Problems, problems.

Tony was going out in his machine, G-BWAD, with another flyer who had some historic gyro experience as well as other flying machines, and who wished to get acquainted with more modern gyros. 


While they were out, I got G-BYJA and started my pre-flight checks. Everything looked good and normal until I looked underneath the front of the cabin. The nosewheel didn't appear to be turning as freely as it should, and then I found some loose bolts protruding from the underside of the bodywork. 


Fortunately, Viv was around, working on someone else's  RAF-2000, so I asked him what these bolts were holding. The answer was very interesting but disappointing. 


Interesting because it instantly explained the problems I'd had in turning while taxiing two days previously, disappointing because it meant that I had some serious problems to fix before I could fly G-BYJA again. With the bolt fixings having failed, the whole cabin body had dropped and  was now resting on the nosewheel, restricting its movement quite a lot. Although this wouldn't have caused the machine to drop out of the sky during flight, it could have caused difficulty in steering during landing, potentially causing a rollover accident


With Viv's kind and expert help in lending me tools and showing me what to undo, I eventually discovered that three out of four rubber mounted bolts holding the cabin to the keel (the main structural support element of the whole aircraft) had failed. It wasn't immediately obvious why they'd failed, but age no doubt had quite a lot to do with it. 


Having exposed the problem bolts, there was little more I could do until I could get replacements, so I put my poor little machine away and went home to search the internet for replacement rubber supports. 

Back at home, it soon became clear after exhaustive searches, that the original rubber mounts were probably no longer available. So the backup plan suggested by Viv was put into action. This was to make my own rubber supports from rubber bungs. Our winemaking days are long past so a quick look on ebay found Homebrewsupplies4u advertising rubber bungs for demijohn airlocks. An order was promptly placed but by the time I did this, it was the start of the four day Easter weekend, so I didn't expect that the bungs would be despatched for four or five days. Very pleasingly though, Homebrewsupplies4u did actually send them on Easter Saturday, so they turned up on the Tuesday after Easter - thanks Homebrewsupplies4u.