No more blogging 'till the New Year

Which leaves me to say have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and thanks for watching this space in 2008.

A great flying day so no engineering.

I took my time preparing stuff this morning, and until very late I was undecided as to which aircraft I was going to take. Finally I chose the Sunbeam and the Yak54. Both flew superbly although starting was a little more difficult probably due to the low air temperature, after all it is winter. At this time of year I tend to use fuel with 5% nitromethane mixed in to help with cold starting.
Met Geoff at the airfield and he brought along his Mustang which was developed from a trip to Cornwall earlier in the year. That's another story.
All in all a lovely day, wall to wall sunshine, and just a light air moving from the North East.


Yak54 in the late afternoon sunshine.

Geoff with his Moki powered Mustang. The tail wheel bracket failed just before this picture was taken, and that curtailed its flying for the rest of the day.

More on the Crankshaft

A day off work, and as the weather forecast is better tomorrow, I'm in the machine shop today.

Finished the front crankshaft part, see pix below:-

I've made a start... To give you an idea of the scale, the 3 jaw chuck is 80mm dia.

A 6mm dia. pin is used to aid setting.

Nearly finished, just the 3.1mm dia. clearance hole and M3 thread to be cut.

Finished and assembled to the centre web with an M3 grub screw.

The hole is clearance size down to the centre and threaded into the 6.0mm hole where the centre web assembly is clamped with an M3 grub screw. Sorry the photo is a bit out of focus, I wanted to get as close as possible to show greater detail.

Flying tomorrow - with a bit of luck!

What did I say?

I was spot on yesterday when I said today the weather would be glorious. Its been wall to wall sunshine and light winds all day - aaargh!