Maintenance Log

**Keeping this up to date has become a bit more of a chore than I expected - no more entries here**

This little space is for me to keep some notes on various bits of maintenance I do to my aircraft. I doubt it is really exciting to any visitors, but something I have noticed is I am unable to tell how long particular components are lasting etc, because I'm not making a note of when the components are being installed.

This space will hopefully fix that:

Tucano:

• 17/6/07 - 38 - Replaced ewatts 1500 motor - Previous one burned out due to rubbing through insulation and shorting. Motor secured to base with locktite.
• 30/7/07 - 49 - Reglued firewall to rest of motor mount. Repaired cowling with red packing tape. Crash damage as a result of stalling at 1.5 metres on approach.
  
• 5/12/07 - 80 - Replaced nose wheel wire which finally snapped after bad nose down landing

RV4:

• 18/6/07 - 54 - After big crash rebuilt front and rear firewall. Remounted engine stick and motor. Took opportunity to secure motor with locktite. Am now confident this bird will fly again.
• 17/11/07 - 60 - Re-enforced and reglued battery tray.
• 24/11/07 - 69 - Reglued over wing stringer broken after stall.
  

Mini Pulse XT (MPXT):

• 19/6/07 - 1 - Used Dubro 4-40 1.25" bolts to secure eflite 480 to the MPXT. These bolts have a flat head screw driver and are smaller than the great planes - good fit. Used plenty of locktite. Should be ready for another fly on Thursday/Saturday.
• 24/6/07 - 12 - Used Epoxy to secure tail wheel into rudder - it has come away.
• 14/7/07 - 25 - After tail wheel wheel broke away have just taped a piece of wire to the bottom of the tail and am just skidding it along.
• 28/7/07 - 34 - Used double sided tape to resecure RX. One of the allen key landing bolts had come loose - resecured.
  

Zero

• 30/6/07 - 219 - Re-expoxied firewall and replaced ewatts motor after last serious crash. Also added some foam safe CA to the elevator (non control horn one) to get rid of some slack (the torque rod hole is getting too big. Seriously old airframe.
• 30/7/07 - 247 - Resecured motor to firewall after midair with Ground Dancer's spitfire.
• 22/9/07 - 266 - Motor really hasn't worked correctly for many flights now. Replaced with new ewatts motor. Noticed propellor badly out of balance due to one tip being broken off. This was replaced too.
• 22/9/07 - 269 - After test flight don't think it was motor. Have replaced speedie as well now. Bench test looks promising. Test fly tomorrow.
• 18/1/08 - 323 - Wing retainer bolt came loose - epoxied back in.
• 3/2/08 - 338 - Wing retainer section loose again. Used PU this time instead. Will probably need a full rebuild in this section next time.
  

Dragonfly

• 13/7/07 - 7 - Replaced tail boom.
• 25/7/07 - 11 - Replaced rear rotor - it busted after a sort boom strike. Couldn't source 4530 so used 5030. Seems okay.
• 31/7/07 - 12 - Replaced flybar - broke after she went in on her side.
• 19/10/07 - 14 - Adjusted flybar - broke end off after she went in on her side.

Lil' Squirt

• 19/10/07 - 3 - Replaced servo after the ESC failure spasm back breaking thing.
  

TREX

• 16/11/07 - 2- Epoxied landing gear after roof landing incident.
• 20/11/07 - 2 - Replaced landing gear

Easystar

• 24/11/07 - 52 - Installed some rare earth magnets in wings to stop them working apart at high speed.

Mustang

• 29/12/07 - 1 - Replaced horrific ultrafly retracts with better GWS ones. Also reattached spinner.
• 1/01/08 - 2 - Replaced one of the GWS retracts - plane landed too hot again, although they didn't fail as badly as Ultrafly ones.
• 18/1/08 - 5 - Replaced one of the GWS retracts after a on approach stall.
• 3/2/08 - 9 - Replaced the last carbon fibre landing strut - now all steel wire. Works good.