Month: July 2023

Inspector Ali G was over in Ireland and sent some photos of a nice Cub at Athboy airfield, just to the west of Navan. It’s not in the seemingly standard D-Day invasion stripes colour scheme, just plain green. This is actually more likely, as the “invasion stripe era” only lasted for six months. According to Wikipedia:

“One month after D-Day the stripes were ordered removed from planes’ upper surfaces to make them more difficult to spot on the ground at forward bases in France. They were completely removed by the end of 1944 after the Allies achieved total air supremacy over France.”

Of interest to me was the photo of the cockpit. There is an 8.33 radio and a Mode-S transponder like ours (albeit in the opposite wing root to ours), but also a twin plug USB charging port!

A USB charger would be great for running Skydemon in flight. Longer distance multi-day trips like Normandy next summer would seriously benefit from inflight charging. I have to take power packs on longer journeys to keep it running. A short bumble around the patch like the screenshot below is OK:

The overnight trip to the VPAC meet at Wickenby needed a forest of cables, power packs and cables. Trip report to come soon…

Time for a 25 hour inspection and oil change on the RV:

Cold oil doesn’t flow so well out of the sump, what better way to warm it up than to go flying…

Initially there was quite a low cloudbase as we headed out towards Montrose:

But then there was a big gap and we powered up into the blue:

Centre of this pic is a contrail way off over the North Sea…

…which the SkyEcho unit identified as Lufthansa 452, Munich to Los Angeles.

Off the wingtip is the old WW2 airfield of Kinnell, which is probably what RAF personnel said when they heard that they were posted there!

Montrose harbour and the basin looking nice in the sunlight now that the clouds were clearing a bit…

After 1.3 flying hours, the oil should be warmed up enough. Back to base…into the hangar, cowlings off and drain the oil. Despite the quick-drain plug making it easy, I still managed to spill some on the floor.

A few bits of cardboard and a chocolate tin “drip tray” and all is well.

As well as the oil change, the 25 hour inspection is just a general look around for leaks, cracks, broken wires etc. All hinges get lubricated and the tyre pressures adjusted where necessary. The yellow tape on the wing root screw line is replaced, and the aircraft gets a bit of a wipe down…WD40 and a rag for any oil stains, and baby wipes for crusted on insects on the prop and leading edges. It’s just an interim look around between the annual inspections.

All was good and in the guise of a leak check, it was time to fly again. The aircraft is good-to-go for another 25 hours. Just as well, as the Cub is in with the engineers for its annual, and will be out of action for a couple of weeks. Sometimes it’s a pain running more than one aircraft, and sometimes it’s an advantage…