Light Aviation February 2021

Clive Davidson flies this simple sportster with a complex character… FOURNIER RF47 KEEPING BUSY IN LOCKDOWN

Team

Chairman TIM HARDY

CEO STEPHEN SLATER

Chief Engineer FRANCIS DONALDSON B.Tech c eng FRAeS

Chief Inspector KEN CRAIGIE

President ROGER HOPKINSON MBE

Vice Presidents BRIAN DAVIES & JOHN BRADY

Engineering email engineering@laa.uk.com

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Email office@laa.uk.com

Office Manager Penny Sharpe

Drinking from a glass half full…

Welcome to the February issue, we will still be in lockdown as this drops through your letterbox, so I hope it brings you some interesting reading and inspiration for when we are able to return to some form of normality. The Covid vaccination programme seems to be gathering pace and as a fairly aged membership, no doubt a good number of you will have already had their first dose, and over the coming weeks, many more will, me included, so that alone will move us closer to a less stressful place.

Some do say that when one door opens another slams in your face, and it did feel a bit like that when the good news about the vaccines was almost trumped (yes I know, not a great choice of words) by post-Brexit news that all manner of hurdles could be placed in the way for those of us who like to fly our Permit aircraft abroad. I’m by nature an optimist and believe common sense will prevail and resolutions will be found, we just need to be patient. See News (p6) for more on this.

the optional 120hp Jabiru 6 and provides 130kt cruise speeds and 1,000+fpm climb rates on a budget (see p40).

Our look at the projects underway by staff members this month follows the initial far from tentative steps taken by Chief Engineer, Francis Donaldson, on repairing the prototype Fournier RF47 following an accident in Belgium. The rear fuselage was badly damaged, to the point where it was touch and go whether it could be repaired or an entire cockpit-back section newly built and grafted on. Follow Francis’ lockdown ventures on p20.

And finally, we have an update from the current owner of the pre-war Heath Parasol that Stuart MacConnacher has related the history of over the past couple of issues. Colin Essex bought the sad remains in 2017, after it had sat in a garden for 20 years. The only word I think does justice to the workmanship that he has lavished on it is exquisite . It is pure joy to look at, see p16.

Stay safe and look forward to the brave new world with joy and optimism.

Brian.

The cover story this month is the Sonex, an aeroplane I liked from the first time I saw it when it debuted at Sun ‘n’ Fun. Designer John Monnett has been at the sharp end of affordable sport aircraft design for 50 years, indeed his first design, the Sonerai Racer, will be celebrated for its 50th anniversary at Oshkosh this year. He was one of the pioneers in moving the VW Beetle engine on to reliable higher power such that it could be successfully used in two seaters. Our test aircraft, G-SONX, is powered by

John Greenhalgh’s RV-14A, featured in Project News being weighed (p10). See also p22 on digitising your W&B schedule.

Make good use of your time during lockdown…

By Tim Hardy

Let me start by hoping all is well with you and yours. It has been a rough start to the year on pretty much any basis you choose; Covid, weather, and the potential Brexit effects on going foreign. What looked like a couple of sprints only three months ago has turned out to be a bit of a marathon as we entered another lockdown with no end date declared just yet but, as I write, some strong vaccination performance is looking like coming to our rescue. Mind you, for a collection of people who have run the gauntlet of learning to fly, biennial check flights, a build or two perhaps, and routine medicals, we are uniquely qualified to run this particular marathon!

I’m sure you all share some frustration with the current restrictions, but maybe we should be thankful that it’s happening at this time of the year. Even if the restrictions were not there, there’s only so much flying that can be done on cold, dark days even if it’s not raining and you happen to be based next to a serviceable runway.

During the first lockdown, I recommended a few things that you could do to while away the days until you could fly again, and these still hold true. Go through your checklists, update your POH, or plan a few trips.

There’s a tale in this issue of a chap whose iPad died on a trip from Kemble to Cornwall but having also prepared his route with a plog and chart, it was only a minor inconvenience. Maybe boning up on your ‘old school’ planning skills might save you from such a situation this summer. I have always found that planning a route using a chart or SkyDemon for example, is a great way to visualise and perhaps savour a forthcoming experience. Pick a destination at home or abroad, plan and develop a route to the extent of

your endurance, calculate alternates and fuel reserves and who knows, you might be able to do it for real – but mind out for those pesky drones operating within these Temporary Danger Areas that are springing up everywhere.

When it comes to considering the current coronavirus guidance, which is also actually law, we recommend that you need to consider the importance of visiting your aircraft for maintenance/safety purposes, but I think we can be trusted to decide what’s best on our own. Certainly for that engine maintenance flight during lockdown and those first few flights afterwards, perhaps re-read the advice we produced last spring, which was also echoed by the CAA, on taking it slowly to begin with after lockdown and if flying during lockdown. Bear in mind the impression that might be given to those around airfields annoyed by the noise and visual intrusion in normal times, who would be super sensitive now.

Do we really need them, I wonder, drones that is. I read recently that a delivery by drone was many more times less environmentally efficient than a delivery by van, even diesel powered. It has been said that applications for drone licences have gone through the roof, except that it was forgotten by that particular reporter that all model flying aircraft are required to have licences as well as drones, much to the annoyance of the model flying community. I look forward to a time when all of these issues could be less opaque, when we can get a straight answer to a straight question from those who regulate us. OK, I’ll dream on.

Well, enough from me for now, stay safe and I look forward to seeing you at an event during this year’s season.

06 NEWS

Brexit woes and event changes

09 LETTERS

Airymouse reminisces…

10 PROJECT NEWS

Europa XS, Van’s RV-14A, Cleared to Fly and New Projects

16 HEATH PARASOL

Colin Essex brings us bang up to date with his impressive rebuild…

18 FOURNIER RF47

Francis Donaldson makes progress on his Fournier RF47 prototype rebuild…

22 WEIGHT AND BALANCE

Brian Hope weighs up the prospects of going digital when it comes to W&B calculations…

24 LUSCOMBE LOCKDOWN

Duncan Campbell muses over a year of constrained aerial activity…

28 FLYBOX

FlyBox, an innovative Italian electronic instrument company

30 WHY DO WE DO IT?

Lloyd Edwards buys a new single-seater to recapture the fun of former years…

34 PILOTAWARE VECTOR

How to check your Electronic Conspicuity (EC) devices for FREE!

38 STRUTS 4 U

Anne Hughes looks back over 50 years of the Strut system…

40 FLIGHT TEST

Clive Davidson flies the Sonex, a simple sportster with a complex character…

48 WHERE TO GO

Plenty of dates for your 2021 diary

50 SAFETY SPOT

Propeller failures, and ASI problems…

56 COACHING CORNER

Be cautious when it comes to flying advice; and get your LAA Wings

58 MEET THE MEMBERS

This month we talk to Ruth Kelly, paraglider, sailor, pilot and much more

66 CEO CHAT

Steve Slater reflects on aircraft care

News

Plenty more news is available on the LAA

website at www.laa.uk.com check it out every day!

Brexit – the hopefully temporary snags…

It was perhaps inevitable that there would be a number of hiccups for pilots once the UK left the EU at the start of the year. Probably the principal issue is that, currently, LAPL holders can no longer fly outside of UK airspace. This undoubtedly affects many pilots who have moved from a UK or EASA PPL and its Class 2 medical requirement to the LAPL, with its less demanding medical. This is because a UK LAPL, previously an EASA license, has now reverted to the CAA, and EASA now state that because it is a non-ICAO license, they won’t recognise it.

The CAA persevered with discussions with EASA right up to the New Year, but it now appears that they have taken the advice previously offered by the LAA, which is to talk directly with the individual national aviation authorities. This is now happening. Why they didn’t do it sooner is of course a moot point, but given the current Covid-19 restrictions, it is rather academic. Similar discussions will no doubt include the NPPL, which with a Class 2 medical could be used in some states to fly light aircraft, or with a Medical Declaration, to fly microlights.

As members of the European Federation of Light Experimental and Vintage Aircraft (EFLEVA) we are working with the CAA and the DfT to re-establish those agreements to allow both NPPL and LAPL holders to fly outside of UK airspace. Another important item too, will be the reinstatement of the ability for NPPL holders to fly Part-21 Certificated aircraft. This is already in the CAA ‘change system’.

The ability of Permit to Fly aircraft to fly outside of UK airspace has a similar dilemma. The European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) 1980 Recommendations between most European States to accept each other’s PtF or Experimental aircraft, have come under question because changes to the wording under EASA call for

RAeS Vertical Aerospace talk

The General Aviation Group of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) invites LAA members to a virtual talk by Vertical Aerospace’s Chief Engineer Tim Williams and Senior Flight Dynamics Engineer Sophie Robinson entitled: From the Drawing Board to the Sky: Vertical Aerospace’s Journey to Certification

The talk, which is free and is scheduled for 16 February from 1600 to 1700. Access is via the RAeS website Events Calendar, see https://www.aerosociety.com/ events-calendar Please pre-book online.

Vertical Aerospace has previously flown two full-scale, all-electric, vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) prototypes with UK CAA approval. Tim and Sue will outline the key achievements and history from Vertical’s inception in 2016 to the present,

acceptance of aircraft from other EU States and Switzerland. Again, negotiations are underway with individual states to add and the United Kingdom, the French DGAC already having agreed in principle that they will do so.

Another fly in the ointment is the Border Force’s implementation with private airstrips and non-Customs airfields to permit flights directly to and from the EU. A blanket permission exists until June 2022 for this practice to continue as pre-Brexit, but after that date individual strips and non-Customs airfields will have to meet currently unspecified criteria and arrange a Letter of Agreement. The alternative is that many pilots would have to exit and enter the UK via Customs Airfields, adding delay and cost, and in many cases making a day trip to the Continent unviable. Again, we’re working with the Home Office and DfT on that. We will undoubtedly have to be patient, but Covid has stopped European travel anyway. By summer, we can but hope that a non-Class 2 medical and permitted PtF access, at least our nearest neighbours, have been negotiated.

anticipated projects and key milestones in the short and long-term, and the technical detail on designing, developing and flight testing its recently unveiled flagship aircraft, the VA-1X (above). Capable of

travelling 100 miles at 150mph, carrying four passengers and one pilot, VA-1X is set to be the world’s first certified winged eVTOL, with initial commercial operations starting in 2024.

www.flyer.co.uk

AERO and Wessex Strut date changes

Just as we went to press came the news that AERO Friedrichshafen, the principal GA Exhibition outside of the US, had decided, in light of the current Covid crisis throughout Europe, to make an early decision and move the event from its scheduled 21-24 April slot to 14-17 July. This would seem to be a wise decision, the only downside being that the Lake Constance region is a popular tourist area, and the later date means accommodation for exhibitors and the thousands of attendees is likely to be in high demand.

Meanwhile, with confirmation from Shobdon that their popular summertime

Food Festival will unfortunately not be taking place this year, and the event had been pencilled in as a Meet the LAA Day in conjunction with the

LAA 75th Anniversary UK Tour

Plans are ongoing for the LAA 75th Anniversary Tour from 22-31 May. Unfortunately, due to the festive holiday and the Covid lockdowns and as a result, people being furloughed and airfields closed, we have been unable to add significantly to the finer details, but

rest assured the event is definitely still on and we will relay further news as soon as we are able. Please note that the article in the December magazine is correct with all the dates – the email Neil sent directly to those who have registered an interest, contained a typo.

Ernie Horsfall Birthday Fly-in

The forever young Ernie Horsfall will be 103 on 21 April, the same day as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, as Ernie reminded me the other day, when he

Airfield news

Rochester Airport in Kent, has recently been granted support from the DfT / CAA Advisory Development Fund (ADF) initiative, which takes the form of five days of free support and development consultation. This very worthwhile opportunity is to review their previous runway planning application, with particular emphasis on the EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) to ensure it meets the current legislation.

Although an initial plan to build a hard runway and additional hangarage and tower facilities was approved, the challenge of a Judicial Review by objectors on the basis of an unsatisfactory EIA, has delayed progress for several years.

Work on the buildings started in 2018, although that too has suffered delays due to archaeological investigations on the site. However, progress is now being made, and the photo shows the WWII

rang to discuss Jodels. He still drives and is eagerly awaiting is Covid-19 vaccination. To celebrate what by any measure is an incredible milestone, a

Shobdon Strut, it has been decided to move the date of the Wessex Strut Fly-in / Meet the LAA Day at Henstridge, from April 18 to 4 July.

The Bodmin stop is Sunday 23 May, Barton stop 24th, and it’s Glenforsa on the 25th. Apologies for any confusion. If you are interested in receiving more information about the trip, and have not done so already, please contact neil.wilson@laa.uk.com

celebration fly-in birthday party has been arranged at Manchester Barton on 24 April. Free food will be provided courtesy of the North Western Strut.

Above Rochester’s wartime hangar’s refurb is well underway.

hangar which is receiving a new floor, new doors and is being re-skinned. The Rochester redevelopment was possible because part of the airfield is being given over to an Innovation Park project. A similar agreement could enable airfield infrastructure enhancement, including three new hangars and runway repairs, at Wolverhampton’s Halfpenny Green Airport as part of a deal to build 112 houses on part of the site.

Left Happy visitors at the 2019 AERO Exhibition.

SkyDemon support for SkyEcho

Time is running out for taking advantage of the DfT / CAA up to £250 subsidy for the purchase of Electronic Conspicuity equipment – the end of February is the final purchase date and end of March the close for applications for the funding. The SkyEcho from uAvionix has proved a popular choice for non-Mode S transponder equipped aircraft owners because, as a low cost (around £500 of which you get up to a £250 rebate), self-contained ADSB in and out package, it the cheapest and simplest way into what the majority of pundits consider the most likely ultimate EC solution – ADSB.

To make that decision even easier, uAvionix now has in-app configuration support through SkyDemon, making it easy for users to enable/disable SkyEcho’s ADS-B transmission, set the transmitted call sign, and edit the aircraft’s hex code in a convenient settings panel in SkyDemon, both on IOS

and Android. This makes what is a ‘carry-on’ device, easily configured for use on a number of different aircraft.

ADSB and the world and his wife

There is, for some people, a downside to ADSB in that it opens you up to being seen on the likes of Flightradar24 etc., advertising your movements to all and sundry.

Many of us are unconcerned, but I know some are, and as member David Taylor reminded me recently, in March 2020 I published a letter from Bob Knott explaining how to remove personal information from flight tracking apps.

Dave has followed that up for his own

aircraft and though some platforms have acceded to his request, others have required that he take out a subscription to their platform. However, the most interesting response was from FlightAware, who informed him that despite his aircraft not being US registered, the appropriate route to block his aircraft is through the FAA’s new programme Limiting Aircraft Data Displayed (LADD). The FAA has created a website so you can submit your request

Mike Bowden (August 1933-December 2020)

Mike Bowden flew for over 60 years, mainly with Lancashire Aero Club, at Woodford and later at Barton, and was flying until two years ago. He was a long-time member of the PFA and LAA, the BMAA and a number of local clubs. As a committee member of the LAC, he helped organise many events, including the Manchester Air Show, and was honoured to be appointed a trustee of the Aero Club for 13 years.

Mike owned Jodel D9 Bébé G-KDIX for 10 years, having purchased it from the builder, Keith Barlow, who operated it out of Fenland. Mike was a familiar sight at Barton, preparing for a trip in his beloved D9, which he flew for 10 years. If it was flyable, Mike was flying all over the country to fly-ins and annual rallies. He loved landing on the beach at Middleton Sands, and later at Knott End in Morecambe Bay.

He was instrumental in installing the Booking-in Logs at the cafés at Knott End and Hest Bank. When Lancashire Aero Club needed a new airfield to operate from, Mike and partner Jane visited over 40 sites seeking a new venue. He eventually found Kenyon Hall Farm, which has now been established successfully for 11 years. Mike

Other EC solutions are available, for example: PilotAware, FLARM, and Mode S transponders.

online for your aircraft to be blocked. Once the request is received, the aircraft will be blocked within two to three weeks on FlightAware and other flight tracking websites. The web address is: https://ladd. faa.gov/

Dave confirms that it has done the trick with FlightAware, but he has not been able to do enough flying in the current situation to verify that all of the platforms have been blocked.

had a career as a chartered engineer and retired early to start a second career as an antique dealer. He was a salesman extraordinaire and he and Jane also sold and demonstrated the X-Sail mini land yacht at microlight fly-ins around the country, and even at the microlight show at the NEC. His adage was ‘if it was too windy for the microlight, then you could have a huge amount of fun in the land yacht’. Some may remember Dave Bremner ‘test flew’ the X- Sail for the BMAA magazine and gave it an excellent report!

Mike was a friendly and enthusiastic gentleman, much loved by his many friends in aviation. He remained very fit until the last few days when he died peacefully with his son, Robin and Jane, his partner of 23 years, at his bedside. He will be sadly missed Jane Rhodes.

Airymouse reminiscences Letters

Dear Brian, Clive Davidson’s and Steve Slater’s delightful account in the January issue of LA brought back many memories, which you might be interested to share.

Like many others, I was encouraged to have a go at building a Currie Wot after reading Harald Penrose’s book Airymouse

Another good read and inspiration was Doc. John Urmston’s book Birds and Fools Fly. I ordered timber and adhesive and made a start. I believe that most projects start with the easy bit, the tailplane, and mine was no exception.

Then my father died, and I found that my workload on the farm increased. Our four children were also getting to the stage when they needed more attention, and the result was that the Wot project was put on the back burner. In the meantime, I was approached by Roy Newton, who wanted space to build a Taylor Titch. There was a redundant cowshed on the farm that suited him, and he moved in.

It was through Roy that I met Sid Tomlinson who was a brilliant engineer who worked for British Aerospace in Stevenage. He said that he would like to take on the Wot, so I handed it over to him, and he joined Roy in the cowshed and set to work. I used to visit on Sunday mornings to see progress and have a cup of tea. Sid’s workmanship was immaculate and, in good time, Wot G-BKCN emerged from the cowshed for engine runs. All went well.

Flying lessons

In 1968 I worked out that if I gave up smoking, I would have enough money to take flying lessons, something that I had wanted to do ever since I had seen dogfights between Hurricanes and ME 109s during WWII. In those days, Panshanger was the home of the Wasp Flying group run by Baron Derek de Sarigny, and there were three Austers on the training fleet, charged at £4 an hour. I remember G-AIBX in particular, as she was painted in a hideous colour scheme of orange and black. I eventually got my PPL and the next problem was how to continue flying at the least possible cost.

I had always had the ambition to have my own airfield and there was a suitable field on the farm, so I bought a second-hand Romney hangar and, with the help of our farm maintenance man, we put it up next to the field.

Francis Spear had a Rallye that he kept at Panshanger and was interested to keep it on the strip, and for several years we had a very good arrangement – I had my cheap flying and Francis had cheap hangarage. By this time we had put up another building, which was the start of the Benington International Airstrip.

As time went by, Francis bought a Robin and decided to keep it at Panshanger, and I had the opportunity to buy an Auster for £1,200 and I kept it on the farm. There was space in the new building for Sid’s Currie Wot, so it was assembled at the strip. Benington is rather short and therefore not suitable for test flying, so Des Penrose carried out the first flight of G-BKCN from Benington to Panshanger, where they had much more room. Des then did more of the test flying, but eventually Sid had a go and he then offered me a flight.

I had only once flown a single-seater, a Tipsy Nipper which was living on the strip at the time and belonged to my nephew, Kester Scrope. I found that it was a more exciting experience than my first solo! I had been told that the climbing speed was 60mph, so I stuck to that, but by the time I had sorted myself out, I looked over the side and found that I was still very low and heading for the village of Watton-at-Stone. I gingerly pulled back the stick and soon was climbing away at 55mph. I landed back at Benington with no trouble and with a big grin on my face.

By this time, I had several hundred hours of tailwheel time, so I was delighted to be invited to fly the Wot. The aeroplane was still based temporarily at Panshanger, so there was plenty of room. As soon as I was airborne, I realised that this was the worst

handling aeroplane that I had ever flown!

In order to remain in the air, I had to keep full forward stick while staggering round the circuit to hurriedly land.

Thankfully, the landing went OK – I could never have forgiven myself for bending Sid’s beautiful new aeroplane. When I complained to Sid, he said that he had left off some of the fairings and that must have made a difference. Test flying completed, CN was flown back to Benington where she resided for a number of years.

Sensitive aeroplane

In April 1988, Sid offered me another flight. My memories of the first had faded somewhat and Sid had completed the fairings, so I took off from Benington. I still felt that the CofG was well out and I had to keep a firm hand on forward stick, but not as badly as on the first flight, so I flew for about 20 minutes before returning to Benington, which is short at 400 yards, but I managed a reasonable landing.

That is my recollection of the Currie Wot, I think that the real problem was that I weighed more than Sid or Des, and in a small aeroplane the CofG is very sensitive.

Sid flew CN for several years out of Benington and as the years passed his eyesight started to deteriorate. He got lost one day when trying to get back to the strip so landed in a grass field in order to ask the farmer where he was. Mick Williams was the farmer, and his farm was next door to Benington, so all he had to do was to point across the valley to show Sid his way home!

Incidentally, I always thought that the turbine powered Wot was called the Wiz Wot and Doc. Urmston confirms this in his book.

Best wishes, Harry Bot ■

Harald Penrose at Merryfield in 1959. Photo: Peter R March

Projects which inspire others to build their own aircraft

Compiled by Mike Slaughter

Project News

Here we are, winter proper. Typically, this time of year sees more New Projects than builds reaching the Cleared to Fly stage. But this month there are six of each and a fairly typical mix of marques, so activity and progress seem to be undulled, even though ‘The Thing’ has hampered many a project. While some have found additional time with their creations, others have been prevented access to an aircraft nearing its flight test phase. This time l ast year it was abnormal rain and water logging that prevented many exercising their Permit to Test, this year its travel restrictions and locked airfields. As builders, I think the words of Winston Chur chill are rather apt here, ‘We must just KBO’ – Keep Buggering On.

