Whilst lying under the tail end a few weeks ago .. cleaning and drying the bottom I noticed that there was a small scrape on the Oratex material that doubles over the metal joints.

it turns out that prolonged full left rudder turns over the 3 years plus has caused the cable .. that splices off the rudder cable to give left and right control on the spring governed tailwheel … has rubbed against the lower material covering.

An easy fix .. will cut a pinked patch of leather .. really degrease the tail end and stick it on the overlap joint

Well …. what do you get when you mix rubber and oil … there may be a few answers but probably an underlying theme will be nice lubrication !

Its not so nice when it comes together at an area where you probably don’t wish to have quite so much lube and slip …

3 smoke flights in and I was on my 7th or 8th landing post the addition of the smoke system … and I realised I was getting some of the excess oil over the tailwheel .. I made a small leather boot but it was already pretty moist.

On the 8th landing I got quite a bit of wheel shimmy at the end of the roll out …. on parking up i wondered if it was a bearing … but on investigation proved to be an interesting small problem….

The oil had wet the tailwheel bungee rubber and then the ‘loop around’ had slipped up the tailwheel shaft and popped onto the (smaller diameter) main shaft. This had the effect of slacking the support .. hence allowing the natural resistance of the bungee – Now gone – to let the wheel have more free movement.

Easy fix .. clean it all down and remove the oil and then cable tie the bungee top and bottom loop together

Thanks to Sarah Harman and George Gaudin for ground shots from a 3rd smoke test today

It sort of says OK and the second (almost) circle .. was a practice to then draw line through ! .. OK maybe back to reception class … i am flying right handed .. instead of left as usual … ha ha

And thank you Martin Fallaize for the shot from the boat

As with .any aircraft you get ‘hanger rash.. the odd little dink here and mark there… some just washes out some might need polish and some more

The secondary cowl was painted using a matt black spray .. which incidentally heats up hugely in sunshine … over the year I have used it about 1/3 of the time.. opting to use the main gloss painted cowl normally

When not in use it sits in the back of the hanger and sometimes gets blown by various prop wash if the doors are left open

So .. a year or so on .. I re touched the matt black up

The 9th May marks 75 years since Jersey was liberated following the occupation in the war.

Sadly it seems that celebrations will be very much curtailed due to virus worries and social distancing but I’m sure something will be planned by the Bailiff post release

In the meantime, a slight addition to my previous ‘commemorative cowling’ which I want to use, post lockdown, on my flight through France to Cherbourg, Caen, Deauville and Abbeville …

I had to scale up the image to get a suitable size and then split the numbers across the curve of the cowl .. a bit of edge tidying still to do ..