Friday 27 March 2009
Roll on Abu Dhabi!!
Tuesday 24 March 2009
Friday 20 March 2009
Rough with the smooth
Wednesday 18 March 2009
On the weight front Hux has done an outstanding job and we are confident that we'll be on the minimum race weight all season.
On the power front the new Lycon engine feels very smooth and powerful. It will be a while before we can make a true comparison with last season but the signs are really positive.
Regarding aerodynamics we have a lot to do and this is normally the most time consuming, so one or two innovations may not be ready for the first race.
The really great news is that after only 3 days I am happy with the control setup, and as the weather looks so good all week it will be test flying and training before the MXS heads back to the paint shop on Friday for the final touch ups.
Thursday 12 March 2009
All hands to the pumps
Wednesday 4 March 2009
Prepare for Take-off!
So why is the winter so busy?
Anyone would think that we just chill out, go for the odd jog, wander through the workshop occasionally to see how things are progressing on the race plane, go to lots of parties and not much else. Well, sadly, it’s not quite like that... there is SO much to do to ‘make it happen’ before the first race. Picture the swan on a strong current ... looks calm on the surface but furious paddling going on down below! In addition to Hux and Becci there are many others helping in the background so we have a great team but with shipping for Abu Dhabi a few weeks away it still feels like there are not enough hours in the day. We’ll manage though!It’s great to see the MXS coming together and we plan to start test flying on Monday next week. The new engine arrived from LYCON last week and is being installed. It looks awesome. We have various components still inbound and Hux is finalising the myriad of modifications he has been working on for the last 8 weeks. Due to all the modifications, the balance of the MXS will be different and I am expecting the feel of the controls to need a lot of attention. It took half of last season to get the control system really well ‘tuned’ but, hopefully, it’ll only take a few days this time (fingers are all crossed!)I am off to an air display conference in Belgium on Thursday and hope that by the time I get back on Saturday, all systems will be ‘Go’ for testing on Monday.