Bad things come in threes?

Let’s hope that bad things really don’t come in threes!

Recently, I taxied into a sign at an airfield and dented the underside of the port wing. This meant repairs costing some £200 and the plane being out of action for about three weeks.

The plane was up and about again around the middle of March, which allowed the group to get flying again (including my own ‘trip’ to East Anglia and a very pleasant evening bimble locally).

I did not have the plane booked at all over the easter break as I thought it only fair to give the other group members a look in over the weekend and bank holiday break. The weather was generally excellent – warm, sunny with scattered cloud and very light, if any wind.

One of our other group members who is relatively new to the group is doing tailwheel training and was hoping to be signed off for difference training by his instructor very soon. So I was surprised when I received a group-wide email saying that the plane had ground-looped with the instructor on board while doing circuits at Enstone. Apparently, it was a low speed groundloop at the end of the roll-out from a landing.

This resulted in bad damage to one of the spats, disconnected and damaged tailwheel and the left main leg being bent back slightly.

I do feel sorry for the member concerned as must have been quite a shock. I am sure we will understand the circumstances later.

Subsequent inspection has indicated that the left leg is indeed bent – some 2 inches backward – and probably needs to be replaced. A new spat is required, so we may use this as an excuse to replace both spats with a newer type with more ground clearance more suited to grass strip operations. The tailwheel and linkage is also damaged.

In any event, it looks like we will be ordering and fitting a few new parts from that nice Mr Vans in the USA. So it looks like the plane will be out of action for a good few weeks. Let’s hope that’s the last of the bad news for 2009!