First we need to welcome Maui Igor to our Monkey Family. He has always been a visiting outer island monkey but he is now calling Oahu home. We are honored to have him here but our weather for this cross country guru has not been cooperative. He never complains.....yet....but continues to hone his skills and equipment. Today was no different for one of our top comp pilots in the USA and Estonia, his birth country.
I arrived home after work, the furniture in the living room was all pushed aside, wings, harnesses and ruck sacks were all over the place and a reserve was being re-packed. I smiled, "Yes, my house is coming back to normal". JK was re-packing his reserve and down loading the videos for under the seat position to insure that it will deploy the next time he throws (which we all hope never happens).
When JK finished, Maui Igor set up a table and a contraption was clamped to it. I was intrigued, as I have had many reserve re-packs, wing re-lining, harness adjustments, wing patching, harness sewing and over 50 wing washes done here at the house, this was something new. Line measurement for tolerance.
Igor started from one tip working his way to the next. I didn't want to ask questions but when I saw a package of spaghetti dangling along side a 10 pound dumb bell, I just had to interrupt.
Apparently he needed 11 pounds of weight which is close to 5 kilograms which is the recommended ballast for pulling a line taught on the Zeno. We only had a 10 pound weight and he pondered how to get the extra pound. Ginny with all her cooking knowledge came up with a 1 pound package of Busatini (type of spaghetti for all us non gourmets). So that answers that.
With laser accuracy he measured all the lines on his Zeno, entered the data into a self generated spread sheet which calculated the info needed to tweak his rocket ship.
So this is what pilots do on non-flyable days which I am sure Alex will argue that there are no non-flyable days as long as your willing to chase it, duck under it and dodge it. But that is another story.
When It's Time to Fly.........Fly, but when it's not, Get Your Gear and Tune It Up!!!!!!!!
Sunday, April 08, 2018
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2 comments:
Thom,
It is nice you have the high tech factory going. My question is which lines shortened the most on Igor’s Zeno? Since I fly the same?
Check with Igor, it was beyond me since, I fly gliders with more than 2 lines!!!
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