There are those of us who are in the RV gang and those who are not, I’m not, but only because my flying fate has never take n me down that road. So, like most, I’m on the outside looking in However, compiling Project News does expose me to the type a little and, if asked by another outsider what they are like as a project, I’d probably have to say they are at, or near, the pin nacle of amateur built aircraft, hugely respected and sought after but rather time consuming to build. However, like all preconceived ideas not drawn from personal experience, there is every chance my viewpoint would be, at the least, inaccurate.

Reading John Greenhalgh’s project report on his RV-14A set me off on researching the type a little, after all we seem to have a little extra time on our hands recently! So, my preconception clearly stems from the early Van’s models and yes, with one exception, they all use solid riveting – a black art to those of us

who haven’t set a large number of them – but without doubt, it is a time consuming process. But progressing through the models, it would seem that the level of preparation of parts at the factory has slowly increased to a point where all the bolt and rivet holes are pre-made to the final size on the RV-14 sheet parts. Van’s claim that with a late model RV you assemble the parts but do not need to make them first. Sheet assembly is all self-jigging, with premade wiring looms and other prepared assemblies that enhance the builder’s progress. It is even suggested that the canopy fit ting process is nowhere near as taxing as on previous models.

None of this of course diminishes John’s achievement in turning out a beautiful looking flying machine, but it does help to expl ain how he was so successful in doing it in under 100 weeks of 9-5 building. Read his report, it may change your perception as well…

A nice contrast to John’s sprint is Alan Twigg’s 20-year Europa marathon. Alan started and completed his project as the longwinged motor glider variant but has a set of standard wings in preparation to compliment his creation. On the basis that you can never have too many aircraft, this seems to be a route to two for the price of one – well almost, certainly only one hangar fee! It does show that it is possible to complete an aircraft in conjunction with a busy lifestyle, it might just take a little longer. Alan shares some other interesting lessons from the protracted process as well.

To get in touch with Project News , and tell your story, report a milestone or just to send a picture, email: projectnews@laa-archive.org.u k. Please share your story!

G-GIWT (PFA 247-13623) Europa XS

By Alan Twigg – long wings, long build

Travelling around the world with my job kept me from building my own aircraft for many years. I actually started a Falco while I was on a three-year assignment to Aer Machi in northern Italy, based in their flight test and development centre. I even met Stelio Frati, the designer, and in a small way, helped with the flight test of his production version, the Pinguino. I still have the plans but all the metal parts I made were left in Italy, a customs duty issue. I looked and dreamed of all sorts of aircraft, almost settling on

a Lancair, until the reality of operating on grass with small wheels kicked in. I missed the RV train having fallen for Ivan Shaw’s idea of a farm strip capable, de-riggable aircraft.

I started working life as an RAF apprentice at Halton in 1965, at the time my elder brother was based at RAF Bicester on 71 Maintenance Unit. My first weekend off I went to visit big brother, who was a member of the Bicester RAF Gliding and Soaring Centre, and was invited to fly in a glider – and so a

55 year love of gliding was born. Solo in 1966, full Silver C in 1968, and an instructor in 1969, all flying off one main wheel, so I was always going to be a sucker for Ivan Shaw’s bait!

I left the RAF in 1979, having been offered a job with Rolls-Royce as a Field Service Rep, a great role with stories best told over a beer.

Recently I looked at my first receipt from Europa, it is dated January 2000 and was for a motor glider, me thinking only about the gliding advantages rather than the touring, a mistake I have mourned many times. I helped friends like Mick Dolphin and Ron Swinden build their short-wing aircraft and was honoured to be allowed to fly G-VKIT, Terry Crow’s aircraft for many years.

In 2000 I had returned to the UK from a three-year assignment with Lockheed on the (then) new C130J. I built a pedal Gee Bee while awaiting the Europa kit

2019.

Left bottom Back in the spring of 2019, big wings out on the big grass at Bicester, the Europa white nicely adorned with some graphics.

and, understanding that the wings had not been approved, I got permission to start with the tail feathers and fuselage.

A disaster struck when Europa went bankrupt, still not having cleared the motor glider wing with Engineering. I wrapped up the wing kit and stored it in Lockheed’s UK warehouse, intending to sell the wing kit in the USA, where their ‘Experimental’ category rules allow more leeway.

Around the same time, I was also able to fly an example of the motor glider in the US. Further convinced that the motor glider wing would eventually get approval, I kept the wing in storage for six years, hardly touching the build.

After nearly 21 years, I can at last report the build complete and the Permit to Test has been issued. I have received lots of support from LAA’s Andy Draper

Left The fuselage on its building jig back in the summer of 2010.

Photo: Alan Twigg

Left middle Using that expensive hangar space and starting to come together right at the beginning of

Photo: Alan Twigg

Photo: Alan Twigg

and the late Neville Ayre, whose larger workshop birthed my wings. I’ve spent the last three years struggling to marry the wings with the fuselage, never seeing a write up on this until it was complete. But I am sure all that angst will soon be forgotten, and I must remind myself that competing with the build progress I had my gliding world and work to keep me both busy and current.

I started the build in a single garage in Wootton Bassett, extending rearwards with the help of Mike Dolphin. This proved a little cramped, so I moved and built a larger workshop.

I was able to retire early (at 61), and joined the team running the Bicester Gliding Centre in 2011. Right up to the end of 2019, my workshop then became a Portakabin slid into a large ex-RAF tanker garage but having access to the large hangar at Bicester.

A decision to rig and go for completion saw me rent hangar space longer term. Six months should have been enough, I thought… and three years later and £10,000 in rent, I am now cleared to fly.

Much of this tale is repeated on many builds but I also had the misery of hearing about builds taking six

months to two years, this I had to cast from my mind as I went off on another gliding expedition, telling myself that life, gliding and power flying had to run alongside the build.

I am really pleased with the end product but having updated systems along the way, I now have a large box of instruments, a GPS and radio, an intercom system and full vacuum system sitting in a cupboard – another expensive lesson. I never started the project with a view to saving money, even though I am not particularly well off, buying along the way suited me but I am sure I could have saved £60,000 had I thought and planned better.

My flying is going to be a bit of touring, but you may spot me in some wave or thermal, mixing it with the gliding fraternity as well. I have held shares in a 172, a Jodel and a Robin along the way and would always visit the PFA/LAA Rally, once flying to the Wroughton Rally from Italy. So, at the next Rally, watch out for the big wings – you will not miss them!

Oh, and I am now off to build the short-wings which David Joyce sold to me at a bargain price. Fair winds and strong thermals.

G-JGRV (LAA 393-15585) Van’s RV-14A

By John Greenhalgh

Ihave always been interested in aviation, starting with control line models as a boy and then onto radio-controlled models. Later in life I had a taste of hang gliding, which led to owning a flexwing microlight for 23 years, during which time I also took to paragliding. A wish to tour around the country and beyond, in comfort, prompted me to train for a SEP PPL and build my first aircraft, a Europa purchased part finished, albeit I still had over 1,600 hours of building time until completion. After selling it, I was pleased to see the aircraft on the Europa stand at the Sywell Aero Expo UK exhibition in May 2014.

I then bought a SportCruiser, and this led to flights to the Central Pyrenees, South of France and Barcelona (Sabadell). The RV-14 will enhance my touring with a trip already planned for a flight down the Adriatic to Dubrovnik.

Prior to starting the actual build in my 5m x 11m garage/workshop, I did a radical clean out of the standing rubbish, painted the floor, made various benches and purchased tools and equipment. Also, I built a 5m x 7.2m shed with doors the full length to accommodate the storage of Van’s large boxes of parts, and to hold finished assemblies. My intention was to order the empennage kit and then all the remainder of the various kits together at a later date, thus making sure that I had the parts whenever they were needed, cutting out any lead time delays. This I did and it worked well, the only deviation being the engine, which was ordered separately. All was set for the arrival of the empennage kit in December 2018, and the build started on Boxing Day.

I purchased the 14 because it is the latest two-seat aircraft from Van’s and they are always improving their aircraft kits, however, I did decide on the quick build wings and quick build fuselage.

The attributes of the RV-14A, which assisted with the decision to build are that it is a very adequate touring machine with full fuel of 200 litres and up to 100lb of luggage (far more than would be required for me and my wife) flying at a cruise speed of 150kt. This means I can fly to the south of France in 4½ hours (from EGCV, Sleap).

Also, the aircraft is aerobatic, and this will be included within the flight test programme as, after a period of pilot experience and skills development, I would like to train for simple aerobatics. I will find this an exciting departure from touring.

The assembly was very straightforward, however, I am an engineer and familiar with design, materials, manufacture and assembly methods. I also enrolled on the LAA metal working course, which I found very interesting and informative.

All the parts did assemble together as per the

Below Late summer 2020 and the aircraft is wheeled out for its engine tests. Photo: John Greenhalgh

instructions, ticking off each step on each page as progress was made. Holes were pre-punched and certain items pre-formed, the only tedious part being the endless deburring – every edge, every hole. The key here was to have the appropriate deburring tools and appropriate music playing.

There was no welding needed and the engine baffles were assembled simply, as instructed.

The canopy assembly was technical but not too onerous – Van’s has a great video showing the joining of the canopy bubble to the canopy frame. The canopy and the rear window did require trimming and the time taken for this process was slow because you remove small amounts of material and then check, and then repeat and repeat again to achieve the fit required.

This is also true for the engine cowl and other various glass fibre fairings. The alternative to a slow and gradual assembly could be a bad fitting moulding or worse, scrap.

I did build strictly to the Van’s instructions, both in content and in chronological progression. Any additions were Van’s optional components such as the standard wiring harness, electric roll trim etc.

The avionics are all Garmin including G3X dual GDUs, Autopilot GMA507, Audio Panel GMA245, G5 backup, plus Pilot Aware Rosetta, CO installed

detector (with on screen reading and alarm to headset). I will still have an iPad mount with SkyDemon located aft of the fuel switch; I know that I don't need this, but I do like the SkyDemon capability.

I decided on dual G3X screens because I wanted the ability to view a GPS map and flight plan in full screen, i.e. the right-hand screen, with the Primary Flight Display on the left-hand screen. Also, if the aircraft is flown from the right-hand seat, the PIC can view the PFD directly in front of them. I also like the symmetry of two screens.

I purchased the Van’s common wiring harness together with a collection of other unit wiring harnesses. This allowed me to link the connections at the panel to the relevant LRUs (Line Replaceable Units), which was sufficient involvement for me. The 1,000-page Garmin avionics installation manual, albeit large, does offer interconnections to the various LRUs, which proved invaluable. This assistance, plus the excellent email support from G3xpert, made the job achievable.

I enjoyed the build so much that I was generally working on the aircraft 9-5 each day, with as much as I could pinch at the weekends. The key here is to plan ahead with the delivery of parts from the US so that assembly is not held up. There is currently talk of long

Left John’s aircraft on the scales, September 2020.

Photo: John Greenhalgh

Above left The all-Garmin panel is very capable and uncluttered. Photo: John Greenhalgh

Above right Nicely finished interior with very luxurious seats. Photo: John Greenhalgh

lead times for the engines. It also helps to have an understanding wife, who is more than a good support but also a pretty good riveter – the sound of ‘Rivet in’; ‘I'm ready’; ‘I'm ready’; ‘Riveting’ still rings in my ears.

The aircraft build has exceeded my expectations and was a delight to build – I enjoyed every minute. I am looking forward very much to when the test flying can be completed.

I would like to mention my LAA Inspector and test pilot, Peter Whitehead. Throughout the build process he has been a source of invaluable advice and his knowledge and experience most welcome.

I would also like to mention Steve Hicks who is a fellow RV-14 builder. He has not only been very supportive but an ambassador of perfection in build quality. He was always available at the end of the telephone or email to discuss various aspects of the build.

The paint job is brilliant. Keith Bebb at Shropshire Aircraft Painting (Sleap, EGCV) not only did a thoroughly professional job but also advised on scheme design and colour matching.

I am fortunate to be looking forward to 2021 and have planned many flying adventures in my RV-14A.

Below

Inset Simple beginnings – John with his paraglider.

If your aircraft has featured recently in the magazine and has subsequently completed its maiden flight, Project News would like to hear from you at: projectnews@laa-archive.org.uk

n G-GIWT Europa XS (PFA 247-13623) 17/12/2020

Mid-October 2020 and job done, the aircraft awaiting test flying less than 22 months start to finish, terrific looking paint. Spats to be refitted once Romeo Victor is fully debugged. Photo: John Greenhalgh.

Right Sherwood Ranger G-CLNZ back in December 2020 just prior to its test flight. Photo: David Bremner

Cleared To Fly

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Rising from the cabbage patch…

Following our delve into the archives, current Heath Parasol owner Colin Essex brings us bang up to date with his impressive rebuild…

Iacquired Heath Parasol G-AFZE in September 2017, with the help of local aviation historian John Berkeley who did the initial negotiations on my behalf. I knew the aircraft was in a poor condition, having been kept outside for 20 years in a Surrey residential garden, following the death of the owner, Desmond St Cyrien. The aircraft came with a Bristol Cherub III, serial number 3000, which I considered fitting in my Hawker Cygnet G-EBJI in place of the JAP J99 which is currently installed. It also came with an incomplete spare engine, serial number 3013.

I got the aircraft back to my home and workshop in Coventry on the back of a rental flatbed truck, whereupon it was assembled in my garden to assess whether it was

Above The fuselage is well advanced and the quality of workmanship quite superb.

Top right Assembled as recovered from its garden home of 20 years. Clearly it has suffered badly, the wings being beyond redemption.

viable to restore it back to flying condition. After putting details about it on social media, I had so many encouraging comments I felt obliged to at least try and restore this piece of aviation history.

Once the covering was removed, the basic bolted steel tube fuselage frame wasn’t in too bad a condition – nothing that dismantling, shot blasting and repainting couldn’t cure. The small amount of woodwork was all replaced, including a new burr walnut instrument panel, and surprisingly all of the instruments are in good working order. A new aluminium turtle deck and windscreen have been made, and new cables and fairleads fitted as a matter of course.

The fuselage incorporated many unnecessarily heavy

items, including seating, flooring, P11 compass, Kigass fuel primer and square steel tube stringers, which have all been changed to make the aircraft lighter, in keeping with the original drawings.

The wings were in a very bad condition, having been standing on the leading edges on the grass, so everything forward of the main spar and around the aileron area was totally rotten. It was decided that the best way forward was to manufacture yet another set of wings, utilising the original metal fittings. The Heath has the fuel tank incorporated within the wing, FZE has two, one in each wing, but I have rebuilt the wings with just one tank, saving even more weight.

As for the steel tube stabiliser, elevator, fin and rudder,

Above left The new wings have now been built, a new steel tube empennage to the original plans remains to be constructed.

Above right

Surprisingly the instruments were recoverable and have been set in a lovely burr walnut panel.

the larger version, which Arthur Ord-Hume designed, was so badly rusted that it needs remaking. I am building the new tailplane to the drawings, as it was originally intended.

The wheels fitted, as shown in the picture, are in fact the wheels from the Shuttleworth Collection’s DH53 Hummingbird and fit perfectly, as opposed to the wheelbarrow type wheels originally fitted. It is hoped that a four-cylinder Heath Henderson motorcycle engine conversion, as used by a number of aircraft in the 1920s, can be found in the United States and installed in FZE, keeping the Cherub for a future project.

Thanks to Stuart MacConnacher for supplying me with the drawings and other valuable information, and to John Berkeley for his help in my obtaining this aeroplane. ■

Staff projects

Chief Engineer Francis Donaldson found that national lockdowns gave an un-planned opportunity to progress his Fournier RF47 prototype rebuild…

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so it is with home workshops I find – no sooner has one project gone than an unstoppable force brings another in its wake to fill the vacated space. In this instance, in 2018 the departure to the airfield of my restored Super Wot had left me hopelessly vulnerable to ‘empty workshop syndrome’. LAAer Bob Grimstead mentioned that he was having second thoughts about repairing his wrecked Fournier RF47, and was thinking of putting it up for sale…

About a year previously, Bob had emailed saying that the French-registered wooden prototype of René Fournier’s last design, the two-seat RF47, had crashed in Belgium after engine failure, and asked if it could be repaired under the LAA Permit scheme. As the prototype had never been certificated, I had managed to obtain CAA permission for this to go ahead. The aeroplane had overturned in a ploughed field, broken the fin off and the canopy was shattered, but the one-piece wooden wing was apparently undamaged, and there was a spare canopy available. Surely putting it back in the air wouldn’t be too much of a problem, I encouraged him, and was probably largely to blame for Bob having made contact, wrestled a deal out of the French owner, and having the poor thing trucked over to the UK.

Unfortunately, on closer investigation it had turned out that the fuselage was seriously damaged, most visibly in the rear section, but also the main wooden members in the firewall bulkhead had broken where the noseleg had been wrenched back. The noseleg bore witness to the magnitude of the impact forces by being bent backward through 90° just above the wheel. The lightly constructed tail surfaces were also damaged, probably by being clouted by the departing fin, or during the recovery operation. The flat-four 2.6 litre VW-based Suer engine had dropped a valve, wrecking everything on that side of the engine. This particular Sauer was a discontinued

Above The major damage was to the port side of the rear fuselage, where both main longerons were severed and there was a large hole in the skin. The fin had also been ripped off.

Left Designed initially as an aerobatic kitplane, subsequent certified production examples were part-composite, non-aerobatic trainer/tourers.

model based on the water-cooled camper van engine, retrofitted with lightweight aluminium cylinders and custom heads which would be very difficult to source.

Having seen quite a few bad experiences in the past where LAAers have bought aircraft only to find that under the skin they’re not all they’re cracked up to be, I always advise LAA members not to spend money on a used aircraft with anything other than ‘disposable’ funds.

Happily, in this case once I took possession of the project and was able to dig a little deeper with a torch and mirror, I was pleasantly surprised. Looking past all the damage, the original construction had been to a very good standard, made from high quality materials and with superb workmanship, not surprising perhaps given that it had been overseen by the master himself, René Fournier.

There were various options for repairing the wooden

fuselage. I could saw the damaged rear section off just behind the wing trailing edge, build a new rear section separately and then graft it on. Or I could saw the back end off and then splice new sections of longerons onto the front section of the fuselage, and build up the new rear fuselage in-situ. Both of these options would have involved a lot of time drawing and dimensioning the fuselage, and then building complex jigs to make sure that the job didn’t end up bent like a banana, or twisted, and that the tail surfaces would match up to their fittings correctly and be ‘square’ to the wing. Plus, I’d have to find space to store the old ‘back end’ to use as a pattern, while I built the new one – no small consideration with a small 25ft x 10ft workshop that’s already crammed to bursting.

After carrying out some measurements with spirit levels and plumb bobs, I realised that amazingly, the sorry-looking fuselage had not ‘broken its back’. Despite three of the four rear longerons having broken, along with the surrounding framing, and the large holes in the plywood sides, top and bottom, enough good material remained for the front and rear ends to still be in alignment. This meant that with a bit of luck I could repair it using a relatively simple jig to support the fuselage while I replaced each of the broken members one at a time, and if all went well it would remain straight and true throughout. After weighing up the options I decided to try it – partly on the basis that if it all went to worms, I could always revert to one of the other options. Besides, it would be very annoying to build a beautiful rear fuselage and then find it didn’t fit the front end, and this possibility would be avoided using the ‘one piece at a time’ method.

Realising how important it was that the crippled fuselage held its shape while I committed pretty major surgery on it, I glued some strategic pieces of scrap wood and ply over the worst of the holes in the fuselage’s skin using foaming household Gorilla glue –knowing these skins were going to be changed anyway

as part of the repair process, and the ‘jury rig’ would end up in the bin.

Totting up the wood and ply required, I ordered twice as much as I reckoned I’d need – partly because I thought that if it went badly I might have to start again and wouldn’t want to be stuck for material… and also partly because my experience of buying aircraft wood over many years is that even if it is supplied for aircraft use, the quality can be quite variable. From what’s supplied you have to select the best straight-grain material for critical applications, the less good (slight grain run-out) can be used for small blocks and less critical parts, and the rubbish can be used for stirring the glue or lighting the fire. Sad to say, it’s a mistake to think that everything supplied even by the major names is of good aircraft quality. Getting hold of long lengths of wood that’s high quality throughout is particularly difficult, so I was not surprised to find that of the eight lengths of material that arrived I could find only three that met the standard I wanted to make the new longerons from.

There was a delay in getting hold of the wood and ply because I was prevaricating over the wisdom of trying to put 8 x 4 sheets of thin, but very expensive, plywood on the car roof rack, or what kind of platform I would need to support it. But when folk started talking about Covid-19 and it became obvious that a lockdown would be imposed imminently, very generously, the wood supplier agreed to bring the consignment over himself, on what turned out to be the last weekend before the start of the first lockdown – phew!

Sensible working height

Tackling such projects usually starts with making a special, perfectly flat jig table. It’s very important to be working at a comfortable height, so this is critical, but I figured that the way I intended to repair it, I could use the floor of the workshop as my datum and trestle the fuselage up to a sensible working height from that.

