Sierra Del Barón Rojo

The onset of inclement weather
The infrared image

Well today I couldn't see the horizon, so no flying.

I went to the airport and took an old bedsheet as a rag and cleaned the streaks of the landing gear hydraulic oil from underneath the aircraft. UMS has had a serious haydraulic leak before I bought it and the inside under the floor boards the belly skins are coated with landing gear fluid, which is rather tacky like treacle and some of this fluid still manages to flow and exit between the skin at the rear of the wing root and then flows along the under belly.

At the annual, when we lifted the floor boards, and removed inspection plates to service the pulleys and torque-tube bushes we noticed that the floor was covered in this stuff and it was so tacky that we found a $25 socket glued to the floor.

The fluid is quite difficult to remove. It came off once I wet the rag with AvGas from the fuel drains though, and half an hour later the outside belly skins were cleaned from the front to the tip of the enpennage. I also removed the dirt and grease left behind in the airstream of the landing gear from underneath the wing and the flaps and cleaned the engine oil overflow from the nose wheel hosing so now the bottom of the aircraft is relatively spotless.

The orignal source was caused by a problem in the hydraulics which was fixed before I bought the plane, but even so, I will keep an eye on this, and the level in the gear-motor reservoir, because we had to top it up at the annual.

The contanimation made the under-belly skin quite rough, aerodynamically speaking, which would have increased the drag a little. I also intend to polish the aircraft when the weather is better and I should start seeing a better speed or economy as a result.