May 20th

Ken had an annual inspection to do on a parachute, so I met him for lunch, then we looked at the brake bracket he'd made up.  Unfortunately it bends in use, so we ended up drilling an extra hole on the original bracket, and that looks like it'll work OK.  There isn't enough movement to take the parking brake off, so we're going to look at playing with some springs to see if we can rectify that.  The clicky pen spring I had isn't quite strong enough.

The other push to talk switch I had was also a closed switch, but Ken found on in his box 'o stuff.  It was ever so slightly too big, so I tried turning it down a bit, but it fell apart, so I'll need to order some and see what I can do with that.  Ken's away next weekend, but we think we should be able to fly it on the weekend after that.

May 19th

I dropped the modified throttle off with Ken, then went and cooked pancake breakfasts at the LRAA display day.  We had a muted turnout, but there were a couple of people who'd been at the Young Eagles event, so hopefully we can get more word of mouth turnout in future months.

Ken came over and said he thought he'd got the throttle all sorted out, so when I was done there, I went over and checked it out - it works fine, yay.  We've started tinkering with the brake lever, and need to make up a mounting bracket for that.  Sadly the toggle switch I had to use for the radio push to talk was a normally closed switch, and we needed a normally opened switch, so I'll check in my box o' stuff at home.

John had texted to see what I was doing, and came and met us at the airport to see the gyro for the first time.

After we left the airport, we went out and had an early dinner before John needed to head home.

May 18th

I went over and met Ken and we played with the throttle for the gyro.  We have a problem in that the throttle is too hard to shut, due to springs that open the throttle - those are needed to keep the carbs in sync.  We played with various things and stuff, and I took the throttle unit home and took out a stop to allow us more throttle movement, which should hopefully help by allowing us to increase the mechanical advantage.

May 17th

The parts for the Magni have come in, so I went over to the airfield and got in Ken's way while he worked on things and stuff.  We bonded a plate with a pulley to the side - we were going to use fibreglass, but Jack showed up with some carbon fibre, so we used that instead.  While we were waiting for it to dry, we went and got lunch, then did some tinkering for a while, then I went over to Cameron Park and flew for an hour with Don in his Magni.  While my upper air work was fine, I need to work on the landings a little, as I managed to touch the tail (it's OK, it has a roller for exactly this reason) a couple of times.

May 16th

I went to the EAA membership meeting, where Dubs talked about getting back into flying after a 40 year break.  It was funny, as he had a list of web sites he visited, and one of them was mine :o)  I talked to him after the presentation, and he didn't realise that was me :o)

May 15th

We went to dinner with Jen, then went and watched "Avengers: Infinity War".

May 13th

We're still waiting for parts for the gyroplane (it seems they're finished, they just aren't here), so I spent the day doing things around the house.