Foreseeing the opportunity to get on with the fuselage while self-isolating, virtually as the shops were closing down, I rushed out to B&Q and bought up a dozen of their straightest eight foot lengths of inch-and-a-half square pine, knowing that the project was bound to need various jigs and trestles, and there’s not much you can’t create along these lines providing you have the material to hand. Like most of us, I already had boxes of screws accumulated from previous projects so ‘stay at home’ meant I could get on straight away with making a tapered wooden frame that would support the rear end of the fuselage, the fuselage lying on its side perfectly level and with the worst damage uppermost ready for treatment.

Left Still lying port side up, this shows the fuselage after both of the longerons on the port side had been replaced, scarfed carefully onto the sound front section of the fuselage. Large portions of the plywood skin have had to be removed for access to the underlying primary structure...

In the rather surreal first week of lockdown, with the ‘patient’ reclining on the newly made frame, it was very much a ‘surgeon’s knife’ moment to cut the plywood skin away to reveal the first of the longerons that I was going to replace, chop the remains of the broken longeron into small pieces and then extract each piece section by section, releasing them as I went along from the various bulkheads, uprights and spacers. The structure looked very sorry for itself with a longeron missing and its guts, so to speak, ‘exposed’, so I was relieved to find that it wasn’t too difficult to saw and then plane a 15:1 splice on the truncated longeron end ‘in space’ and, on the bench this time, create a matching splice on one of the best pieces of my new material. With the new longeron spliced into place using Aerodux (nowadays called Prefere) I really felt I was making progress.

The second longeron was replaced in like fashion, by which time the fuselage looked rather like the remains of the Marie Rose, a kind of floppy half-shell largely supported by the B&Q wood frame underneath. At this stage the rear end was at its most flimsy, so after acquainting the new longerons with the framework of new uprights and spacers I ply-covered the side without delay, using hundreds of staples, polythene sheets and tacking strips to apply the gluing pressure. By this time we were in the middle of a heatwave (remember those weeks and weeks of perfect flying weather during the first lockdown?) and accelerated by the sweltering temperatures the Aerodux seemed to forget that it was supposed to be slow-setting. This made it quite a challenge to manipulate the big plywood sheet into exactly the right place for the splice at its front edge to align, and then get all the staples in before the glue started to thicken. It was definitely a job to do without interruption – but even then, stress levels were high because the staple gun, contaminated by stray glue, kept jamming up and had to be cleared out and re-loaded.

However, once complete, it was grand to see the fuselage side fully skinned from end to end and I felt the job was definitely past the point of no return – it had started to get stronger again, and now could be picked up from both ends without fear of collapsing in the middle!

Tight radius

And so it went on through the summer of 2020, first turning the fuselage on its back whereupon I took the old bottom ply skin off, replaced the plywood hoop-like frames (made a good excuse to buy a new band saw) and re-skinned it, this time using lightweight okoume ply rather than the usual birch. Unlike the Jodel and most other French wooden two seaters, from the RF3 onwards the Fourniers incorporate curvaceous rather than flat bottoms. This looks nice, and maybe saves a bit of drag, but I was concerned about getting the ply to form to the tight radius without breaking, and how it would be spliced to the side skins on either edge. How I wished it had a simple overlap joint like de Havillands would have used!

Should I make the seven foot long splices in the big piece of ply ‘on the bench’ and then have to stick it on the fuselage in exactly the right place to align with the matching splices I’d make in the side skins? I know from bitter experience how difficult this might be – gluing often seems easy at the ‘dry run’ but when you apply the glue and do it for real, the glue acts as a lubricant and the ply starts skating around when you apply pressure to it. In the end I played safe and glued the ply on initially oversize, having previously wetted it and strapped it to give it time to take up the curved shape. Once glued in the middle portion, I then trimmed the edges of the ply to the final size and made the splices along the edge in-situ mainly using an electric file – a wonderful tool but you have to be very careful not to slip and remove too much material, which would have been a disaster.

Again, another heatwave coincided with when we came to glue the seven-foot-long splices. It went down OK, apart from one area at the back where the fragile ply took exception to the process and split, almost certainly because I couldn’t press the edge down simultaneously along the whole seven-foot length in one go, using just the one helper in our household ‘bubble’. I’d planned to use ratchet straps to hold the ply down while the glue dried, but in the end this didn’t work out (I was frightened of the savage teeth of the ratchet gouging the soft ply

Above New plywood being glued onto port side of fuselage, with clamping pressure being applied by hundreds of staples. Sacrificial plywood tacking strips are used along each line of staples to spread the clamping pressure and help with staple removal.

Above right Here the underside frames and stringers are being replaced.

Below Underside ply replaced, with seven foot long splices along each edge. Note left rear ‘patch’ where problems handling the large sheet caused a crack at the bend.

skin) and it was easier just using hand pressure and following up with staples to work the ply round the curved formers. Luckily it was no big problem to cut out the split section and splice in a small replacement bit of ply in that bay.

With the bottom done, and the fuselage now reassuringly even more rigid, it was time to turn the job the right way up and take off the remains of the upper ply skin from the turtledeck, along with more broken formers and stringers and the third broken longeron. The third longeron was soon replaced and the superstructure re-framed with new material.

A rather tiresome period followed while I had to re-frame the extreme rear of the fuselage which had disappeared when the fin was ripped off and also I had remake a partially rotten section – water had hung around near the tail bumper where it had ruined the woodwork just for the lack of a small drain hole. Finally, I was able to tackle the job of re-fitting the fin, which had only had minor damage. The fin on the RF47 is glued on, so this was another major job, and it was a great relief to find that it fitted back in place nicely, needing only a millimetre thick wedge to shim it precisely vertical. Luckily, I have a good collection of G clamps of all sizes, essential for this kind of thing – you can’t have too many!

In between the major work on reinstating the rear fuselage, for relaxation I had been making good the tail surface and firewall and tinkering about with the instrument panel. I even bought a radio and transponder.

With falling temperatures, the gluing season came to an end in October and I hadn’t quite got the fuselage top skin on first, as planned. Driven indoors, I’ve been planning the installation of an elderly but low-hours Rotax 914 engine. By good fortune, I found during a rare LAA 2020 field trip that an Alpi Pioneer cowl fits the Fournier’s firewall almost perfectly, and I was able to buy one from Alpi and have it sent over. It came in an enormous

Left Trial rig of the tailplane and elevator. Big relief – it all lined up OK!

Below left The fin repaired and refitted with the rudder.

Below By good fortune, it looks as though a Pioneer 300 engine cowling will work nicely with the Rotax 914 that Francis intends to fit.

cardboard box, about the size of a fridge/freezer. When ‘white van man’ delivered it, the neighbours were suitably amazed to see me carrying this box up the drive on one shoulder, Charles Atlas fashion, the carbon fibre cowls within weighing next to nothing.

Coming right up to date, ‘essential’ preparations for the Christmas holidays and the third lockdown included a new pack of hacksaw blades from Santa, so I could spend time each day cutting and filing the 4130 tubes that will make up the new engine mount.

Who knows what 2021 will bring? But I already have enough fabric and dope put by… ■

Going digital…

Brian Hope weighs up the prospects of going digital when it comes to W&B calculations…

In the last issue I posed the view that all too many of us do not pay sufficient attention to carrying out a weight and balance calculation, and went through the recent weighing of our Jodel. I’m happy to say that my request for some information on ‘going digital’ with W&B calculation elicited a fair degree of comment, thank you everybody who got in touch. Later, I will run through two Excel spreadsheets (metric and imperial) very kindly sent by LAA Inspector and former taildragger Europa flyer, Oliver Smith, which I think is simple to populate with the data for a specific single- or two-seat light aircraft. They also fall in line with the LAA Engineering nominated W&B format as presented in last month’s article. If the thought of using Excel strikes fear into your heart, please stay with me, I’m, shall we say, ‘behind the curve’ where Excel is concerned, so if I can

get it, anybody can. Before that though, here are a few comments from some of the other correspondents.

Even the experts get it wrong…

Colin Wilkinson, from the US, is a fellow Jodel owner with a DR1050 as well as a RV-7, and spent his working life doing handwritten load/trim sheets for airliners, BAC1-11 500s and various Boeings etc., and although he sees the benefit of digital solutions, is a firm believer in keeping things simple. He has pro forma for his aircraft which enables him to ‘do the math’ quickly and easily.

John Wilson is another former commercial W&B man and commented, “A loadsheet check should be carried out for every different configuration when required, providing the pilot knows what he is looking at. Education on Weight and Balance has a lot to be desired.” He related the tale of a commercial pilot who asked him how far out of the envelope he could take his aircraft, and photographs of commercial aircraft sitting on the tarmac with their noses pointing skywards because they’d been loaded incorrectly, would seem to suggest that GA pilots are not the only ones who sometimes fall short. Following retirement, John set himself up to weigh light aircraft and operates as Demraview Ltd.

I guess we’d all like to think instructors know best, and Dick Flute certainly thought so when he hired a C172 while holidaying in Florida. He contacted the FBO the day before and asked that the aircraft only have half tanks as he, his wife and daughter would be making the sightseeing trip. When they turned up though, the tanks were full, and the instructor said all would be fine. On take-off, with the trim neutral, the aircraft left the ground and the nose rose dramatically, taking all Dick’s strength to push it down while he trimmed fully forward.

SkyDemon W&B facility

Howard Apps was one of several who emailed to say that there is a very good feature in SkyDemon which allows you to set up a pictorial view together with the numbers of the CG envelope and loading data for your aircraft. Upon entering the specific loading for the flight it gives you the CG and includes a fuel usage vector.

I spoke with Rob at SD who provided the following info: One of the most common questions about the loading envelope is what the orange line with the crosses and arrows means – basically, the green full arrow is where the CoG would be with a full fuel tank, the red empty arrow being CoG at empty tank. The black cross is CoG at planned take-off weight, with the grey cross being estimated CoG at landing. In cases where there are multiple fuel tanks, or a destination hasn’t been set, you won’t see a grey cross.

For some people the initial aircraft and loading envelope set-up is the most challenging part of SkyDemon, since some Operators Handbooks are unclear. For example, in some cases the loading envelope graph will have an X axis

as the moment, whereas SkyDemon is expecting the X axis to be the distance from the datum. So, there may be extra calculations for the pilot at the set-up stage in order to get the SkyDemon envelope correct.

Excel excels

OK, back to the Excel spreadsheets that Oliver very kindly sent. As I say, they are based on the LAA preferred format, they’re free, and they’re adaptable for pretty much any single- or two-seat light aircraft. You can also use Excel on a tablet, so you can have it available in the aircraft.

Oliver transferred the Jodel’s figures onto the spreadsheet that are shown in the last month’s article, so you can directly relate the two. We have put this completed spreadsheet on the LAA website along with the two ‘blanks’ – metric and imperial – plus Oliver’s instructions, so you can download them, try out the Jodel’s completed W&B to see how easy it is to add fuel or change pilot and passenger weights etc., then populate your preferred blank to make your own schedule. To find them, go to the LAA website at www.laa.uk.com, click on Magazine and on the first page there will be a link to the files.

How to…

On the appropriate blank sheet – metric or imperial – enter the details exactly as for the LAA W&B form, i.e. Type, Model, Reg, weighing details etc.

The weights and arms from the weighing are entered in the appropriate boxes and lines and the programme will work out the Empty CG

As you go down the sheet to the most FWD situation, the programme will have carried details down from the empty situation so you only need to enter the loads and arms for the crew, fuel and baggage and the CG will be calculated. If the CG is outside the limits, you will need to alter one or more of the loads to correct it – remove baggage or fuel.

Next is the most aft situation and the process is repeated with the new weights being entered. The arms will have been carried down from the most forward boxes. The final section is where you can calculate the loading.

Above The

Above left A screen grab of the SkyDemon W&B facility.

Again, the empty weight details and the various arms will have been carried forward so you only have to put in the appropriate weights for your flight and it will work out the AUW and CG.

Some points to note:

■ When an arm is negative (as with the front fuel tank on the Jodel example) the value must have a minus sign preceding it

■ Put in a zero where something is not used e.g. no P2, a second tank or baggage.

■ The ‘spare’ line in the empty weight case can be used to find the effect of any ballast you may want to try to amend the cg. It cannot be used for rear seat passengers as it doesn’t carry on into the FWD and AFT sections. However, you could use one of the ‘baggage’ or ‘fuel tank’ positions.

■ If you have two wing tanks and both are at the same ‘arm’ you would treat them as one bigger tank and so only use one line of cells. Similarly, if you had a Zenair 601 or similar with two in-wing baggage holds, you would treat them as one.

Street legal

Carrying out a W&B calculation will help keep you on the right side of the law, but more important it will be a major step in keeping you, and your passengers safe. Whilst here in the UK we have thus far escaped the scourge of dedicated air police, in France, and particularly the Netherlands, you may well be accosted by an official who wants to check your papers, and that may well include the W&B for the flight you have just landed from. Better prepared than caught, I think. ■

Imperial version of the blank ready and willing to be populated with your aircraft data.

What did you do in the pandemic, Grumpa?

Duncan Campbell muses over a year of constrained aerial activity…

The onset of the pandemic has generally reduced our flying opportunities, and it was no different at Kittyhawk Farm. For safe operation, our grass runways and vintage taildraggers always need wind from the right quarters, the surface has to be reasonably firm and, as luck would have it, those windows of opportunity didn’t necessarily line up with those afforded within the pandemic restrictions. Inevitably, our airborne outings in 2020 were fewer than in recent years. Still, reflecting on what has been achieved does give much to be thankful for.

On the first weekend of August, Andy, one of my group colleagues, and I joined a small group of Luscombes for a meet up and overnight stay at Sywell. There were to be only seven of us in the end, but we were converging from different parts of the country. Nige (UK Luscombe enthusiasts’ éminence grise) had suggested that those of us arriving from the South or West could meet up at Draycott Farm for a picnic lunch. Neither Andy nor I had been there before and, while I can’t speak for Andy (whose day job is poling Airbuses around the skies), I don’t mind admitting that any new destination always quickens the pulse.

Draycott Farm is a little south of Swindon, not far from the disused RAF Wroughton. I found the field quite hard to spot, a moment longer and we would have been overhead! Undulating but beautifully smooth, I thought it a very pleasant strip. We spread our picnic across the outside tables, thought about the beer waiting for us at our final destination and checked out each other’s aeroplanes. Pete

Main One of my few trips in 2020, a lunch stop at Draycott Farm en route to a Luscombe Fly-in at Sywell.

and Michelle had flown in from South Wales, and as Pete had rebuilt Mike India many years back, I was particularly delighted with how pleased he was with the condition in which we had maintained her over the years. Mark, a commercial colleague of Andy, and his dad had flown across from Ireland – something that fair took my breath away.

Our next leg, a short hop to Sywell, should have been straightforward. A straight line would have taken us through the Brize Zone and, on any other day, there being five aircraft in our group it would have made sense to give Britain’s biggest RAF airfield a wide berth. Today, Notams indicated that both to the east and west, the way was blocked by parachuting activity so I phoned Brize and asked the duty controller how they would feel about a clutch of Luscombes flying through their zone. Much to my delight, we were given permission to fly overhead, so that is what we did.

We joined the Sywell circuit downwind, line astern, and I imagine our orchestrated arrival might have been quite pretty to watch. After refuelling and checking in, we hit the bar and were joined by yet more aerial and road arrivals, whiled away the late afternoon nattering and topping up our personal tanks. It was a good weekend.

At the end of the summer, James, our friendly, larger-than-life owner of Kittyhawk Farm – and of the sleek Falco that was invariably in pole position by the door –decided to retire and hand over executive control to his son, Oliver. Within days, his Falco was sold and rehomed in Scotland and James pronounced he was walking away from flying forever. Jack, our hangar colleague, day-to-day

operations manager, wise man, catering manager (well, he makes a lot of tea and always has a goodly supply of interesting biscuits), and custodian of endless useful aeronautical engineering hardware, was retaining his daily airfield operations brief.

Meanwhile, Oliver consulted us airfield users and began to sketch out a longer term strategy to improve the runways and the taxi track from the hangar, equip the hangar with toilets and wi-fi, and improve car parking and access from the road. Of course, these things all take time and money, but things started to happen quite quickly. We have long had a drainage problem with the strip and Oliver brought in a specialist to advise how to improve things and maintain a good runway surface.

A small digger appeared and grubbed out the ditches alongside the main runway, and a bigger one arrived to remove a hedge line that ran across the land at right angles to the runway, meeting it close to the mid-point. Almost immediately, with a little bit of tidying, the width of 16/34 doubled, giving us an additional, parallel, runway. The greater width has already reaped benefitted, enabling us to find a take-off/landing run that avoided the worst patches and keeping us operational for longer than would have been possible prior to the work.

Bad hangar husbandry

Now, I am sure we are not alone in having permitted the usable floor area of our main hangar to shrink as ‘mightcome-in-useful one day’ items have been stashed against walls and, like slow moving lava, begun to encroach year on year onto the work space. Bad hangar husbandry it may be, but keeping this under control always seems to take second place to the serious business of flying or rolling the strips. Multiple occupancy also brings in the

Right Old friends catch up at Draycott Farm following a period of restrictions on flying.

‘someone else will do that’ factor, the problem with that being that there is actually no one of that name based in the hangar! Oliver brought in a friend, Lee, to help with the work in hand. Lee marked out an area in one corner of the hangar and designated it a repository for unwanted aeronautical ‘stuff’, a notice advising that anything left there would be disposed of appropriately.

Over the next few months, the owners and operators of the six airworthy aircraft began to deposit hopelessly tangled remnants of wiring looms, old cans of paint, clogged aerosols, aluminium off-cuts, rotting fabric and random bits of broken tubing and timber. You get the picture, I’m sure… The long, uncompleted carcass of a self-build Jurca Sirocco project was moved out into a neighbouring barn and, shortly after, we welcomed a new Bristell into our midst. The work is ongoing, but the result so far is that our home looks a lot better than it did, and certainly has more space.

At the end of November we used some dismal non-flying days to have a close look at the tailwheel on our

Above At least the hangar has benefitted from the inaction with a continuing tidy up of ‘might come in handy’ detritus.

Luscombe, which had begun to ‘clonk’. We found nothing seriously untoward but were able to improve things no end by fashioning a damper from an old ‘might-come-in-useful one day’ inner tube to stop lateral movement of the carriage spring, and tightening everything up a tad. Job completed, we felt that it now required a good aerial exercise, not just to keep everything supple and exercised, but also to identify anything else that might best be done as we laid her up for the winter.

The ensuing test/maintenance flight proved very instructive. I realised afterwards that virtually all the flying I have done up to date has always had a focus on achieving an external objective. Usually this was a destination, or to keep in formation, or meet the requirements of a Permit test flight. This is not to say that one wasn’t exercising due diligence to the rules of the air, navigation, or ATC, or the person sitting beside me, but that the primary focus was external and every action and input and the aeroplane itself, was a means to that end. This flight was to prove different – to check how things were working and to explore the performance of the aircraft and, indeed, of me, in a much more focused way.

Taking off and climbing to do some upper air work, I quickly realised that I was rustier than my aeroplane. Things started well enough. I set her up for straight and level flight and, taking hands and feet off established that we had the external trim tabs pretty much spot on (our only cockpit adjustable trim is for the elevator), for she flew spot on track for about 30 seconds before ever so gently, almost imperceptibly, beginning to bank left. I did it again and this time, she went right, but only after a minute had passed. I was happy with that.

Throttle forward

We were at the lower end of our cruising window (95/100mph and about 2150 revs) so, still straight and level, I eased the throttle forward to 2250 and then 2300. I wanted to achieve our magic ‘step’. She, of course, wanted to climb so, holding her level with the stick, I wound the trim to take off the load and waited a bit. I let go of the stick… and we were still climbing. I wound a teensy bit more and let go again… and down we went. I was all over the place. I repeated the exercise, gave Mike India enough time to settle into her new trim, and there we were, on the step, straight and level throttled back to 2200 and banging along with 115mph on the ASI. I experimented with slight throttle adjustments and, waiting much longer than I would have done in normal flight before correcting the resulting deviation, was surprised how extreme the wandering could be if left unaddressed.

Suffice to say I repeated both incompetence and learning doing a number of other manoeuvres and eventually approached our muddy field happy with Mike India’s performance, slightly less so with mine, but feeling I had been through an almost metaphysical experience. I pulled off three of the better landings I can recall, managing to coat the entire underside of our beautiful Luscombe and some of the upper wing surface with a fine covering of liquid farmland.

Cleaning took considerably longer than the flight. Still, it had all been worth it. I had explored that aspect of Mike India as never before; but what did I learn, or rather relearn? To ‘listen’ to the aeroplane and give her time to adjust. I don’t think I have ever listened that hard.

In the week before Christmas the strip finally closed, and we put Mike India to bed for the winter. The pages of Light Aviation and the practices of our hangar colleagues

Above Approaching the strip with the South Downs in the background – I hope to see this more often in 2021.

show that we all have slightly different, preferred ways of mothballing our aeroplanes – and ours works for us. We would have been unable to take off safely from our seriously soggy strip, so we ran her up for a good half hour, taking her up to take-off revs more than once and then drained off the oil, removed the top plugs, and sprayed the cylinder walls with a thin solution of oil before fitting desiccant plugs. All possible routes for damp air to get into the engine were sealed off, the tanks were drained of mogas, and we gave all hinges and joints on the airframe and control surfaces a protective coat of oil. The one thing we didn’t do was check that the carburettor was free of mogas gunk. It was simply too cold to hang around any longer! If I’m not able to get up there before, we’ll do it when the better weather arrives.

Looking ahead, we can hope for better times generally in 2021. My 10-year-old granddaughter Poppy, who loves flying, asked me in a FaceTime conversation the other day whether I thought I might be able to take her flying again soon and then added, “What have you been doing in the pandemic, Grumpa?”. I had to think… and then out came the iPad.

