This morning I did a dozen circuits to practice my short-field skills. A couple of full-flap landings were less than 130m, the shortest I’ve stopped the little Baby since I added 60kg of modifications. The cold air and lack of turbulence were ideal conditions, so I won’t be able to do that in summer…
Learned a couple of things:
Throttle needs more friction so I don’t have to keep one hand on the lever.
Stopped to talk to a person who lives on a nearby farm and she hadn’t heard my plane go over a dozen times, despite it being a quiet Sunday morning. Jabiru engines are quiet.
My GoPro is an amazing camera, always finding new ways to bugger up my day. For the first time, nothing went wrong. (We need a whole thread on action cameras.)
This time the iPad let me down: I’d left it in the plane overnight without shutting it down. It was bat flattery, so the OzRunways wasn’t there to record my tracks and warn me of other traffic. Must remember to not set Auto Lock to Never.
They tell us Lithium batteries don’t like to be run flat. I’ve now done that to a couple of mine and it’s come back to bite me. A few months ago I accidentally left the plane battery on and it was 8.9v when I next tried to start the plane.
Battery Management Systems are supposed to stop that happening, but this one didn’t.
I’ll install an Anderson plug to make connecting a booster pack a bit easier, but will also price a new battery.