I don't want to hear how tough other folks annual inspections were. Mine was supposed to be about a week long and now, almost a month later, I'm still waiting to get into the air. I guess it's a test to see if I REALLY want to do this sort of thing.

I licked the problem of the seat springs in the Maule where you have to install the return spring, stretched to the point where it has the equivalent energy of about half a stick of dynamite, with the precision of a swiss watch maker and in an area that would make a gynecologist claustrophobic.

I survived the incandescent brake disk on the "high speed" (about 25 Kts) taxi test where something stuck on the left brake and tried to make me into an immitation of the last Concorde flight.

My back muscles have just about recovered from the Backcountry Pilates that I had to perform to disassemble and reassemble the Maule

But I hate it when I have to run the gauntlet of a wild animal theme park just to get in the hangar.


Yep, the spring is on the handle of the hangar door. She is not alone. Last year, it was like a jamboree in my hangar. I used some stuff that was supposed to return a patch of the Earth to a pre-biological state. It worked for a while, but then the neighbors moved in. After living in Australia for a while, I just don't trust spiders any more. This is the BEFORE picture...


This was AFTER... Guess I brushed her a little hard, but I see the sign of the Devil on her belly.



OK, if a picture is worth a thousand words, here comes a few K more:

Here's the source of a lot of banging and snatching in my tailwheel steering. It is the lock plate of the tailwheel and is supposed to have nice crisp corners on that keyway. I won't go into how I got to this picture.



How do you like my latest T/W hubcap? I have deposited these things all over the country. This one could be coming to an airport near you. Soon, I will have seeded enough places that when one falls off, I will just poke around in the grass and be pretty sure that one of the others will just turn up.



You've heard of the smoking gun. This is the smoking brake. After several months in the hangar, something stuck on this brake and it got the disk hot. Not, red hot, not even orange hot...it was yellow. All I could think of was the 3 Cirrus's that burned up from brake fires. Good thing I had a 78 in dia fan to cool it off quickly before anything flamed. And, no, there wasn't any pull to that side that I noticed.


Anyway, you know you are making progress if the front end starts to look like this


But on the bright side, I don't have a mouse problem.



So, yeah, count me in for brats at Johnson Creek, if the Lord's willing and the creek don't rise. Wait a minute... the creek DID rise.... and... SOMEBODY sent a plague of spiders my way.... Maybe I oughta just stay home?

Sounds like a jungle out there, Fun annual. Call me if you need help re seatsprings, seat align and quick release, tailwheel question or in fact anything I can help with. I was about to kick up the floor catch on my hanger door a fortnight ago and at last second, realized a rattler was laying on it holding it down. When back to NZ, you can rent a Tiger Moth at Croyden aerodrome.
Jeremy