None of us can know for sure what the coming year will bring in terms of flyability. I love flying in France but regrettably the only water I managed to cross this year was standing water on the strip and the Solent, so I hope that 2021 will bring an opportunity to get across the Channel to explore another part of France. Of course, for me, that raises the spectre of how we LAPL holders will be treated in the brave new post-Brexit world across the water. I look forward to the light dawning.

Finally, a little commercial break. If you are looking for hangar space near Lewes, East Sussex, do get in touch with Oliver on info@kittyhawk.farm I’m sure he would love to hear from you. ■

An Italian job

LAA Inspector Phil Hall reports on a visit to Milan just before coronavirus hit to visit FlyBox, an innovative Italian electronic instrument company

If you were able to make it to the last LAA Rally in September 2019 – seems a long time ago now doesn’t it – you will have seen a stand manned by a group of smiling Italians. The FlyBox company was making its first visit to the Rally and was showing an attractive range of electronic aircraft flight and engine instruments, as well as its own autopilot system, which has been designed for use on LAA type aircraft, microlight and helicopters.

Alongside its stand it had a sign stating it was looking for ‘installers’, which is different to the usual ‘dealer wanted’ request. When asking the owner, Antonio Gaiano, why he had taken this approach, he pointed out that they wanted their customers to have good local backup and support, which trained competent installers could do.

Good and proficient support of their customers meets with the needs of many of the aircraft owners who have instrument installations done by maintenance or servicing organisations, and also for those who do their own installations.

After the Rally I discussed the concept with Tim Smith, a friend who does the avionics installations for The Classic Aeroplane Co based at Oaksey Park, and we decided to visit the FlyBox manufacturing site in Robbio, near Milan, to learn a little more about this innovative company.

Above The FlyBox team at the 2019 LAA Rally.

Right Electronic test and assembly area at the FlyBox Robbio facility.

Whilst not a large company, we were surprised how efficient and well run the whole operation is, we also discovered that Antonio is clearly a real light aircraft enthusiast. To help with development and manufacturing they have their own 20-head CNC unit to produce all the aluminium components, their own pick and place for electronic components, plus an automated soldering unit.

For testing, they have an impressive thermo calibration unit which tests the operation of instruments between -20° to +70°. No wonder they have produced more than 15,000 instruments since their inception in 2003.

We learned a lot about their significant array of instruments, from basic 2¼inch (57mm) engine instruments, a 31/8inch (80mm) Attitude Indicator, and an EMS Integrated Flight Information System (EFIS and EMS combined).

However, three products particularly drew my attention:

■ Android and iPad interface to their autopilot. This remarkable innovation consists of a dongle, software and a wi-fi activation key and is the last step needed by those who enjoy touring and use navigational and route planning applications. The Route with waypoints, which the pilot has entered into his SkyDemon or RunwayHD, are saved from the application and sent via wi-fi to the OBLI EFIS which controls their autopilot. This is a development many of my touring friends with autopilots have been asking about for some time.

■ Amp/Volt-meter which displays the overall health of the aircraft’s electrical system in one instrument. The health indicator uses two shunts to get the load current and battery current, this with the voltage measurement, it then diagnoses and displays the state of the aircraft’s electrical systems.

Left The thermo calibration unit tests instruments from -20 to +70C.

Right The FlyBox Prop Controller can maintain engine rpm within +/- 20rpm.

■ Constant Speed Propeller Controller with some clever patented hardware can maintain the rpm to within +/- 20rpm, more like a propeller with hydraulic governor. A direct copy of this instrument has been made by another manufacturer much to Antonio’s clear frustration.

The Prop Controller brings us nicely onto future innovations. Flybox was planning to show a new range of 80mm (3 1/8inch) instruments and a range of 10inch EFSI and EMS products at the 2020 LAA Rally, hopefully we will see them next September if all goes well.

They were also going to introduce the next iteration of the prop controller with pitot/static and MAP inputs. Using these inputs, the unit will automatically control the propeller pitch throughout the speed range of the aircraft, from take-off to Vne, and will manage the pitch and avoid over revving the engine if the pilot opens the throttle aggressively.

Classic aircraft instruments – a personal wish list

We have many classic aircraft in the LAA which, like many others, I would like to keep flying. However, some components – engine parts and instruments in particular – are becoming more and more difficult to find in a serviceable and usable condition.

Right FlyBox’s standard electronic altimeter. They may consider retro designs if there is sufficient demands.

Left The Amp/Volt meter analyses the state of the aircraft’s electrical system.

Antonio showed us design concept components for his 80mm instruments and his ‘standard electronic’ altimeter. Knowing that some of the old analogue instruments are getting harder to find in a serviceable condition, we discussed the market for classic style but electronically operating instruments. Antonio was certainly not against this development – it’s a matter of commercial viability and market acceptance.

In LA, January 2021, it was announced that Flybox are now part of the LAA suppliers scheme offering a discount to LAA members for their instruments. Hopefully, we will be seeing more of Antonio and his innovative instruments at the 2021 LAA Rally. ■

Why do we do this?

Why do we do this?

Idon’t know quite why we do it, but sometimes we have to challenge ourselves in a deeper way; a way that ‘tests the metal’ within us – in order to taste life’s other options. I would say that this tale began when I sold a model railway loco to a good friend, Paul, who lives ‘up-country’.

That in itself was a bit of a game, as it had to be packed well and was rather heavy to send in the post. It was a model loco about a foot in length, rather delicate and rather nice, too. It had been standing in my front room for a few years and had been run outside on a dedicated layout in the garden. Yet another hobby that was taking up a ‘back seat’ position, while the flying bug asks for yet more!

Above Lloyd tries the cockpit for size – the screen later proved a tad too low.

I sold my motorbike too, as flying demands are great and require cold hard cash. It always asks just that little bit more as a pursuit, just when you think it’s enough, it says, ‘nope, not good enough dear chap, I need more’.

When we get a bit older, maybe we like to remind ourselves of what it was that we liked about a particular thing. It’s a bit like re-watching a film that we have seen years ago, to see whether we think it is still as good.

So, after rushing around the house selling things, and having had a reasonable summer’s work, funds were ready, but I had injured my back. As I lay on the bed I had time to think about my next move in life... rightly or wrongly, I revisited AFORS to amuse myself and see what aircraft were for sale.

Lloyd Edwards buys himself a new single-seater to recapture the fun of former years, and despite the odds, manages to get it home before lockdown…

Why do we do this?

Marvellous adventures…

I think sole aircraft ownership is very hard, the maintenance and the upkeep I mean. But the adventure it can bring is never to be forgotten. I still remember flying the old VP1 when I was young, all those years ago in the PFA days.

Mind you, there is a dose of reality here – flying sometimes takes out more energy than it gives back; some difficult hobbies do this. Then you find yourself wondering if it’s right to keep going. However, even with all these doubts pervading my mind, I made a purchase and bought Plumb Biplane, G-FUNN, to energise and refresh ‘somebody’ who was becoming a slightly jaded pilot – and that ‘somebody’ was me! The aeroplane I refer to is Barry Plumb’s design as mentioned in LA’s Meet the Members feature last month.

This all happened as we were coming up to the second lockdown, due to start in November, just when it felt like everything was going wrong with more and more people being unwell and the economy heading steeply downhill – perhaps not the best time to buy an aeroplane, even a low-cost one… Anyway, the allure to go open cockpit again was too great. The deed was done and I had to get it home from Little Staunton in Bedfordshire to Davidstow Airfield in Cornwall.

Travelling at 60mph in one day over quite a chunk of England takes preparation. Airfields to phone for PPR and fuel types available, weather, Notams to check etc; but having spied a potential weather window, I spent four hours at least on the route planning, which in the end I was so glad I did. My friend Roger went out of his way to set me up borrowing an iPad for using SkyDemon. This would take out the ‘old school’ dead reckoning effort for me on the flight, although I had done my old school prep as well. He loaned me a handheld radio too. I must say I had a lot of kindness shown to me to make it all happen – the seller, John, collecting me from the station.

The whole thing was like a series of safety gates that had to be manoeuvred through, and I was shocked they all ‘opened’. For example, I was tired, and my back had only recently healed so, on the train ride up, I had a ‘safety gate’ in my head telling me that unless I had a good night’s sleep, especially as the previous night was not great, I’d

get the train home and do it another day. And this, despite the fact that weather and lockdown could mean that it may be months until it would be ‘right’ again.

Guess what? I had the most perfect sleep, I was so tired I slept despite the four degrees cold outside – I slept at the airfield in John’s VW camper van. John had left me a sleeping bag and I had my flying jacket over my body. Woosh, off I went to sleep! I woke up at 0600 and went for a jog, checking out my take-off runway and visually looking around at the general area of planned departure.

As I was jogging along, waking up my lethargic body, I saw a hare, which I thought was very special, and also noted that the old control tower was converted into a dwelling. At about 0730, John met me and briefed me exceptionally well. The aeroplane has one of the smallest cockpits, so I had to bring only what I was taking back. The flying clobber, radio, iPad, maps and that was it. Again, prior planning was so important.

Flying an aeroplane you have not flown before, especially a single-seater, is a challenge. Add to it the cold of an open cockpit and a long journey, and you’re getting a high level of priorities within the flight. Sounds silly, but ‘fly the aeroplane’ can be overlooked and cause accidents or incidents. Then we ask why do we do it? Is this a hobby? I haven’t quite found the whole answer why yet...

As I taxied out absorbing what was where and how it all worked, I switched on the iPad, which was strapped to my leg. It was a tad bulky in the cockpit, but I needed to see for myself its virtues and take out some of the pilot workload, freeing me up to fly an aeroplane I did not yet know.

It worked a treat, except the cockpit wanted an iPad Mini to enable me to move the stick easier. The first sector went quite well, could do better, but not bad considering.

Kemble was manic. Lockdown was happening the next day and everyone and their dog was up and about. It was like one last ‘hurrah’! The landing itself was on to a ‘mud bath’, on their only grass runway, the recent spate of wet weather having done its worst. I couldn’t see the runway state from the circuit and as the controllers had worked hard to fit me in, I took the grass – and all John’s cleaning came to nought as the aircraft was now plastered in mud. I had to fuel up and get out of there, as winter daylight hours were short, especially at these slow cruise speeds.

Above Previous experience with a VP1 spurred Lloyd on to buy another single seater. Photo: Ray Barber

Why do we do this?

A new life awaits

The Biplane was parked next to a BA 747, which was being ripped apart. I flew on this very machine in another life, as did my friend Roger – with him up front me down the back! It seemed like I was looking at ‘what was’, and ‘what is now’ as I readied to depart, the dear little Plumb that Barry, Pat and John had worked so hard on to create was starting her new life with me.

So far so good, next stop Dunkeswell, and I could feel a nice cup of tea coming on. I ate a small biscuit I had kept from the train journey, just to keep my energy up, and set off having paid for the fuel. Clearing the area quickly, I turned the iPad on but the battery was dead, maybe it didn’t like the cold either… I moved it off my leg and tucked it safely in my lap. Luckily, I had planned ‘old school’, so much of the flight was OK, navigation wise.

More ‘human factors’ came into play, however, my back was holding out but I decided to stretch forward to relieve it a bit and my headset was blown off my head. Normally they are tied into the leather helmet, but mine wasn’t due to the style of the leather helmet – it is ‘supposed’ to be a dual purpose one for cars/aeroplanes. I had considered cable-tying it to the front strap but decided not to, alas my judgement call not to was wrong, it was now over the side and the coiled cables extending.

I tried to tug it in but it didn’t want to come and as it was affecting my attention on flying, and my body movement was affecting pitch, I prioritised the flying and disconnected it, to let it go. To my horror, the jack plug leads wound round the tail skid. I was pleased it was away from the elevator at least, its weight dragging the headset some angle down. I ducked and dived trying to free it, but it was held fast.

No nav aids, bar a compass, no comms and huge engine/wind noise in my ears. Luckily the stretch helped my back, at least I had that going for me. Now what… ‘Fly the aeroplane first’, so I did. Next navigate, which is where all the planning came into its own. I knew all about the Bristol Control Zone and the towns that marked it etc., and the plotted wind drift was working out too. Do I still go to Dunkeswell with a headset trailing behind me though? It’s a busy airfield, and with no radio and the possibility of headset parts being littered on the runway, will it create a problem for someone else? Maybe, so ‘yes’ was the best answer, and Dunkeswell is out, and I’ll fly directly home. Davidstow is quiet and the headset will not be an issue. Have I enough fuel left? Thanks to John’s good briefing

Above First stop Kemble. Lloyd was a steward on the BA747 in the background and one of his friends a former pilot.

Right Safely home at Davidstow with many a tale to tell.

and planning, yes… I made it home with fuel to spare, exactly 40 minutes worth of contingency. I had a lovely welcoming committee, as always at Davidstow, they were most intrigued with their new arrival. And I had a great cup of tea. John Gardiner texted me and said Runway 07 was OK, no water – but as I was so hooked on having a steaming cuppa when I arrived, I read it as ‘07 runway OK but no water for tea’! You see we have no drinking water at Davidstow and have to bring it to the club room. I was thinking to myself, blimey I’ve had all this drama and I don’t even get a cuppa at the end, that’s bad!

The now bashed-up headset remained in tow by the way, right up to the apron area. I got out and dragged the remains to the club house where, relieved, tea awaited. It had certainly been an interesting day but the kindness of friends and prior planning had seen me through, the weather too had played ball. G-FUNN was now at her new home, although until Covid-19 and the weather gets sorted, she’ll have to stay on the ground. But I certainly do have a better idea now as to why we do this! ■

Check for EC devices – FREE

PilotAware’s Keith Vinning explains how to check your Electronic Conspicuity (EC) devices for FREE with PAW VECTOR

There have been many aviation magazine articles and forum posts on Electronic Conspicuity that have been written based on personal opinion, hearsay or otherwise. While these have been written with good intentions, most have been done without access to any meaningful data to back up their assumptions. This can lead, at best, to unsubstantiated and unhelpful conclusions, and misinformation at worst.

The principal difficulty has been that there has been no public, or private, method of checking the transmission fidelity of the various EC devices under discussion –FLARM, PilotAware, ADSB (DF17), ADSB CAP1391 (DF18) and Mode-S, either individually or collectively.

However, with the PilotAware ATOM GRID network now exceeding 200 sites in the UK and Europe, millions of data ‘pings’ are collected daily from all types of EC devices. This has allowed PilotAware to quickly analyse and compare all devices, individually by aircraft and collectively by device, using multiple sites and detecting multiple technologies on a continuous basis.

Powerful information

A detailed analysis of the collected data clearly shows that there is a very broad range of EC performance, from very good to very poor. This could lead to a dangerous situation where the users think that they are transmitting and receiving effectively, but they are not. To be clear, this can apply to ALL of the device types in use today.

Once this range was understood, it was agreed by the PilotAware Team that access to this valuable tool should be available to all, not just PilotAware users. However, to do this would require significant effort to develop and maintain.

Fortunately, this additional work requirement coincided with the DfT – CAA EC grant, which generated more than average revenue for PilotAware, and this has allowed us to maintain our altruistic business model. The result is PilotAware VECTOR, which has been made freely available to allow everyone to check and improve their EC performance. This article explains how VECTOR will help you.

PilotAware ATOM station coverage

All electronic conspicuity devices transmit and receive signals that require line-of-sight to operate correctly. PilotAware ATOM ground stations can detect all correctly working EC technologies at 60km+, if the line-of-sight signals are not obscured or attenuated (weakened). The signal strength used by the EC device is not a significant factor if the device is working and installed properly. For example, transponders transmitting 140W+ are required to

see aircraft at far distances, but once they fly over the horizon and are out of line-of-sight of the receiver, the additional power is of no advantage.

The picture above demonstrates this, the range and direction heatmap shows PilotAware devices, transmitting 250mW, detected by the ATOM station at Turweston (EGBT). The diagram is built up using 230,000 data pings collected over 49 days during December and January 2020-2021. The heatmap shows the 360° coverage of the single site at Turweston. The apparent reduced range to the north-west is caused by the lack of GA aircraft flying in Birmingham controlled airspace.

The lower part of the diagram shows a vertical slice of the PilotAware equipped aircraft detected at 176° from Turweston. The Chiltern Ridge can be clearly seen, obscuring any aircraft in their shadow, to the south.

It is important to recognise that this is the heatmap from just one station. Other surrounding stations will have similar heatmaps (topographical obscuration permitting) that will overlap, providing redundancy and contributing to the full picture for all EC device types and altitudes. The data from each single site is shared among all local stations. Similar heatmaps are available for the other EC technologies detected.

PilotAware is grateful for the excellent work done by James Rose from Aircrew Ltd., in helping to provide the visualisation of this data.

Why do we need to check our EC devices?

The problem is airframe obscuration and attenuation, and it is more prevalent among carry-on devices.

A performance reduction can be caused mainly by a combination of bad device location, incorrect antenna

design or orientation, and poor GPS reception. The UHF radio signals used by all EC devices are obscured (completely shielded) by radio opaque objects such as metals or carbon fibre – the engine and airframe being the biggest culprits. The primary effect of airframe obscuration is to stop the radio waves transmitting in the direction of the obscuring object.

For example, if you put an EC device on the rear shelf of a metal or carbon fibre aircraft, it will be completely obscured to the rear as the signal fails to pass through the metal or carbon fuselage. And if the device is positioned low enough, it will also be blocked by the engine and firewall in the forwards direction. Fibreglass airframes and wood or tube and fabric aircraft will be less affected, but the engine and occupants will still block the signals in the forward direction. There is a PilotAware YouTube video that describes this further.

The signals are also attenuated by dense objects and liquids, such as the fuel in fibreglass or polypropylene fuel tanks and the water in the occupants’ bodies – and we are 60% water, don’t forget! The effect of this is to weaken the signals, and hence reduce the effective design range of the device. These effects are well understood, and performance is improved by placing remote internal antennas inside the aircraft at optimal positions or, better still, by using remote antennas outside of the aircraft. This is nearly always done with transponders and VHF radios and, therefore, is also the best option for EC performance improvement.

What ‘good’ looks like

Pictured below is the VECTOR Polar diagram for a Van’s RV-7 using a PilotAware Rosetta EC device fitted with remote external antennas. Using data gathered from five flights and 11,416 detections, the VECTOR software shows an excellent polar pattern, with 360° of transmission with an air to ground range of over 60km to available distant ATOM stations. Each radial ring represents 20km. This is a good example and can be considered as the benchmark for a well-designed EC installation.

Below left VECTOR diagram showing a good transmission quality using external antennas in an RV.

Middle right

VECTOR of Cabri helicopter showing obscured rearwood transmissions due to passengers, fuel and the engine.

Bottom right The very poor transmissions of a badly positioned ‘carry-on’ device in a PA28 with no supplementary antennas.

What ‘average’ looks like

This second plot, pictured below, is from a Cabri G2 helicopter with a carry-on PilotAware Rosetta EC device mounted in front of the binnacle. The air-to-ground range of the unit is 50km+ in all directions, except to the rear where there is significant obscuration. The fan shapes seen are produced as the aircraft passes abeam a local or distant ATOM ground station. The obscuration is caused by the passengers, fuel and the engine to the rear. This obscuration could be reduced by the use of remote internal antennas or better still, as shown in the previous example, by using remote external antennas.

This is what ‘poor’ looks like

If an EC carry-on device is poorly installed and its signals are obscured and attenuated by the airframe, or by other reasons such as orientation or design, its polar diagram will look something like the picture below – or worse!

This polar diagram is taken from a carry-on device installed in a PA28, probably fixed to a port window. It can be seen that the EC device has been detected at 25km to the left, however, the majority of detections are received from much closer ATOM stations only.

There is also significant obscuration to the starboard side, most probably caused by airframe obscuration and occupant attenuation.

Using PilotAware VECTOR will allow the user to reposition the device or use remote internal or external antennas to get the best performance possible.

Checking your device using PilotAware VECTOR

PilotAware VECTOR is very easy to use and works in the following way. As you fly, your EC transmissions will be picked up by several ATOM GRID stations at various bearings and distances. The picture below shows a long flight in the Midlands and East Anglia, but you don’t have to fly this far for VECTOR to work.

If you don’t have time for such a long flight don’t worry. Data is collected from all flights automatically, so the more you fly the more data that is collected. If you fly a few lazy, flat, five-minute orbits for 30 minutes or so, this will provide enough data to produce the initial polar diagram for analysis.

There is absolutely no need to fly any elaborate, accurate or complicated shapes in the sky. The GPS in your EC device and the ATOM station software will do all that work for you. The picture (below, opposite) shows the current ATOM station locations in the UK, so just randomly fly around and let the network do the rest. Each ATOM station will receive signals on all EC frequencies transmitted at a distance of 60km+, if there is line of sight and if there is no airframe or topographical obscuration and attenuation. We still have more work to do to bring stations into service in the South West of England, South Wales, the Borders and Highlands of Scotland and Cumbria, but the main flying areas are well supported as shown.

Plotting your results

Once you have flown sufficiently, visit the VECTOR site at www.pilotaware.com/analysis/vector, and follow Steps 1 to 5.

Step 1

Enter the HEX-ID (ICAO) of your Aircraft or Electronic Conspicuity device into the ‘ICAO’ field.

Step 2

Select the Electronic Conspicuity type to be plotted in the ‘Type’ field or select ‘All’. Vector analysis PilotAware, FLARM, ADS-B Transponders,

Below Example of a flight to test the performance of your EC set up.

Mode-S and CAP1391 devices. Note that using ‘All’ will overlay all EC types, so will not show the individual genres.

