatively late addition for me, apps like SkyDemon have been a revelation

They have simplified not only advance planning but in flight changes due to usual bad weather that usually ‘unexpectedly’ happens in the UK

I was delighted when Skydemon further developed their already amazing software to add auto route tracking over time with a map overlay

This shows mostly Jersey based starting points and flying to various places in amd around the UK as well as France and Luxembourg .. many small airfields with friends to pickup pups or business trips to various European offices

Id been thinking about the hot running head and thought the damage to the lower cowl meant we needed to repair and beef up some of the lower curves.

The original holes in the lower cowl were primarily around exhaust exits, a small hole where the exhaust silencer block touched the cowl, the oil radiator and feed pipes and some cut outs to accommodate the cylinder heads.

The accident crunched the oil radiator into the lower curves of the cowl and that needed beefing up and neatening

The net result was a super strong and great gloss finish but some holes were either enlarged or simply aren’t required anymore.

To test my theory out, without the need to do any ‘hard acts’ on the cowl , I planned to use tape to temporarily block off some of these holes and double the tape so that it would survive a short (30 min) test flight.

A short test flight, which ended up being 41 mins, proved very successful.

Even powered climbs were better than they were before.

Having left it for a few hours and thought about things .. one thing that came to mind on the cooking was the only major thing I changed on the engine following the ‘downing’

That was a brand new oil cooler matrix ..the original being the only part of the aircraft to take the brunt of the field landing !

This left the old matrix somewhat mashed …i removed it as it was leaking oil in the field on recovery.

What I didn’t do .. was take a photo’ before I removed the old unit and the pipes fitting could easily have interchanged

So, Plan A, is to switch the pipes out of the TOCA, the theory being .. if I had the pipes the wrong way the oil would have to be pushed ‘UP’ from the bottom of the oil matrix vs a gravity style ‘in the top’ method of circulation.

Pipes have been switched, so awaiting good wind direction and strength for a retest

Part II – investigation continues …

So, I thought if the TOCA was causing some sort of problem, ie the thermostat was perhaps causing an issue, I would remove it .. like you do with a car .. and the oul just flows .. uninhibited … right?

Anyway, removed it, its under a little square plate and easy to remove. Test flight number 4 (without the thermostat in place) and 3 minutes into the flight the oil temp started to climb past 80

Pulling around, throttling right back and brought her in on tickover.

On checking with the Jabiru guru Kevin H… it turns out if you remove the thermostat it CLOSES the feed .. completely!

So although this wasn’t what was required it PROVED what was wrong !

I suspect the thermostat valve is STUCK and needs freeing … then putting it back in for another check