09.06.2019: Winter is really around the corner here in Sydney, and that’s when the whales start migrating north from Antarctica to the Arctic. Many boat operators offer whale watching tours, but around Sydney they can be seen from the shore. We went hiking today to the Kamay Botany National Park and were rewarded with some spectacular attempts of humpback whales attempting to fly….
11.06.2019: I’m on my way back to Switzerland, after three months in Australia. I’m looking forward to fly my own airplane again, but first I will have to do the annual check as i would have been due some weeks ago.
18.06.2019: I have spent yesterday and today doing the annual check / maintenance on my SportCruiser. When I arrived yesterday there was a beautiful sunrise, but also a water puddle on our runway as a sign that there was a lot of rain there over the last few days.
As every year I rented as spot in the maintenance hangar, and asked for some support from our mechanics for the engine related work.
We found a small water leak at one of the fittings with which the water hoses are connected to the cylinder heads. This seems however to be quite a frequent issues on Rotax engines, so we removed it and re-sealed it with the appropriate sealant.
I also noticed that the engine temperature is higher than usual since a while, and I finally traced this to the oil thermostat which doesn’t fully open at high oil temperatures. This again is a standard issue with the older style thermostat model I have installed eight years ago. As a short time measure I removed the thermostat, which eliminated the problem.
There is a newer style thermostat, which is installed directly above the oil cooler. I took some pictures on another plane, so that I can check whether I can install it on my plane too. Once I have checked this I might install it later this year, ahead of the cold season. Alternatively I can always install the cover which partially blocks the oil cooler, as done on the factory built models.
Of course I had to do a short check flight to verify everything works after finishing the annual check.
24.06.2019: I managed to finds some time for a short flight this morning, before flying to Brussels for a meting this afternoon.
25.06.2019: I flew to Brussels yesterday afternoon, and back today. When I arrived yesterday I saw the All Nippon Airways Star Wars Boeing 787 again, which i have seen some time ago in Paris. Cool that some airlines dare doing some paint schemes like that.
On the way home we flew over the Rhine Falls, there seems to be quite some water still from the snow runoff.