Step 3

Choose the ‘Diagram’ type of interest. We currently offer a Polar Diagram or a ‘Quadrant Matrix’ diagram. The latter tabulates the quantity of data by quadrant.

Step 4

Use the calendar feature ‘ ’ to select and deselect data from individual flying days. This can be used as a way of measuring your EC improvement or degradation over a period of time.

Step 5

Select ‘Go’ to produce your chosen diagram. There is also a youtube video which explains how to use VECTOR which is available at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=VOoZPhzFNDY&t=0s

Remote internal and external antennas

As the data shows, the best way to improve the performance of your EC device is to use remote antennas, either internal or externally mounted. However, what you can and can’t do to modify an aircraft depends on the classification of its registration. All aircraft both C of A and Permit aircraft can fit internal antennas as a modification to the airframe or avionics is not required. In addition, external antennas can be readily fitted to Permit aircraft and signed off by your inspector. This is very good news for LAA and BMAA Permit aircraft, providing lots of options to improve performance.

However, for aircraft on the CAA or EASA registers it has not been so easy. It is possible to install antennas on EASA aircraft using the standard change CS-SC004a in CS STAN issue three, or the minor change route could be used instead. However, I am told by those helpful people in Cologne that help is at hand.

Over the last nine months EASA has been working to extend the ‘light touch’ regulation currently available for the installation of remote external antennas for FLARM devices, it is soon to include other EC devices operating on a nonaviation frequency.

EASA states that the intention is that, “This template could be drastically simplified for the installation of an electronic conspicuity device. No flight test (no flight conditions, no Permit to fly) is needed. A flight check is sufficient.” This will of course include PilotAware and other EC devices operating on a non-aviation frequency only.

With the UK leaving the EU and EASA, the application of this for aircraft on the CAA register will, presumably, depend on whether this change is harmonised by the UK authorities.

Still more work to do

PilotAware VECTOR provides a step change in the availability of data to help you get the most out of your EC installation, but there is still more to do. The air-to-ground range available to the ATOM GRID network does not directly correlate to direct air to air EC performance. Air-to-air ranges will always be less than air to ground ranges – for all EC devices. This is because the receiving antennas used by the ATOM stations are of a higher gain than those that are transmitting from the aircraft, significantly so for FLARM and 190MHz. The result of this is that the achievable air-to-air range distances of all EC devices are flattered to a lesser or greater extent.

For example, users of FLARM will recognise that the air

to air design specification is about 10-12kms, and possibly double that for Power FLARM. However, no one should expect to get a direct air to air range for FLARM that is comparable with the 60km+ air to ground performance of the ATOM GRID or OGN receivers.

So, one of the next developments on the PilotAware roadmap is to plot similar polar diagrams showing the air-to-air performance where possible. This will then provide everyone with real data on which to further understand the performance of their situational awareness and fly accordingly.

Summary

Using VECTOR will freely give everyone significant data to allow them to get the best out of their chosen EC devices, not just PilotAware. It should be regularly used as much as required. Also, please encourage your flying companions to do the same, as it says in the VECTOR video – it takes two to tango. In optimising your EC installation, everybody wins.

If you want to help aviation safety and improve situational awareness by installing an ATOM GRID station at your flying club or local site with the help of the PilotAware subsidy, please email atom@pilotaware.com ■

Left The location of Atom Grid sites around the UK. Can you help by hosting an antenna?

Struts 4U

by Anne Hughes

The Struts were able to kick start the Association’s 75th Anniversary year with an online publication of our Struts celebration booklet, which was included in an email sent to all LAA members on 5 January. This is now published as a pdf on the LAA website and on the LAA Facebook page. If you have taken the opportunity to have a read through, you will see that we have included the history of the active Struts, along with archive photos and contact details. Much of the information has been published previously in the monthly S4U column and thanks go to all who spent time delving into their own archives and talking to Strut members with long memories!

It was interesting to put the booklet together, but it also became apparent that there is a larger story to be told. Trying to piece together the history from the beginning of the first Strut in 1969 involved working in the LAA archive at Turweston, reading through all the Popular Flying magazines, in particular the Strut columns of the day.

For a significant period of time the column was called ‘Strutting Around’ and, as many of you will remember,

Main The Strut 75th Anniversary booklet is now available from the LAA website www.laa.uk.com and the LAA Facebook page www.facebook. com/lightair craftassociation

contributors included Jim Willis, Pat Holmes, Les Richardson, David Wise, Alan Lovejoy and Brian Hope.

There were surprises! I was unaware that a Brunei Strut was formed in 1979 with Morley Tobin as secretary. The inaugural meeting lasted for nearly seven hours and was reported on TV. Missing from the meeting was Joan Galvin, who had gone to visit a homebuilt hydroelectric scheme. Her mode of transport for the visit was a speedboat from Limbank in Sarawak, then a flight in a BN-2 to Miri where she chartered a Cessna to take her to Long San, a native long house where the village’s 800 residents lived. All travel was through or over crocodile infested swamps.

The group were keen to start the build of an aircraft which would need 99.99% reliability, and were considering a Luton Duet or Luton Minor. Ted Potts and Morley Tobin put on a slide show illustrating the work of the PFA to see which aircraft members thought would be suitable for flying over dense jungle. Several years later it was reported that the Royal Brunei Flying Club had purchased a Cherokee 180 and a 140. It would seem that the Strut was disbanded in the 1980s, but if

anyone has any more information I would be interested to hear what happened next.

In 1986 there were nearly 40 Struts across the UK and, out of a total PFA membership of 4,000, over a third belonged to a local Strut. Dave Wise wrote in Popular Flying: Struts are simply local associations of PFA members and their objectives are to encourage the pursuit of those activities which the PFA promote nationally. They represent the real grass roots of the PFA.

In the light of our experiences over the last 12 months, it would be interesting to know if anyone had foreseen that 34 years later, most Strut members would be able to communicate ‘virtually’ and that, as Struts and LAA members, we had coped with an international catastrophe largely by communicating from our own sitting rooms. The cartoon from a magazine from the 1970s illustrates what may have been going on recently in the garages and workshops of frustrated lockdown aircraft builders.

Looking forward, I am hoping that our next issue or two, we will be inviting you to attend meetings and events ‘in person’. Above Lockdown can present problems with getting aircraft quality materials!

Strut details

Please check with your local Strut as meetings may be arranged at short notice. At this time, unless otherwise stated, monthly meetings are using Zoom, and you are welcome to contact any Strut should you be interested

Andover Strut: Spitfire Club, Popham Airfield, SO21 3BD. 1930. Contact: keith.picton@ntlworld.com

Bristol Strut: BAWA Club, Filton, Room 4 or by Zoom. 1930. Contact: chairman@bristolstrut.uk www.bristolstrut.uk

Cornwall Strut: The Clubhouse, Bodmin Airfield. Contact: Pete White pete@aeronca.co.uk 01752 406660

Devon Strut: The Exeter Court Hotel, Kennford, Exeter. 1930. Contact: david.millin@sea-sea.com

East of Scotland Strut: Harrow Hotel, Dalkeith. 2000. Contact: gibson001@btinterne

East Midlands Strut: Please contact: tonyrazzell2@gmail.com for meeting details a few days before hand, or to be added to our email circulation to get details automatically. We also have a Facebook group and upload recordings of some meetings where we have speakers.

Gloster Strut: The Victory Club, Lypiatt Road, Cheltenham, GL50 2SY. Meeting via Zoom until further notice. Contact: harry.hopkins@talktalk.net

Highlands & Islands: Highland Aviation, Inverness Airport. Contact: b.w.spence@btinternet.com / 01381 620535

Kent Strut: Cobtree Manor Golf Club, Maidstone, Kent. 2000. Currently meeting via Zoom. Contact: Brian Hope bfjjodel@talktalk.net 01795 662508

LiNSY Trent Valley Strut: Trent Valley Gliding Club, Kirton Lindsey. pilotbarry1951@gmail.com http://linsystrut. wixsite.com

in the advertised talk, or to find out if meetings have been arranged. Let’s hope that as the year progresses, we can get back to face-to-face meetings for Strut nights and enjoy the camaraderie of fly-ins and fly-outs.

North East Strut: Fishburn Airfield. Brunch third Sunday of each month. 1130-13.30 at Fishburn Aviator Cafe. Contact: alannixon297@btinternet.com

North Western Strut: Veterans Lounge, Barton, Manchester, 19.30 for 20.00.

Contact: cliffmort@btinternet.com 07813 497427

North Wales Strut : Caernarfon Airport, Dinas Dinlle. HEMS Bistro Café 1300.

Contact: Gareth Roberts gtrwales@gmail.com , 07876 483414

Oxford Group : The Duke of Marlborough, Woodleys, Woodstock, Oxford, 2000. Second Wednesday each month. Currently Zoom meetings. Contact: LAAOxford@ gmail.com www.oxfordlaa.co.u k for joining details.

10 February – World Records and More! By Steve Slade.

Redhill Stru t: The Dog and Duck, Outwood, Surrey, RH1 5QU. Third Tuesday of each month. 1930. Contact: avid@milstead.me.uk

Shobdon Strut : Hotspur Café, Shobdon Airfield, Hereford HR6 9NR. 1930. Meetings (once lockdown completed) second Thursday.

Southern Strut : The Swiss Cottage, Shoreham-by-Sea. 2000. Normal meetings are on the first Wednesday of the month. Contact: palmersfarm@sky.com

Strathtay Strut : Scottish Aero Club, Perth Airport, Scone. Scone Clubhouse. Contact: keith.boardman@ peopleserve.co.uk

07785 244146

Suffolk Coastal Strut: Crowfield Airfield Clubhouse. 1900. Contact: Martyn Steggalls events@suffolkcoastalstrut.org.uk

07790 925142

17 February – (Zoom Meeting) Foxy, Return of the Pup Prototype, G-AVDF, to the Skies, by Anne Hughes and David Collings.

17 March – (Zoom Meeting) ‘Grandma Flew Spitfires’ by Richard Poad, of Maidenhead Heritage Centre.

Vale of York Strut Chocks Away Café, Rufforth East Airfield. Contact: Chris Holliday 07860 787801 valeofyorkstrutlaa@ gmail.com

www.valeofyorkstrutlaa.wordpress.com

Wessex Strut: Henstridge Airfield Clubhouse. Currently meeting via Zoom. Contact

West Midlands Strut: Navigator Café, Halfpenny Green Aerodrome 1930. 1 8 February – Zoom meeting with Andy Sephton (Shuttleworth Collection’s ex-chief test pilot.) Contact Graham Wiley westmidlandslaastrut@googlegroups.com

Stuart Darby stuartdarby134@hotmail.com or visit our website wmstrut.co.uk

West of Scotland Strut: Bowfield Country Club, Howwood, PA9 1DZ. 1900. Contact: Neil Geddes barnbethnkg@gmail.com

01505 612493

Youth & Education Support (YES): Contact: Graham Wiley gw20home@outlook.com

Thanks to all Struts and clubs for getting in touch. If you have any stories or items you wish to share, or updates for the calendar, please contact me at struts@laa.co.uk

The Sonex boom…

Clive Davidson flies this basically simple sportster but finds it has a complex character.

Pictures by Neil Wilson

TFlight Test

his year marks the 50th anniversary of John Monnet’s first design, the mid-wing Sonerai 1 V Racer, designed for the short-lived, VW-powered air racing category, but an exciting sportplane nonetheless. The former schoolteacher from Illinois set up shop to market plans and parts for this steel tube, folding alloy wing machine and also developed a VW Beetle engine conversion for it, and the design proved a great success. In 1974 a tandem two-seater joined the product line, again a mid-wing design but in 1981 he revised it to a low-winger.

Meanwhile, however, in 1978, Monnett ventured into gliding with a kit single-seat pod and boom glider featuring a V-tail – the Monerai. This followed the steel tube / aluminium wing formula of its predecessors, having a steel tube pod encased in glassfibre panels and a large diameter alloy boom tube.

Move to all alloy construction

With another racer, the Monex in 1981, Monnett moved on to the all aluminium construction which ultimately led to this month’s flight test subject, the Sonex. In fact, there is more than a passing resemblance between the two, although, like the glider, it featured a V-tail.

Powered by Monnett’s VW conversion, in 1982 the Monex set new Class C 100km and 500km world speed records of 185 and 182mph. A motor glider variant was also launched, the Moni, powered by a Konig radial two-stroke, but in 1986 the company was sold, with the new owners folding only a year later. The rights to the Sonerais, the most popular of the company’s wares, changed hands a number of times but ultimately ended up with the late Steve Bennett of Great Plains Aircraft Supply, but have very recently completed a full circle and passed back to John Monnett at Sonex Aircraft. The company is now providing plans and parts again for those who wish to build these traditional designs.

Birth of the Sonex

Sonex Aircraft, John Monnett’s new company, burst onto the scene in early 1998 when John flew the prototype Sonex for the first time at Wittman Field, Oshkosh, where he has set up a new manufacturing facility. Remaining true to his roots the Sonex was, and still is, offered as a set of plans, but even as a kit it is aimed at the sport flyer on a limited budget as it can be built from a kit and flying for under $38K in the US.

The prototype was powered by an all-new Monnettdesigned VW engine conversion, the 80hp Aero Conversions AeroVee but for those happy to spend a bit more, the 80hp and 120hp Jabirus were factory options from the outset, the latter giving the aircraft very sporty performance.

In 2016 the original design was updated into a wider bodied B version offering more passenger room, electric flaps and other changes. Importantly, the wider firewall also allows the fitment of a 120hp turbocharged version of the AeroVee, Rotax 9 series and ULPower UL250 and 350 engines.

Between the launch of the original Sonex and the revised

B variant, the company had certainly not been sitting on its laurels. There have, subsequently, been a healthy number of siblings – the V-tailed variants, the Waiex, and the Xenos motor glider (now both B model); the single-seat Onex, which features fold up wings rather like a carrier fighter; and the sensational single seat SubSonex Personal jet. A two-seat jet project is also currently underway.

Enough of the preamble, it’s time to introduce Adrian Eves, Ad to his friends, who is the lucky owner of Sonex G-SONX, an early variant Sonex powered by the 120hp Jabiru 3300A. Adrian has an old Thruster, which he keeps on a farm strip, but was looking for something with considerably more ‘zoom’ and possibly, potentially aerobatic. Initially he went to look at a Wittman Tailwind, but the lack of knee room made it a non-starter, so he went to try the Sonex.

He fitted the cockpit fine and a demonstration flight, which elicited a cruise of 155mph at 3,000rpm, burning 25 litres an hour, a good rate of climb and sprightly handling sealed the deal! He keeps the aircraft at Henstridge.

Walking around the Sonex on a sunny day, its gleaming metal skin had me squinting to see the nice straight rivet lines. In fact, it has many straight lines, the leading and trailing edges of the wings are straight with no apparent wash out to soften wing dropping stalls. The generously long flaps and ailerons use piano hinges, nicely gap sealing the latter, which are also mass balanced via counterweights on concealed forward projections inside the wing.

The fuselage box is just that, with three flat surfaces joining each other at right angles, with the curved upper ‘fastback’ turtle decking melding with the plexiglass canopy, one of few curves, the line rolling over the top and then down over the engine cowling in an uninterrupted line. The tailplane’s elevator and the fin’s rudder are again, straight edged, but the fin and tailplane feature fibreglass tips to nicely finish off the empennage.

They do say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I am not a fan of what adds up to be a rather angular and quirky looking aircraft. However, the proof of the pudding…

The solid tailwheel’s spring rod extends beyond and aft of the rudder and its single steering bar connection promises to be twitchy, as there is no spring in the system to ‘harness’ and delay input, it could be sprightly arriving on tarmac. For the less adventurous however, the aircraft can be built as a trigear.

I do quite like the line of the rather skinny looking main undercarriage legs as they sweep backwards, aft from the firewall. They are short, slim and circular in cross section, although they originally had alloy fairings. Ad prefers the look without them fitted. The brakes are very simple cable operated drums. Simplicity is a John Monnett byword when it comes to design, as is his description of the Sonex as a ‘Reality Check’, so many of the modern offerings cost so much more than too many sport flying enthusiasts can afford. And keeping it simple keeps it affordable to more people.

The aircraft is compact overall, making its control surfaces close together and the undercarriage close coupled, which points to having to be on one’s toes and having fun in the process, but probably not very suitable to fly in reduced visibility and turbulent weather.

Simple it may be, but the detailing is nicely executed.

Above The clean, gapless lines enable good performance on relatively low power.

Left The Sonex has some handling quirks but is a lot of fun, you certainly get a lot of bang for your buck.

Below The lift profile of the aircraft’s fuselage is evident in this side shot, as is the glare from the unpainted alloy.

The red fibreglass cowling is in two halves, upper and lower, joined by piano hinge like the RVs. Looking at it head on it looks rather like a cheeky smiling face, it reminds me of those once adversaries of the Doctor from Doctor Who, the Cybermen. Beneath it however, lies an opposed six cylinder Jabiru 3300A, its 120hp at 3,300rpm harnessed to a Sensenich 54 x 62 prop,which has a slight scimitar curve.

With a maximum take-off weight of 1,150lb / 522kg, 120hp gives a power to weight ratio of 9.58lb per horsepower. By contrast, a Tiger Moth has a power to weight ratio of 15.2lb per hp and a Cassutt around 8.2 (which the Sonex would have if flown solo) – so the Sonex is certainly erring on the side of ‘sporty’.

Comfort…

The one-piece Lexan canopy hinges along the right fuselage side, being restrained by a braided steel stay wire, so entry is via the left wing walk. A steadying hand on the rear fuselage top, rather than grabbing the front roll over bar helps, and looking into the neutral grey bench seat and surrounds, it’s rather neat, albeit somewhat minimalist. Each seat has a centrally placed, short, soft tactile grip control column that ‘sits’ right between your inner thighs when seated and the seat coverings are firm with little ‘give’ when standing on them. My right-hand seat has the shoulder and lap harness tidily prepared and a sideways brush of my foot edges them from where I aim to park. The headset is already plugged in and sitting on the coaming above the instrument panel.

Adrian had warned me that space was quite tight, and it is, so as he suggested, I put my straps on before he slides down and in on my left. Incidentally, when flown solo, if the pilot weighs less than 80kg then 10kg must be placed in the baggage area behind the seats. In the US, some of this space can be taken up by an auxiliary fuel tank.

Minimalist panel

The panel can best be described as minimalist as there are only two analogue instruments, an ASI and an altimeter

Below Fibreglass fairings add some form to the otherwise straight edged empennage. Note extended spring rod tail spring and solid operating rod from rudder.

with a stall indication of 40mph around to the 100mph flap limiting speed. The green arc commences at 45mph and joins the caution yellow line at 125mph, which itself runs to the Vne of 197mph. There’s slip ball under the ASI and a rather large boat style compass sits on the coaming alongside a PilotAware. An MGL Stratomaster G-meter resides on the right side of the panel and an all singing and dancing MGL Enigma, positioned for the P1, takes care of everything else.

Navigation is by SkyDemon running on an iPhone, and to the left of the Enigma is a Dittel KRT2 8.33 radio. Electrics are taken care of via illuminated Master and Avionics switches on the far right of the main panel and a row of half-a-dozen switches for the usual services to their left, the relevant circuit breakers being mounted on the right-hand side of the lower panel. All in all it’s a tidy, simple and effective layout.

Control wise, the lower panel houses a central throttle and has the carb heat T handle to its left and then a mixture/idle cut off, and to its right is a ‘Pull for off’ fuel knob. The trim is the large red disc on the far left, turn clockwise for nose up. On the left side wall are two vertical levers, the forward one operating the brakes, the rear one the three position flaps via a simple position gate. Sophisticated it may not be, but it’s easy to build and will still work if the battery goes flat.

The tank holds 60 litres and is conventionally placed between the engine fire wall and the panel and it’s only read indication of quantity is via the Enigma.

Taking note

Like all LAA aircraft the Sonex has the ‘Occupant Warning’, and as with a good many other the ‘No Aerobatics or Intentional Spinning’ but placards are there to inform the pilot of various limitations, and two on the Sonex you wouldn’t want to miss are the one about sub 80kg solo pilots and ‘Warning, Side Slipping, causes a marked nose down attitude’. I looked forward to investigating this latter trait further. The lesson though is, if

you are in an unfamiliar aircraft, make sure you read the placards!

Getting going

Prior to starting Ad raised his right hand up to grab and lower the canopy, so I ducked down and as it neared closing I had to twist further away to the left, away still from the ‘lid’s’ edge. As it closed and latched my right ear was against the canopy and I had a bit of a left kink in my neck because I couldn’t sit upright. I hadn't got my headset on yet either. The worst aircraft I found for this was the rear seat of the Shadow, but to be fair most people would find that a problem. I just couldn’t close the canopy on the first WAR FW190 in the country, or the Cri-Cri, and didn’t buy a Midget Mustang for the same reason. But should you really want to, then you can tuck yourself into small spaces, as I did 30 years ago from Leavesden with Mike Searle in my first go in a two-seater of Supermarine's heritage Tr.9 Spitfire, G-TRIX. Once in, you shrink, it works, you find in a little while that you settle into a better position once the canopy is closed, and I soon had my headset on and, although with limited head movement, things were better and improving further.

Above The cockpit is nicely finished, basic but functional. Note canopy swings open to the right-hand side.

Below Swept back round sprung gear legs and cable operated brakes continue the keep it simple concept of the Sonex.

Start and taxi

The start is uncomplicated with the usual fuel and spark sequence, however, the engine is fitted with Sonex’s own Aeroinjector, so the correct procedure must be followed. The injector is a variation of similar devices like the Wal Phillips fuel injector that hit the Speedway scene in the 1970s, and the Ellison throttle body that has been used quite extensively on aerobatic aircraft. Rotec, of radial fame, also makes a similar instrument, the TBI. These ‘injectors’ have no float bowls, and will run in any attitude and, when correctly set up, work extremely reliably.

So, to start this particular Jab, the throttle should be closed, the fuel cock is selected on, mixture set to rich and at this stage the Sonex starts feeding fuel into the manifold. The key starter has to be cranked before the engine floods within the next three to four seconds, otherwise to flood it will. We had no such problem and the T’s and P’s were quickly coming up on the MGL panel. We warmed up at 1,200 rpm and the oil pressure sat at 43 psi.

The right seat has rudder pedals but, like the left seat, has no brakes so Ad had to hover over the brake lever on the opposite cockpit side. The view while taxying was, to be fair, not too bad at all. The wide and curved pieces of Perspex gives a bright open feel to the cockpit but internal reflections, and those bare metal wings, certainly cry out for dark glasses.

However, at a fast walking pace, over both a smooth hard or grassy surface, the brake lever was not needed in the eight knot wind of the day. The into wind power, mag and carb heat checks were at 1,700rpm – the book asks for 2,000 but cooling, particularly of the rearmost pair of cylinders, may become an issue on take-off and climb-out; and anyway, the brakes struggle to hold it at 2000. The pre-take-off checks include setting the flaps at the mid detent, high lift setting. While checks and hands were going through touch drills a unique portmanteau came to mind – the ‘Elbonex’, describing a lack of elbow room in a Sonex cockpit.

‘Log-able’ fun

I have already slipped further down into the cockpit and can now scan laterally again. We have seen the prop’ rotating clockwise from the cockpit so we know we will need right

rudder to counter a generated left swing, and the slight wind’s influence from the north, our right, so will help in some slight way. Being a short, coupled tailwheel aircraft our technique is to keep the tailwheel planted until it will lift cleanly to the flying attitude. There is no need to nominate a rotation speed as she will fly herself off and be able to accelerate in ground effect before climbing away. Indeed, she flew off 24 cleanly and we climbed away above book figures at 90mph with 2,900rpm. The reason for the higher speed is because Ad says it works better than the book 70mph with the particular prop that is fitted, as well as aiding cooling. The lower right screen read out on the ‘Enigma’ temperature colour bars bore this out, showing the rear two cylinders were the hottest at 20°C below the avoid temperature of 194°. With speed and height safe, the take-off flap was retracted giving little nose down pitch change, and retrimmed, our climb rate was healthy.

Cruising

The numbers Ad quoted from his trial flight bore out: 2,700rpm giving a return of 125mph / 109kt, while burning 20 litres an hour – making for simple en route mental calculations should the digitals expire. 3,000rpm gives a slightly lower nose attitude and shows 155mph / 135kt at 25 litres an hour. These figures work out at 6.25 statute miles / 5.4 nm per litre at 125mph and the upper figure, and 6.5 statute miles / 5.65 nm a litre at 155mph, so it pays to be green and give it some welly!

Stable or not stable…

For an aircraft to be of the ‘flying platform’ variety, it should be both statically and dynamically pitch stable, (or to be more precise, be statically longitudinally stable and have a stable long period dynamic characteristic). That means that not only does it tend to bring its nose up hands-off by itself if it is diving and put its nose down by itself if it is climbing, (static

stability), it should eventually find its own way back to near enough the original trim speed, usually by way of several nose up/nose down cycles (phugoids) of decreasing amplitude (positive dynamic stability).

Both the dynamic and static stability can be tested simultaneously by seeing how the aeroplane responds to upsetting it from trimmed straight and level flight –either from nose high or more commonly nose low by 10° and 10% of the trimmed speed. Most LAA aircraft settle within three complete up and down cycles where the stability works to bring the aircraft back pretty close to the starting altitude and speed. If the phugoids increased in severity, then it would be labelled as statically stable but dynamically unstable in pitch. This behaviour is not text book, and unsuitable for an IFR platform but in practice is not a problem for day VFR flight – with a reasonable horizon, most pilots can compensate for this without even noticing. If however, once the hands have been taken from the stick allowing the trim to have a go at recapturing the starting conditions, the nose continues its aimed trajectory, or even pitches by itself further away from the trimmed condition, then this would be described respectively as statically neutral or statically divergent, the latter in particular being definitely bad news.

As for November X-ray, she didn’t fit into the first category – she had a weak positive static stability response but her attempts to bring us back to our starting altitude and speed led to a cycle of phugoids ever-increasing in height, amplitude and speed range. Watching the phugoids in action, Ad and I decided that having started from 2,500ft it looked like the third cycle might get us incriminated for low flying so we took back control, concluding that the aeroplane was one of those that are statically pitch stable but dynamically unstable – something that wouldn’t be acceptable in

a certified

Below The diminutive size of the aircraft is apparent with owner Adrian Eves standing beside it – they’re both smiling too!

aircraft these days, but with the LAA’s more pragmatic view, not a problem in a VFR sportsplane like the Sonex.

Next on the schedule, we went into the timed climb, just as we would for a Permit flight test, i.e. how long to fly at the nominated climb speed, clear of up drafts, in order to gain 1,000ft. We both had a go and Ad suggested we use the higher than book figure of 90mph so that those rear cylinders would not be inclined to cook. Book figures are 1,200ft per min at 70mph. We did two timed climbs, one each and I found it difficult, no… it was hard to hold and maintain the correct pitch attitude as the slightest over or under speed required the smallest of pitch corrections and accurate trimming. Of the two climbs, we averaged 1,000fpm – and maintained our cylinders’ good health.

Side slips

Steady heading side slips were next, and it was with ever-increasing interest that we flew her wing low and holding direction with opposite rudder. She is certainly directionally stable, just like an arrow, as soon as the rudder is released the nose rushes to take up the straight heading we had a moment before inducing the side slip. So, a good strong, positive response there. However, that placard that warns of ‘a marked nose down attitude’ is certainly right – the back stick force to prevent the nose from burying itself w-a-y beneath the horizon was a harsh, high poundage shock.

The nose-down trim change with side slip is almost certainly caused by changes in the airflow over the tailplane in the wake of the yawed fuselage.

Stalling

The standard, wings level stall, decelerating at a second per knot, produced an aerodynamic rumbling for the pilot to feel through the stick as the detaching airflow from the wings struck the tailplane and elevators.

Those short wings produced a few degrees of right wing drop, accompanied with airframe shaking if held in and very quick correcting foot work to hold wings level (nearly). But we did have a high rate of descent and the airspeed fluctuated around the low 40s mph mark. Full flap and the stall had the aerodynamic warning through the stick at 40mph, the bottom of the white ASI arc, and a prompt wing drop was exited with a sharp stick forward, increased power for the prop to bite and balancing rudder. One oddity was felt as the speed was brought back through 70mph, there was an airframe shaking very similar to that experienced at the stall, but we weren’t stalling. Ad’s comment was that it may be a resonance of the main undercarriage legs – I cannot yet think of any other cause. But it was consistent and might be able to be used on the approach to landing should the ASI fail. A novel cue.

Using the 1.3 of the stall speed approach formula, some experts swear by this and others not so, we would come over the hedge at 58mph / 50kt. Invariably we tend to round such numbers up, but as these are quite low, I would add a few more digits to help keep control during gusty, bumpy conditions. Ad suggests 70mph because it gives a better view over the nose and slower speeds tend to lead to a tailwheel first touch down.

A go-around from a simulated baulked landing proved not at all unduly awkward, countering the known power on response and the after take-off behaviour. I realised not only was I comfortable with the handling, but I had completely slipped into the confines of the cockpit. The landing is aided by being able to keep the stick fully back

for the three-point attitude and it helps if all three points touch at the same time. But being in the left-hand seat is a definite priority so as to be able use the brake lever.

The future

The top surfaces of the wings may be painted so the crew do not have to continually squint when caught by glancing sunlight. The oil cooler could also do with being more efficient in helping to keep the cylinder head temperatures a shade lower in the summer months. And comfort-wise, NACA vents down by the knees would keep the cockpit cooler. Ad says it can get rather stuffy in the summer but in this dull cold winter, wrapped in a blanket writing this at my dining table, I can only dream of such things!

Thanks, Adrian, for allowing me to wring out your machine, some of the extended departures I tinkered with, such as stalling in the turn with nose both above and then below the horizon, and allowing her unstable responses were entertaining for me.

She would not make a beginner’s life easy if allowed to stray and (I think) she is not particularly attractive, but she has character and spirit which, when understood, are a delight. ■

Bulldog Model 120

Sonex Factory Specifications

General characteristics

Seats: Two

Length: 18ft 1in (5.51m)

Wingspan: 22ft 0in (6.71m)

Height: 4ft 8in (1.42m) with conventional landing gear, 74in with tri-gear

Wing area: 98 sq ft (9.1 m2)

Empty weight: 620lb (281kg)

Gross weight: 1,150lb (522kg)

Fuel capacity: 16 US gallons (60.6 litres)

Powerplant: 1 × Jabiru 3300 six cylinder engine, 120hp (89kW)

Performance

Cruise speed: 170mph (270km/h, 150kn) at 8,000ft

Stall speed: 40mph (64km/h, 35kn) flaps down

Never exceed speed: 197mph (317km/h, 171kn)

Range: 400 mi (640km, 350nm)

Service ceiling: 23,000ft (7,000m)

g limits: +6/-3 at aerobatic gross weight or +4.4/-2.2 at utility gross weight

Maximum glide ratio: 11:1

Rate of climb: 1,400 ft/ min (7.1 m/s)

Above Adrian wanted affordability and a ‘zoomy places’ aeroplane, he should get both from his Sonex in bucketloads.

The FLYER Club was created by pilots for pilots and its goal is to bring like-minded people closer together.

For many members, it's a social thing, others enjoy the free landing fee vouchers, some like the advice and info webinars we've started organising, and some like the exclusive discounts. As the FLYER Club community grows, it will become more useful, more valuable, more fun and have more opportunities to join in.

Whatever your reason might be for joining The FLYER Club, we would love to have you on board!

W here To G o

The 2021 flying season is looking more promising but please do check if events are still on before leaving. The full details of these and other events can be found via links on the Royal Aero Club events listing pages at http://events.royalaeroclub. org/events.htm.

MARCH

APRIL

New dates are being added regularly and some are being moved to alternative dates, so check the latest info.

Our thanks to the RAeC and to Dave Wise for the use of their data. If you have an event you want to advertise on the list, please email the details to Dave at: dave.wise@btinternet.com

MAY

JUNE

Above The electric Pipistrel Alpha debuted at Aero Expo 2019, the event moves to Kemble for 2021 and LAA will be there.

SEPTEMBER

AUGUST

The latest LAA Engineering topics and investigations.

By Malcolm McBride

Safety Spot

Malcolm discusses Stampe propeller failures, Jabiru control surface hinges and airspeed indicator problems

Welcome to this February edition of Safety Spot, I do hope that you and those close to you remain well. I’m happy to report that yours-truly, despite current circumstances which, going against the grain rather, I don’t propose to mention, I remain in good order. Regular readers will know that I’m a bit of a walker, I left jogging behind in my early twenties – it used to be called cross-country running then, and we used to run in plimsolls and baggy shorts, not trainers and colourful Lycra!

Anyway, our new canine housemate, Sam, demands more and more mileage as the months pass; even though he’s short on leg (though long on hair), there’s no stopping him. He has an infectious smile, which reminds me that life is always special and, even though circumstances might make this difficult sometimes, must be cherished almost whatever the situation.

Thanks to all of you that have written back with suggestions as to how we might improve, and in some cases, correct, the TADS documents. Thanks also for not being too hard on me for finger-wagging a bit in the January Safety Spot, when it came to my encouragement(s) towards accuracy when you submit your FWR/1 Permit Revalidation form to us. Naturally, under the present ‘unmentionable’ circumstances, we haven’t received that many renewals over the last weeks, so we don’t know whether the minor educational campaign had any results in overall performance! Treat the FWR/1 form like you might treat a component you are making from expensive material, measure twice (check the form), cut once (use the correct stamp)!

If you haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about, then it’s likely that you haven’t read the January edition of Safety Spot yet – which gives me the opportunity to let you know that all past Safety Spots are available to read on your computer. Just take a browse through the LAA’s website, you’ll find a link to the Safety Spot area where past Spots are indexed year by year. I’m amazed sometimes, when a member asks a question about ‘how to do’ this or that on their aircraft, to hear that they weren’t aware of the Technical Leaflet library where you’ll find the answers to most day-to-day questions about operating an aircraft under an LAA administered Permit to Fly.

Now that you have to review the TADS document before applying to revalidate your Permit, which means that you’ll have to enter the labyrinth, on your journey take a flask of coffee and a sandwich and explore awhile. Spend time in the engineering section, there’s lots to discover; I promise, there are no demons lurking in the shadows.

Even though there’s not been much leisure flying going on because of the ‘unmentionable’ circumstances that surround us all at the moment,

Above I’m pretty sure that most pilots of single-engine sports aircraft go out of their way to avoid flying over territory that doesn’t offer a good opportunity for carrying out a safe emergency landing, but sometimes it’s unavoidable to get from A to B. The south coast of France is one of those areas where, if you do have an emergency, the only safe place to go is the water. Photos: Mark Jeffries

I remain pretty busy. This, in part at least, is due to a time lag between an event occurring, and it being reported.

A lesson I learned a long time ago is that a reader needs to be very wary of taking too much notice of a rapidly produced report – ‘the exclusive’ – as it is probably not going to be that accurate. That is one of the dangers of web-based news items.

An event, after all, provides the feedstock for the continuing airworthiness engineer’s job list. Of course, if an incident happens because a part has failed, then information about this failure needs to get to other ‘users’ of the part as quickly as possible, we try hard to do this. But, knowing that an event never involves a single factor, a better diagnosis takes a bit longer to put together a longer-lasting cure.

Mind you, this first story, where a propeller failure led to an LAA flyer ditching in the Mediterranean, has taken rather a long time to hit the headlines. That said, the reasons, note the plural, for it are as important to recognise today as when the event happened (in 2009).

Stampe SV 4 – In-flight loss of propeller

Thanks to Angus Buchanan, secretary of the Stampe Club, for sending us a copy of a DGAC (the French Aviation Authority) Airworthiness Directive (AD). This, rather unusual AD requires owners of Stampe aircraft to check the attachment of the propeller on their aircraft for tightness and security. As is normal practice, we sent a copy of this AD to all members operating Stampe aircraft under an LAA administered Permit to Fly, some 27 aircraft, with the following email:

Dear Stampe owner,

Please find attached a copy of an Airworthiness Directive that will affect operations of your aircraft. This AD (F-2020-006), issued by the French DGAC just before Christmas, essentially, requires that an owner checks that the propeller fastening bolts have been correctly torqued and the locking tab washers, when fitted, are not re-used. Further instructions held within, require that you check your maintenance schedule to ensure that the frequency of checking the propeller torque in the maintenance schedule for the aircraft, at least aligns with the instructions given by the propeller manufacturer.

As is the case with all continuing airworthiness safety information we

Left and above A recent DGAC AD requires owners of Stampe SV-4 aircraft to check the attachment of their propellers following a ditching incident, caused by a propeller detachment – in 2009. Note the failed Tab Washers behind the attachment nuts.

receive, we have investigated the root cause of this incident and believe it to have been issued as a result of a propeller loss in 2009, where, after the propeller departed the aircraft, the pilot was forced to ditch in the Mediterranean Sea.

The reason for the propeller’s failure was not established completely, though loosening of the propeller clearly led to friction heating of the wood. I have attached a picture showing the failed propeller.

Of course, although this Directive relates directly to the Stampe aircraft, the importance of ensuring that all wooden propellers remain correctly torqued cannot be over-emphasised. This is especially true after a period of long lay-up. For this reason, we’ll discuss this AD, and the incident that led to its issuance, in the February Safety Spot.

Very kindly, Angus did some preliminary digging to find out more about the incident that led to the AD’s creation and it seems that it related to, as you will have read above, to an incident that occurred in 2009 during a post-maintenance delivery flight. The aircraft was being piloted by our very own Mark Jeffries and, after the dust, perhaps rather water splash, had settled, Mark created a short video about the incident which you’ll be able to find on YouTube, if you want to.

While Angus was sleuthing, I was digging into our records to see if we’d seen a similar propeller loss incident with a Stampe and, as it turns out, there had been another very similar issue affecting a Stampe in July 2001, this time forcing the aircraft into a field, rather than the water. This aircraft was then operating under a Certificate of Airworthiness, though I’m pleased to say that it is now with us and flying under a Permit.

Naturally, I chatted to Mark, who was rather surprised that this AD was so long in the brewing. He thought that this might be due to various arguments about who was responsible for the incident, after all, the aircraft had just been serviced and it is well known that the attachment of wooden propellers needs to be checked regularly, especially around seasonal changes when ambient humidity and average temperature change. I know that LAA Inspector, Andy McCluskie, knows a thing or two about Stampes, and I wondered if he had a maintenance schedule handy to see what this says about checking the propeller.

Andy found the appropriate section which, to be honest, was a bit on the thin side – but it did state that the propeller must be removed annually to check for cracking in the hub and to ensure that the propeller is correctly torqued-up. Part of the AD, which you can download via an ‘Alert’ that you’ll find in the Engineering section of our website (remember to take that flask), warned against the re-use of metal tab washers. These, if you haven’t seen them, are single use metal washers or, as in this case, plates, which have tabs which can be bent over a nut to stop it working loose – an alternative to wire-locking or split-pinning. The problem for me, after I checked the drawing of the assembly, where tab washers aren’t shown, was why they were there in the first place

Another LAA Inspector, who I know has many years of Stampe experience, and still owns one, is Tony Bianchi – so I dropped him a line asking if he could help. Tony kindly responded: Good Morning Malcolm, that’s a nasty experience with the Stampe. I think the propeller looks a rogue, homemade of some sort, I’d like to know what it was? As requested, here’s how the assembly of the hub goes: The hub main nut is externally serrated at its leading edge outer circumference. The locking tube is internally serrated and slides inside the hub and locks the nut.

Left

Photos: DGAC/Mark Jeffries

Above Here’s an exploded diagram showing the correct (original) method of attachment of the propeller to the propeller drive flange (engine’s crankshaft). Here’s how the system works: the hub’s main nut (287) is externally serrated at its leading edge outer circumference. The locking tube (283) is internally serrated and slides inside the hub and locks the nut. The locking tube is then secured by four grub screws (288), that are attached and wire locked after the front hub plate is installed. Finally, the cone (284) is fitted, this locks all the propeller nuts. It stays in place with a centre attachment stud that is on the locking tube, it has a castellated nut and is split pinned. Photo: Andy McCluskie.

Overheating and burning of wooden propellers is a common indication of loss of torque in the mounting system. If the propeller bolts become loose, friction is lost and the relative movement between the two surfaces causes friction, heating and eventual failure.

Photo: Mark Jeffries

Safety Spot

The locking tube is then secured by four grub screws that are attached and wire locked after the front hub plate is installed; finally the cone is fitted and this locks all the prop nuts. It stays in place with a centre attachment stud that is on the locking tube, it has a castellated nut and is split pinned.

That’s as the maker intended. But some people have ditched the locking cone because the centre stud on the tube has been sheared or damaged, or the nut left loose or various other reasons. They then have to use tab washers to lock the nuts. The original way works perfectly well, but requires a sensible person to fit it correctly.

By the way, I’m not surprised that you haven’t been able to find a torque setting for these attachment nuts. For this sort of attachment, quite often seen on vintage types, we never use a torque wrench on a wooden propeller, once the fitters arm has been calibrated through experience, a good feel for the correct tension works best.

So, well done to Mark for getting the aircraft down safely after the propeller departed, even if he can only just remember the experience! Whatever the real reason for this AD, it does serve as a timely reminder to all wooden propeller operators that constant vigilance is required – wooden propellers are definitely not a ‘fit and forget item’… not that much is in a sports aircraft… but you get my drift, I hope.

Tony Bianchi continues: I have, over the years, seen issues that have had similar results to the Stampe that ditched in the Mediterranean. I’m 90% sure that the incident was due to shrinkage and drying out of the propeller, not the bolts coming loose. In the case of the few that we had here at Personal Plane Services (Booker), with client Renault Stampes using Merville or Legere propellers, one incident comes to mind. This occurred in 1990; it was a client-owned aircraft that landed due to the smell of smoke and vibration. As the aircraft came to a stop the remains of the propeller, now alight, flew off and set the grass on the airstrip on fire. It was a Merville propeller.

Wood is a fantastic material for making propellers, just ask the boss of Hercules Propellers, Rupert Wasey, he uses beech laminates. My personal experience is with mahogany, though this is becoming difficult to source, I’m fairly sure that Merville propellers used white ash. Wood was once alive, and because of the complex forces imposed on the living plant by its environment, each piece of wood will have different mechanical properties. But, to varying degrees, all woods share the same two problems when used as a precision engineering material.

One, it will grow and shrink as water content increases and decreases, for example, mahogany shrinks about 4% across the grains from saturated to kiln dried, ash is something like 9%. Two, the strength of wood, particularly ‘crushing’ strength, can vary by as much as 40% within the same limits, and is much weaker when wet.

As an LAA Inspector, I’ve often come across wooden parts, not just propellers, that have been affected by these seasonal/environmental material changes – during a dry summer, the part’s attachment bolts become loose because the part has shrunk a bit. As the weather turns

wetter, the part absorbs water and the part grows, when this happens the attaching bolts become far too tight and this, coupled with a slight weakening in compression strength, forces the bolt (or nut and washer) into the material. During the next ‘dry-out’ the bolt becomes loose again and is again tightened – a ratchet effect that will eventually lead to the part’s becoming more and more crushed and eventually, failing.

Back last year, a member complained that a wooden propeller he’d bought wouldn’t fit the flange. He thought that the propeller had been mis-drilled but, after questioning, he explained that he’d bought the propeller with the kit a few years ago and, to keep it safe, he’s stored it under his bed (in a centrally heated house). Wood grows and shrinks as it’s water content changes at a different rate along the grain as opposed to across it. That’s why the jig drilled bolt holes went from round to oval!

This ‘unmentionable’ situation we find ourselves in will soon be past, when it is, and you get back to your aircraft, remember to check the attachment of your wooden propeller, if you are lucky enough to own one – I have a few dotted around the house, but sadly none on a living aircraft. My favourite, one of the very first made for a microlight, has a barometer in the hub, the propeller, definitely a prototype, never worked very well. Those were the days of trial and error, but it looks lovely in my hall.

Jabiru Aircraft – Control surface hinge inspection

Surely, when choosing a candidate to sit at the top of any list of things a pilot doesn’t want to happen during a flight, losing a flight control has to be a powerful contender for the top spot. Of course, that’s why, during a pre-flight inspection, a sensible pilot will thoroughly check each flight control system in turn. This check isn’t just a waggle of the ailerons so that you can tick the box on the checklist, he or she will be looking for any sign that the system isn’t working perfectly.

Jabiru Aircraft has recently issued a Service Bulletin (JSB-044) requiring owners of Jabiru aircraft which are more than five years old, to check the control surface piano hinges on their aircraft, ‘before further flight’. The reason for this Bulletin is that an owner of a Jabiru SP4 had reported that they had suffered a hinge failure which was, fortunately, spotted during a pre-flight inspection.

We call the SP4 the SP470, it’s a group ‘A’ aircraft, well, not a microlight… whatever that means in these strange times… and combines the longer fuselage of UL 450 with Jabiru 2200 engine and the short-span wings of the SK variant. We look after eight of these aircraft in the LAA system but, in the case of the Jabiru range of aircraft, specific type matters not, they all use piano hinges to attach their control surfaces, so this Bulletin affects all Jabiru models.

Piano hinges are a very common way to affect a simple and inexpensive hinge, and many aircraft designers use them. Generally, when fitted well, they are relatively trouble-free devices, but nevertheless there can be problems with them, and they definitely deserve a close look rather than a perfunctory ‘waggle’. The

Jabiru’s

Above Following the recent discovery of a failed hinge, thankfully during a pre-flight inspection, Jabiru Aircraft has issued a Service Bulletin (JSB-044) reminding the Jabiru community of the importance of checking the control surface piano hinges on their aircraft. Left shows one half of the failed hinge in position, the two pictures on the right show the fracture face using different filters. The top picture shows clear evidence of fatigue, note the four beach lines, suggesting that the hinge hadn’t been moving freely. The lower shot shows evidence of inter-granular corrosion, weakening the hinge progressively as the oxidation ate into the hinge material.

Photo: Jabiru Aircraft

Above The importance of checking the control surfaces and their attachments regularly on all aircraft cannot be over emphasised. Back in 2008, following a couple of in-flight control surface jam events, Jabiru issued a Service Bulletin (JSB-019) requiring owners to ensure that there was sufficient clearance between the control surface and the supporting structure. The LAA followed this up by mandating the SB using an Airworthiness Information Leaflet (AIL). Photos: Gary Cotterill/Jabiru Aircraft

aileron and rudder are secured using an aluminium hinge fitted with a plated steel pin, the elevator hinges use a beefier stainless steel hinge with a stainless steel pin.

Certainly, close contact between steel and aluminium can create an electrical potential that, as we know, drives an oxidation process. When this corrosion occurs, the hinge itself can become stiff, though this can be difficult to ‘feel’ among all the other small resistances in the system. As you can see from the photographs showing the failed hinge, it looks like corrosion has stiffened the hinge and, because the leaves of the hinge are having to work much harder during each movement to overcome the increased stiffness, the leaf has broken due to fatigue.

The Bulletin asks that the leaves of the hinge are inspected for corrosion and cracking, and the pin’s securing screw is removed, and the pin is manipulated to ensure that it’s free to move.

It’s very likely that your aircraft may not have operated much over the last year or more, so a close look at the piano hinges before you next fly is a must and, frankly, this applies to whatever type you own. Personally, I won’t fly any aircraft until I’m absolutely sure that, whatever the flight entails, the control surfaces are not going to stop doing what they’re designed to do during the flight – that is, keep me pointing in the right direction.

Airspeed Indicator – Checking the plumbing

I received an email from LAA Inspector, Dr Bill Brooks, in the autumn suggesting that I should run a Christmas quiz – he sent a ‘what’s the matter with this’ picture in with the email which, to be honest, got me scratching my head a bit (it’s the picture of the Aeronca pitot/static tubes). Bill’s email reminded me why I decided long ago not to run Christmas quizzes! In the end, thankfully from a credibility viewpoint, I guessed the right answer, the static tube (the lower of the two) was acting as a pitot because the plug had fallen out.

But, I also pointed out the strange angle of the tube and, because I hate the stuff, the corroded nature of the tube – remember the ‘zero tolerance for corrosion’ rule LAA Inspectors are encouraged to promote. Anyway, well done to Bill for bringing this to the attention of the owner during the annual inspection who, it turns out, had struggled with suspicious airspeed readings ‘for some years’. The system was refurbished and then calibrated, using the GPS method described in the ASI calibration sheets that you will find, as you peruse the Engineering section of our website – it’s in the ‘Flight Testing’ section!

Bill’s Christmas quiz suggestion reminded me of another ASI-related problem suffered by Jabiru J430 owner, Mike Williamson, back last summer (when we were allowed to fly). Here’s Mike’s email:

Above Three pictures to go with the two stories about problems with incorrectly reading ASIs. The first shows a simplified sketch of the mechanism inside a mechanical ASI; though they’re precision instruments, in their simplest form their mode of operation is pretty straightforward. When flying sports aircraft of any class, the ASI is the most important measuring device on the instrument panel if you’re going to keep safe, especially during the approach and landing phase. The picture in the middle is Bill’s Christmas quiz picture and the one on the right shows why Mike had problems! Photos: StudyFlying.com/Bill Brooks/Mike Williamson

Safety Spot

Hi Malcolm, I thought I would run something by you that happened last week. I have a Jabiru UL430 which I have owned for the last two years. It is 17-years-old now and has done approximately 850 hours. I wheeled the aircraft out of the hangar, did the usual pre-flight checks, all OK. Started up, T&P’s all OK, taxied out for take-off, full throttle down the runway, looked at ASI, 40kts, ready to rotate, take-off absolutely fine, looked at ASI, still 40kt!

Dropped the nose to increase speed, still 40kt. Decided to quickly land again, made sure I was fast enough to minimise chance of stalling and landed safely. ASI still showing 40kt! Taxied in and by the time I reached the hangar the ASI had returned to zero.

Thinking that something had gotten into the pitot, I disconnected the clear plastic tube that appears out at the bottom of the lift strut, tried blowing through but almost impossible to do. Thinking again, that something had got into the tube, I took a closer look at the tubing as it comes out of the strut, gave it a tug and it came free. Eventually, about an extra metre of tubing had been fed back into the strut with a loop at the end… the loop had developed into a permanent kink, which was obstructing the air flow.

I think the recent hot weather had caused the tubing to soften, causing an initial crease, which became permanent when it cooled. I trimmed the extra metre off, reconnected and carried out a test flight, all perfect again. The fix, in the end, was simple, but the cause was 17 years in the making and, in other circumstances could have caused much more serious problems.

Thank you, Mike, for your tale, another example, though rather an odd one, where problems happen because the aircraft had been sitting about unused for quite a time – aircraft owners, in these ‘unmentionable’ times, take heed.

Just a couple of points to note. An ASI failure can happen at any time so, a bit like practicing a forced landing, it’s worth learning how to fly an aircraft without an ASI – learn the attitude and power settings required for en route climb and descent, level flight and, most importantly, normal approach. With a safety pilot, try to shoot an approach with the ASI out of your sight, remember attitude and power equals airspeed.

I shouldn’t go without mentioning that it’s frowned upon checking a pitot system by blowing into it… it’s really easy to damage instruments this way and your breath carries with it quite a lot of water. If you want

Above and right It’s important to ensure that the ASI is showing an accurate representation of airspeed. Both the LAA and our colleagues in the BMAA publish guidelines as to how to do this – right is a screenshot of the LAA’s online spreadsheet and right shows the graph drawn from results obtained by Bill, once he’d sorted out the plumbing ‘pickle’ he discovered during an inspection of an Aeronca Champ – what should be and what was look pretty close to me!

Photos: LAA Engineering/Bill Brooks

your system ground-checked, perhaps because, like our Aeronca owner, you’re a bit suspicious of the accuracy of the instruments, most aircraft maintenance workshops will have a calibration kit, a check won’t take long and won’t break the bank.

In the field, if you do have to uncouple the system and blow into an open end to try to chase down a leak or blockage, like Mike did, be very sure you know whether you are blowing into the sensitive instrument side or the end that leads to the pitot head or static port. It’s all too easy to ruin an expensive ASI, altimeter or ROC indicator by blowing into it. If a

Above and right LAA Inspector, Nick Stone, came across a problem on a Bristell that was being prepared for respray recently, and got in touch. As you can see, especially when looking at the picture above, the Avex (pulled) rivets, have lost quite a bit of their head during the pre-primer preparation process. In a few cases, so much material has been lost that, in Nick’s view, the aircraft’s structure had been compromised. Both wings were returned to the aircraft’s manufacturer for repair, an expensive exercise as quite a few rivets, and the fuel tanks, needed replacing. Happily, the wings have been returned to the owner and have been refitted to the fuselage. Photos: Nick Stone.

LAA engineering charges

Note: if the last Renewal wasn’t administered by the LAA an extra fee of £125 applies

blockage seems to clear, be aware that you may just have blown trapped water around a bend in the pipework and it will soon find its way back to where it was before, and the problem will come back.

The slow-moving warm front that has caused so much havoc over the last few days, heavy snow in Scotland and parts of the North of England and Wales, and continuous rain elsewhere, has just passed through.

Sunshine, the first for ages, is making Sam a bit frisky, I can hear him fiddling with the lock on the stair gate. Now where are those walking boots? Fair Winds. ■

PLEASE NOTE: When you’re submitting documents using an A4-sized envelope, a First Class stamp is insufficient postage.

Coaching Corner…

The (mis) information revolution

LAA’s Head of Training, David Cockburn warns that when it comes to flying advice on the internet, or via the war stories of the ‘aces’, all

that glisters is not necessarily gold, but your LAA wings could be!

We live in an environment where a vast amount of information is freely available to anyone who looks for it. This presents undoubted benefits, but sadly not all the information we may find provides the benefits we want.

There are of course, as the media reminds us, malicious people who disseminate misinformation, ‘fake news’ as a certain ex-President was inclined, rather too often, to say. Such misinformation can spread rapidly and cause serious harm to society, and I hope we are all wary of any such ‘facts’ which do not fit with what we already know to be true. However, even people with the best intentions can cause problems by spreading information which they believe is accurate, but which in actual fact is incorrect.

Covid and Brexit have presented ideal opportunities for the spread of incorrect information, although the CAA and Government have produced a lot of guidance on both subjects. Unfortunately, as instructors often experience, human factors indicate that people can, and often do, easily misperceive or miss a few details of the information presented to them. It is also a natural human reaction to wish to share what we have understood with others.

But misinformation is not confined to misunderstood official advice; it includes information which is not actually incorrect, but is inappropriate for the person seeking it. For example, telling (or showing) a student pilot on his/her first training flight that moving the control column backward with the wings level will cause the aircraft to descend (as it will during a stall) is likely to confuse him/her when he is trying to learn the basic effects of the primary controls.

I doubt if any pilot would think of passing advice to a novice which might place him or her in danger. However, electronic communications, even when video is included, does not provide the same feedback as a face-to-face conversation. How can a pilot who is chatting, or even deliberately offering advice on a web forum, know exactly who is receiving that advice?

Making an approach 10kt below the handbook’s recommended speed might be something a very experienced pilot has managed to do in the past in order to land on a very short strip on a calm day, with no turbulence. However, advising a newly qualified pilot to do the same is not a good idea! Human factors suggest we easily miss important details; if our inexperienced pilot tries the technique in rough

weather, how is the advisor going to feel? And even if it wasn’t formal advice, could our ‘war stories’ (which usually include a bit of exaggeration) lead to the same result?

Although they are not immune from mistakes, instructors are trained to make sure that the information they present is appropriate and properly understood. Even if you have a lot of experience in the matter, please remind your listeners or readers to check with an instructor before trying anything which isn’t in the handbook. And if anyone tells you something different from what you were taught, discuss it with a Coach or other instructor before trying to do the same.

Renewing ratings

The Covid restrictions will undoubtedly have left several pilots with expired medicals and ratings, especially as England (at least) has not yet come out of lockdown. Class 2 medical certificates, needed for instructors to provide most flying training, have been difficult to come by, although most pilots should be able to make CAA medical declarations in order to continue flying in UK airspace.

It has been more difficult to maintain licence ratings, and once the restrictions are lifted, many pilots will need to renew these, rather than revalidate them. In most cases this will require a check with a Flight Examiner (FE) or Class Rating Examiner (CRE). NPPL holders must pass a General Skill Test (GST), and holders of PART-FCL or UK licences will need to pass a Licensing Proficiency Check (LPC) if they have not been able to revalidate by experience. If two or more ratings have expired, you need to pass a check on each class of aeroplane.

LAPL holders (only) may be able to comply with the alternative PART-FCL requirement. That involves completing at least 12 hours of flight time as PIC or flying dual or solo under the supervision of an instructor within the two years prior to exercising the licence privileges. This must include 12 take-offs and landings, and refresher training of at least one hour of total flight time with an instructor. Any Coach can provide the necessary instructional flying and solo supervision to top up the flying to the level needed.

LAPL holders, and other pilots whose ratings have not yet expired, but who believe they will be unable to complete all the revalidation requirements before they do, may opt to fly a LPC or GST rather than carry out a

lot of additional flying. If you’re not sure what is involved, the content of a GST is laid down in the syllabus on the NPPL website, which can be found at: www.nationalprivatepilotslicence.co.uk and the content of a LPC can be read on the CAA form SRG 1157, although some parts of that refer to multi-engine and instrument flying which will not be tested. Basically, the difference between them is that the LPC includes some navigation.

Let me assure anyone who has not flown one of these checks before, that there is nothing to fear! Examiners all have to pass regular tests themselves and understand not only that skill levels fade when we are not current, but also that ‘testitis’ and a desire to do well can actually cause people to make mistakes. I advise that when you ask your examiner to test you, you explain exactly what experience you have, both overall and recent. The examiner may well suggest that you fly with him (or another instructor) on an instructional flight to gain confidence in the requirements before attempting the GST or LPC. That would certainly be advisable before attempting to pass a test in an aeroplane with which you are unfamiliar.

It can be seen from the profiles on the ‘Find a Coach’ part of the LAA website that around a dozen of our Coaches (including myself) can provide LPCs and GSTs on aeroplanes and/or motor gliders. Your local Coach or Strut should be able to advise as we are fairly well spread around the country, and willing to travel. Of course, any FE or CRE can examine the aircraft types he is qualified to instruct on, but LAA Coaches are

probably much more likely to offer to carry out the check on your own aeroplane, which means the advice you get on the debrief should be particularly useful for your future flying.

Even if your ratings are still valid, remember you are likely to have lost a lot of your skill, as well as your ability to anticipate problems, if you haven’t flown as much as usual. Why not ask a Coach to help you back into currency? And if you can’t find one, or don’t want to use one, take everything very steadily and don’t try to exercise all the skills you had when you were in full practice.

I and the other Coaches look forward to helping many of you regain your currency and ratings as soon as Government restrictions allow.

The Wings Award Scheme

As we remain in lockdown, members may like to take a moment to review the Wings Award Scheme. Unable to fly, why not run through your log books and check up on past achievements to see if you qualify for the bronze, silver or gold badges? To date we have awarded 107 sets of wings, 46 bronze, 31 silver and 38 gold, so isn’t it time you became part of that tally?

All the criteria can be found under the LAA Wings tab on the LAA website ( www.laa.uk.com ).

If you should need a Coach to maybe assist with attaining that last qualification, then do not hesitate to ask! Remember that we have 43 Coaches on our list and their locations are shown on the updated Google Map under ‘Find a Coach’. ■

BRONZE AWARD

Minimum 100 hours - 50 PIC

Completion of 1 Achievement, 1 Safety event, 1 Navigational challenge*

(*Total flight distance 200nm+. 2+ intermediate take-offs and landings).

GOLD AWARD

Minimum 500 hours - 400 PIC

Completion of 5 Achievements, 3 Safety events, 1 Navigational challenge*.

(*Total flight distance of 600nm+ with 4+ intermediate take-offs and landings. OR flight distance

The adventurous Ruth…

This month we talk to Ruth Kelly, paraglider, sailor, enthusiastic pilot and so much more…

Welcome Ruth, can you tell us something about your career?

I finished full-time work in 2013, having worked in the museums and archive world for 25 years, ending up in the British Film Institute National Film & Television Archive. People often say ‘oh wow, what a cool job’, and of course it was. I certainly learned a great deal from it, but it was quite stressful. I had a large team to manage and we were under constant pressure from the government to reduce costs. So, I spent as much time restructuring my department – and sadly making people redundant – as I did managing one of the world’s biggest collections of archive film and TV.

But we had some notable successes too, including getting £25 million from Jeremy Hunt (when he was the Culture Secretary) to build a massive new storage facility for the master film collection, create a new database system, and buy digital film scanners and digital preservation equipment. From 2003 I was commuting to London from Christchurch where I lived with my partner William, which was two-and-a-half hours each way. I didn’t have to be in the office 9-5 but it was expensive and exhausting, and that, on top of the stress of the job, led to my early retirement, although I carried on working

for them as a self-employed consultant for several years, which was a good deal less painful.

Prior to the BFI I worked in other museums in London, including the Science Museum, notching up a range of interesting projects including vehicle restoration and display work, alongside yet more major projects connected with collections storage and information systems. Going back earlier still, there was a phase of my life dominated by marriage and children, mixed with an 18 month stint as a Scientific Officer at the Building Research Station, and quite a lot of archaeology, first as a volunteer and then briefly on a full-time (albeit very low paid!) basis, working on assorted Iron Age and Roman sites in the south of England. This included a little bit of flying in army helicopters (Scout and Gazelle) from Middle Wallop, taking aerial photographs.

To bring my career right up to date, although I no longer work full-time, I do run a small business providing yacht rating and measurement services (commonly known as ‘handicapping’) for various sailing clubs, mainly along the south coast but also in Ireland, the Mediterranean and Brazil. The system is called VPRS (Velocity Predication Rating System) and is built on a Velocity Prediction Programme (VPP) developed by William and me. I provided the aero-hydrodynamic modelling, Will was the programming wizard. It doesn’t

Above Ruth enjoying her RV-8 over the South West, part observing the landscape, part aeros.

earn a huge amount but the income covers hangarage, insurance and petrol – and it’s nice to do something useful for the yachting community. If you’re curious just look up www.vprs.org

Lurking behind this slightly peculiar career path are a BSc in engineering (a daring choice at the time) and an MSc in history. Just think, engineering + archaeology = Science Museum and you’ll get an idea of how it hangs together. I didn’t plan it, I just lurched from one thing to another!

What inspired your interest in aviation?

Well, it goes way back really, but the current chapter of powered flight starts shortly after I left the BFI. It took me something like six months to fully recover from the stress and hassle of the job and the commute, but I rarely sit around resting for long. I like a new challenge. So, in November 2013, almost on a whim, I drove up to Compton Abbas to investigate the possibility of learning to fly. A week later I was airborne in an Icarus C42 with John Keep.

Was your brother, (Keith Dennison, ex-BAe typhoon Chief Test Pilot) an influence?

Yes, he has been a major influence. He’s one of those people who always knew what he wanted to be, and that was to be a fighter pilot. So our house was full of model aeroplanes. He started gliding at Booker when he was a teenager and then went on to get his PPL flying Robins out of Goodwood. I think he had his PPL before he could drive. We went to loads of airshows, Farnborough, Greenham Common, Lee on Solent, Fairford and the V&V at Booker all spring to mind.

Keith won a flying scholarship into the RAF and studied aeronautical engineering at Bath University. He was on the last fast jet course on Hawker Hunters and went operational on Phantoms. Later he flew Tornados before training as a test pilot at Patuxent River with the US Navy. Later again he commanded the fast jet squadron at Boscombe and, several postings later, took over as the RAF’s chief test pilot. He ended his RAF career as an Air Commodore and then joined BAe as its Chief Test Pilot.

Latterly, he flew Peter Vacher’s Hurricane R4118 and many of the historic aircraft at Shuttleworth. And yet, with all his astonishing achievements, I never once got a ride in anything, other than a Robin in his pre-RAF days! The closest I came to a jet fighter was flying the Hawk simulator at RAF Valley.

In what, where and when was your first flight?

It was at Booker. My mum and dad’s friends, Sheila and Doug Walker, lived near High Wycombe, which is why Keith started gliding there. Doug worked at Heathrow, I’m not sure what he did exactly, but I do remember getting a tour round a couple of hangers there, which included walking through a Caravelle and a Trident.

At the weekends Doug flew gliders at Booker, and also took his turn as one of the tug pilots. So, while Keith was busy being launched into the blue yonder, I sometimes managed to blag a ride in one of the two glider tugs – a Super Cub and a Citabria.

I also got a ride in a K13 glider and in a Falke motor glider, in which Doug gave me my first experience of aerobatics. I couldn’t tell you the date, exactly, but it might have been around 1973.

Top First foray into ownership was a share in this Dynamic at Old Sarum. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by an arsonist.

Above middle The aeroplane that changed Ruth’s life, the Chipmunk introduced her to tailwheel flying and tandem seating.

Above Ruth learned her aerobatics in the Super Decathlon with Bob Cole, at Thruxton.

How many types and hours have you flown?

I have accumulated 190 hours in my logbook and still count myself as something of a beginner. Having started on the Icarus C42, I got my NPPL microlight licence in May 2014. John Keep invited me to join his T600N Thruster syndicate so I had a go in that, but already I had my sights set on getting the SSEA (simple single-engined aircraft) rating. I did this flying the PA28s at Compton Abbas and passed my navigation test and GST in September and October 2014. I’m not a great lover of the PA28 – they’re good at what they do – but I decided that the Tiger Moth would be more interesting to fly, and I managed one introductory lesson on G-ADXT before operations closed down for the winter.

To keep my hand in I went back to flying the C42 for a while before the opportunity of a one-third share in a rather nice WT9 Dynamic microlight, based at Old Sarum, came my way. Both of the other syndicate members were called Nigel, and the aircraft reg was G-NGLS, and it all went swimmingly for a while until I managed to bend the aeroplane at Hollym in Yorkshire. Landing in a crosswind, I drifted to the left as I touched down and poked the port wing tip through a fence. A very noisy ground roll ensued as we collided with every single fence post in the row, which chewed off more and more of the wing, culminating in a ground loop round the rather sturdy post at the end.

Nobody was hurt, thank goodness, just my pride and self-confidence.

While the aeroplane was being repaired, I did a tailwheel conversion in a Chipmunk back at Compton, flying with Andrew Dixon. I thought maybe a bit of taildragging wouldn’t do my landing skills any harm. Once I was signed off I hired the aeroplane and took my brother flying – the first time we had flown together since he took me up in the Robin from Goodwood, sometime in the 1970s. I was nervous as hell but Keith appeared to have mellowed somewhat and we had a very enjoyable session together, doing some advanced handling and my first aerobatics since that ride with ‘Uncle’ Doug in the Falke at Booker.

However, it wasn’t too long before the repairs to the Dynamic were finished and I went back to that. Towards the end of 2016 I worked with Ray Proost at Old Sarum to do a five-yearly overhaul on the Rotax, which included replacing all the rubber bits. Then one of the Nigels and I scrubbed and re-proofed the covers and gave the aeroplane a very thorough clean and polish. It looked terrific. Just a few weeks later Nigel called me on a day we were due to fly together and passed on the shocking news that our aeroplane had been destroyed in an arson attack.

We were gutted, of course, but after a month or so it became clear that our insurers would pay up and we started to think about getting a replacement. We came very close to buying a SportCruiser, having test flown a kit-built one with a Jabiru engine, and then a much newer factory-built example with a Rotax. But I found the cockpit uncomfortable and I vetoed it. Truth be told, the Chipmunk had changed my life and I was feeling drawn to something aerobatic and tandem-seated with a tailwheel, none of which was seen as desirable by the Nigels. In the end we split the syndicate; I took my share of the insurance money and started wondering what to do next.

The answer wasn’t hard to find – getting my aerobatics rating on the Super Decathlon at Thruxton, flying with former test pilot Bob Cole. And in the process, completing CS prop differences training and converting my NPPL to a LAPL. While all that was underway, I researched possible aeroplanes to buy and arrived fairly quickly at the RV-8. Special thanks are due to Martin Luton who gave me a flight in G-DAZZ, which finally made up my mind.

The rest, as they say, is history. Although, along the way I have enjoyed flights in a few other types including a J3 Cub (Clive Davidson’s old aeroplane); two RV-6s (thanks, John Michie and Ian Fraser); another Tiger Moth (with Annabelle Burroughes); Patrick Caruth’s Freelance; Adrian Eve’s Sonex; Dave White’s Jodel and Paul Robichaud’s ARV Super 2. In the distant past I also got an hour in a Cessna 150 aerobat with a family friend and a trip to Newquay in a Robin Royale. Leaving aside the passenger flights, I suppose that makes 10 types where I can fairly say that I have properly flown them, including taking off and landing, with solo time in six of them.

Do you have a favourite and not so type flown?

The favourite is easy, a rather nice beastie known as a Van’s RV-8, which is handy, because I own one! Why? Because it is an aerobatic taildragger with tandem seating and is very cool with it. Seriously though, it is an

amazingly capable aeroplane: 160kt cruise if you want it, but a long-legged 148kt-ish is available at 31 litres per hour; enough useful load for full fuel (160 litres) two adults and around 30kg of baggage, and five hours endurance.

It’s also aerobatic and jolly comfortable – one of the reasons I like tandem seating is the elbow room. One day I might even learn how to land the damn thing consistently!

Honourable mentions must go to the Chipmunk and the Super Decathlon, and, to be fair, the Dynamic, which was a very capable and comfortable microlight. We just weren’t allowed to turn it upside down.

Worst type? Probably the C42. It’s like going flying in a tent, as one of the Nigels remarked. Actually, they’re a terrific little aeroplane but I have rather long arms and I find the centre stick uncomfortable – there isn’t room for my arm between the stick and the seat back. Too much time in a C42 is a pain in the neck… and shoulder, and back. It was a similar problem with the SportCruiser, an arm rest set in just the wrong place; perfectly calculated to reward every hour’s flying with a bill for osteopathy.

Have you ever built or restored an aeroplane?

No. But it’s coming. I’m enjoying doing the maintenance on the RV and, after my instrument panel rebuild, two people – let’s call them Kevin and Annabelle – started urging me to build something.

I have been flirting with all sorts of ideas, a Currie Wot, an Isaac’s Fury? Or maybe get a fixer-upper and, well, fix it up. I have just moved to Shaftesbury and right now my hands are full with plans for refurbishment of my new house. But those plans include a workshop, which will house the various machine tools currently lurking in my hangar. Then we shall see.

Above Ruth with her Van’s RV-8, which is such a versatile and capable aircraft.

What type of flying do you prefer?

Actually, this is a hard question to answer. My flying experience to date has been marked by lots of different types, and lots of training, and I haven’t really settled into any kind of groove. When I first started to learn there was no objective other than to see if I could; it was the same with aerobatics. I suppose what interests me most is the mastery of flying, and really understanding how every aspect of it works. Flying as a means of getting about doesn’t attract me so much, although I have friends and family spread all over the country and, sooner or later, I may discover the pleasure of blatting off to visit them.

For now, my perfect flight is to cruise around my beautiful local area, interspersed with gentle aerobatics among dazzling puffy clouds, followed by three circuits with perfect landings. It might happen one day!

Have you tried other types of aviation?

I have already said something about three-axis microlighting, although to be honest the difference between those aeroplanes and your average LAA type isn’t so very great. But before I took up powered flight, I spent several years paragliding.

William had a suspicion that I would like it and bought me a two-day introductory course for my birthday in 2010. I did enjoy it, very much, and told him I wanted to carry on, at least as far as getting my BHPA Club Pilot licence. “We’ll do it together then,” he said. So we did, on the Isle of Wight.

Over the next four years I built up about 80 hours in

my log book, and William managed rather more. For William it was the perfect kind of flying – very physical, a bit risky, very free. For me, although I found some of the flying enjoyable, the sweet spot between boredom and terror wasn’t easy to find and I became increasingly worried about the risks.

Talking it over with my brother, he remarked that ‘stooging about, low and slow in turbulent air really is asking for trouble’. Even really good pilots got into trouble from time to time and there were some nasty accidents.

As of now I haven’t quit paragliding in my own mind. I still have my wing and I’m a paid-up member of the BHPA and the Wessex Hang Gliding and Paragliding Club, but I haven’t flown for five years. I might revisit it sometime, but right now I’m focused more on the RV. I like being able to decide when and where to take off and land.

What has been your best aviation moment?

I particularly remember a moment in my first qualifying cross-country flight when I looked around the cockpit, and then out at the sky and the passing countryside, and thought ‘crikey… I’m flying an aeroplane all on my own’.

Solo in the Chipmunk felt good too. I experienced a similar moment of wonder towards the end of my aerobatics course. We had climbed to our usual 3000ft and then Bob dictated a series of manoeuvres – loop, barrel roll, aileron roll, Cuban 8, stall turn, reverse Cuban, slow roll… and there I was, doing it. I’m still getting used to the idea.

Above Four years actively flying paragliders preceded Ruth’s transition to powered flying.

Do you have any other hobbies or Interests?

Many! William and I owned a yacht for 12 years, a beautiful Hustler 35, and we had a lot of fun with her. We really enjoyed trying to sail fast while appearing rather nonchalant about it. Crossing the Channel using nothing but the wind was very satisfying too, and the food markets in France were a delight.

I have dabbled with music all my life, and once played flute, saxophone and harmonica in a band with work colleagues. My current musical project is focused on the guitar. I’m not very good at it but, as ever, I’m enjoying the challenge. Being able to sing at the same time would be marvellous but may turn out to be a challenge too far. Don’t hold your breath!

I’m fond of cooking and I very much enjoy having small groups of friends round for dinner, which is something I want to do more of once my house is sorted out. I have been known to supply cake to the Tiger Moth Training den at Henstridge. I also keep a small flock of chickens. They’re fascinating to watch, great characters and supply me with more eggs than I can eat, but that’s OK as I like giving them away to friends and neighbours.

Any aviation heroes?

Difficult question, I’m not sure I go in for heroes, exactly. What I really admire is the determination, cool competence and mastery you can see in many pilots –test pilots like my brother; astronauts like the crew of Apollo 11; the WWII German test pilot Melitta von Stauffenberg; innovators like Reginald Mitchell… and everyone who builds, restores, maintains and flies their own aeroplane.

Can you recommend any good aviation books?

Nothing that people won’t know very well anyway. I enjoyed Geoff Wellum’s First Light (although it tails off a bit towards the end) and ‘Winkle’ Brown’s Wings on my Sleeve – which left me gasping at the sheer skill and audacity of the man, although in the end the catalogue of types flown becomes a bit exhausting. The Women Who Flew for Hitler is an excellent account of two very different personalities. Hannah Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenburg, but in the course of telling their stories the book presents a fascinating history of the rise and fall of the Third Reich from a fresh perspective.

I’d like to be able to recommend a really good book on the mechanics of flight, but I haven’t found one yet (PS since writing this my brother and Dave White have both directed me to the excellent technical books written by Darrol Stinton). In truth my real favourites are up at the poetic and allegorical end of the spectrum: I’m fond of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and right now I’m enjoying The Stonor Eagles

Have you had any ‘I learned about aviation from that’ moments?

Two moments from paragliding stand out, both involving my wing collapsing and fortunately then re-inflating. The first was at Ringstead Bay (near Weymouth), the second at Bell Hill (next door to Bullbarrow). Both resulted from failure to read the terrain or weather conditions properly, exacerbated by peer-pressure – everyone else was flying so I had better fly too – and in the first case by flying when far too tired.

Above Ruth and late partner Will enjoyed 12 years of sailing with their Hustler 35.

I also had an interesting moment during my first cross-country on the paraglider. Having caught a thermal over Bell Hill I was briefly paralysed by fear at around 2,500ft. Finding myself supported by nothing more than a scrap of nylon and thin bits of string I almost started hyperventilating, but checking my harness and risers helped get the fear under control, and I set off downwind. Rigorous pre-flight checks and having confidence in your kit are vital.

The prang in the Dynamic at Hollym which I have already described, came about from a similar mix of trouble – flying when feeling rather tired and being driven on by peer pressure. I really don’t want to make those mistakes again.

The time when I landed with the parking brake on in the RV-8 was another dodgy moment, the problem lay with the parking brake valve, which was less than perfectly installed. I was lucky not to damage the aeroplane on that occasion, I think. The lesson I took away was to not turn a blind eye to a known fault, and hope to get away with it. Aviation can bite.

Do you have an aircraft or vehicle wish list?

Is there anyone who doesn’t want to fly a Spitfire? I may have to treat myself to a session in one of the two-seaters sometime.

A ride in a fast jet would be nice, how about an F104? I think it’s too late for me to become an astronaut though.

Returning to planet Earth, a nice biplane, or some slow high-wing monoplane would be fun to build or restore, and would provide a nice contrast to the RV. I know… can I have a Fieseler Storch, please?

Any advice for fellow pilots?

It’s not for me to give advice to other pilots, I haven’t been at it long enough. But maybe I should take this opportunity to mention that my partner William very sadly passed away just over a year ago after a two-year battle with cancer.

We bought the RV together partly because of the urge to get on and make the most of life while we could. Although he wasn’t a qualified pilot, the RV was enough to get him started, and he progressed as far as his first solo. In his last year he flew quite a lot with Clive Davidson, with an emphasis on having fun. The Austrian eagle that adorns Victor Bravo’s tail is in his honour, as he was half Austrian. So, for me 2020 was a year of grieving as well as moving house and dealing with Covid-19 restrictions. It still surprises me that I managed to keep flying at all – and here’s the point – I couldn’t have done it without the support of my friends, including many good people at Henstridge and in the Wessex Strut.

In summary I can only say make the most of what you’ve got and work hard to build and maintain a support network around yourself, you really don’t know what’s round the corner.

Let me conclude by paraphrasing some more general advice from Tim Minchin (look up 9 Life Lessons on YouTube): Learn as much as you can about as much as you can, take pride in whatever you’re doing, have compassion, share your ideas, run(!), be enthusiastic. And then there’s love, and travel, and wine, and sex, and art, and kids, and giving, and mountain climbing… but you know all that stuff already. It’s an incredibly exciting thing, this one life of yours. Good luck ■

Below Ruth enjoying some inverted flying in her RV.

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AIRCRAFT APPROVED? Members and readers should note that the inclusion of all advertisements in the commercial or classified sections of this magazine does not necessarily mean that the product or service is approved by the LAA. In particular, aircraft types, or examples of types advertised, may not, for a variety of reasons, be of a type or standard that is eligible for the issue of a LAA Permit to Fly. You should not assume that an aircraft type not currently on the LAA accepted type list will eventually be accepted

IMPORTED AIRCRAFT? Due to unfavourable experiences, the purchase and import of completed homebuilt aircraft from abroad is especially discouraged.

TIME TO BUILD? When evaluating kits/designs, it should borne in mind that technical details, performance figures and handling characteristics are often quoted for a factory-produced aircraft flying under ideal conditions. It is wise, therefore, to seek the opinion of existing builders and owners of the type. You should also take your own skill and circumstances into consideration when calculating build times. The manufacturer’s build time should be taken as a guide only.

AMATEUR BUILDING All LAA aircraft builders and potential builders are reminded that in order to qualify for a LAA Permit to Fly, homebuilt aircraft must be genuinely amateur built. For these purposes the CAA provide a definition of amateur built in their publication CAP 659, available from LAA. An extract from CAP 659 reads “The building and operation of the aircraft will be solely for the education and recreation of the amateur builder. This means that he would not be permitted to commission someone else to build his aircraft”. An aircraft built outside the CAA’s definition could result in an expensive garden ornament.

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AIRCRAFT FOR SALE

Fairchild Argus. Genuine Warbird. Full rebuild Engine /Airframe completed August 2018, 23 hrs since. Executive leather interior. Goodwood Revival participant. LAA permit valid to 12/7/21. Becker AR6201 8.33, Trig TT31 with ADSB out, FUNKE TM250 traffic monitor. Sale due strip operating limitations. £72,500. Details at f24.uc61k@gmail.com

Sonerai IIL for sale, G-PFAT. Contact Henry Carter: kite246@gmail.com

MISCELLANEOUS

Airfield Share in Kent, one hour from London. Three Hangers, two runways and/or Europa trigear 912ULS. email cakeykev@gmail.com www.sites.google.com/view/laddingford

France, Loire, hangarage for two aircraft at our private airfield “ Montrichard”, four-person cottage, package designed by flyers for flyers. £800 per week, www.lachaumine.co.uk, 07802 217 855, 01424 883 474.

Here we are again…

Given the shocking toll of the Covid-19 infection in recent weeks, it’s impossible to argue against the Government mandate to stay at home and cease leisure flying. We remain engaged with the CAA and DfT with proposals for maintenance, inspection and licensing mitigations, for when the time is right.

They are well aware of the implications of a flying shutdown, hence the previous concessions regarding maintenance and continuity flying, but note that currently it applies only to emergency situations. We can all make our own decisions on this , based on circumstances and risk assessment, but please exercise discretion. At the moment we are seen as responsible people, bu t I am really worried that if the maintenance flight privilege is abused, it will be withdrawn.

Many pilots are quoting Lycoming’s ‘four-week rule’ to justify flights. There’s a case in that, but honestly, how many aircraft have we seen on the ground for four weeks or more in the winter months, before lockdowns were mandated? Provided an aircraft has been properly covered or hangared, most can withstand a short period of inactivity without too many problems.

In the case of Lycoming-powered aircraft, there is a good reason for their advice. Lycoming engines can suffer deteriorat ion of their camshafts. The cams are only splash fed and, over a lo ng period of being static, the oil film between the cams and cam followers can break down.

Products such as Camguard can be used to help protect the cams and cam followers on Lycoming and similar engines, but if you are using a ‘W+’ oil or multigrade then there’s little bene fit in using such products as they already include anti-corrosion additives. Four-cylinder Rotax and Continental engines, with th eir underslung camshaft arrangements, don’t suffer the same problems, especially if running on oils containing the additive s. If in doubt, refer to your specific engine’s maintenance manual or ask your LAA inspector for advice.

The LAA website also offers advice both on storage and post-lockdown inspection. When we can, we’ll also offer pilot s kills reviews and advice via our pilot coaching scheme. The good news is that, thanks to good judgement by members, the number of ‘skills fade’ incidents after the last lockdown was lower than many had feared. Even so, when we return to flying, we’ll do well to initially limit ourselves to benign conditions and simple sorties, and avoid tricky crosswinds and difficult navigation close to contro lled airspace until we’re fully back in the groove.

Fuel for thought…

When we do go flying again, one thing to consider carefully is t he contents of the fuel tanks. This was one area where we did see an increase in incidents after the last lockdown, ranging from the

By Steve Slater

need for a change of underwear to badly bent aeroplanes. Mogas is formulated around the expectation of a short operating life, around three months maximum, in a road vehicle. ‘Stale’ mogas may have evaporated away some of its octane-enhancing additives, leading to an increased risk of detonation. That is, if it even allows the engine to start at all. Stale fuel often causes problems at start-up.

On some occasions the chemicals created as mogas go stale and have attacked non-metallic fuel tanks and fuel pipes, even though these have been resilient to fresh fuel. The answer is c lear, any mogas that’s more than a few months old should be drained and replaced.

While 100LL avgas is more stable, fuel that is over six months old should be treated with suspicion. Whatever the fuel type, a fter a long time out of use please pay special attention to water drain checks. Even if hangared, have the tanks got water in them because of condensation?

Speaking of fuels and looking to the longer term, 100LL avgas, the staple fuel for many light aircraft, contains tetra-ethyl lead, which boosts the octane rating and prevents pre-ignition, which can cause serious engine damage. However, the potential removal of lead from aviation fuel is seen as increasingly desirable in many quarters.

Remember ‘five-star’? Lead was used in automotive petrol until the beginning of 2000, when it was banned by European Regulation in favour of unleaded petrol. While the use of lead in aviation fuels continues and the relatively small amounts of lead emissions from light aircraft are dispersed in a much wider volume of air, it is hard to argue against the desirability of unleaded fuel in the future.

In fact, for most light aircraft, in particular older types, a move to unleaded fuel is technically desirable too. Piper Cubs, Tige r Moths and the like were designed for lower octane fuels and are effectively flying around using fuel developed for Spitfires. The aggressive combustion characteristics of 100LL fuel literally burned away the cylinder heads of many Cirrus and Gipsy Major engines, necessitating expensive rebuilds with hardened valve seats, while lead deposits can lead to fouled spark plugs or sticking valves.

For lighter aircraft, refiners including Air Total and BP alread y produce lower octane, 91UL unleaded aviation fuel, but due to its lower sales volumes, it is currently more expensive than 100LL. Late last year, we joined a small team with the Department for Transport, airfield operators and AOPA to begin a long-term strategic programme to look at how airfields and suppliers can develop a more viable unleaded aviation fuel take-up programme, while at the same time ensuring continuing supplies of 100LL or , in the longer term, the approval of a 100UL equivalent. It’s certa inly interesting fuel for thought. ■

CAA Electronic Conspicuity Rebate

The CAA is offering a rebate of 50%, up to a maximum of £250, to pilots purchasing Electronic Conspicuity Devices including those listed below. Equipment purchased from 1st October 2020 until 28 February 2021 will be eligible for the rebate.

uAvionix SkyEcho 2 Electronic Conspicuity

• ADS-B Transceiver and FLARM Receiver

• TSO-C199 GPS (SIL=1)

• Barometric Altimeter

• Up To 12 Hour Battery Life

• Use With SkyDemon, ForeFlight and more

Trig TT21 Class 2 Mode S Transponder

Trig TT31 Mode S Transponder

Trig TN72 GPS Receiver

Trig TN70 ADS-B OUT Solution

Garmin GTX335 ADS-B Transponder with WAAS

Garmin GPS20A WAAS Position Source for ADS-B

BendixKing KT74

Trig TT22 Class 1 Mode S Transponder