Wednesday, August 31, 2011 Mid-Week at the Airport

Well, today was a momentous day. Richard and I planned to meet at the airport at 1PM in the afternoon. The day started gloomy, rainy, chilly but not cold. But by afternoon the sun was out and it eventually got up to the mid-80’s.

I knew we planned to try to get the Kawasaki to run, but I was concerned that the battery might have run down, so I went up a couple of hours early to hook up the charger and have a peaceful lunch. Richard arrived right on time at 1PM and we began the small items leading up to starting the engine. He got the fan belt off which was just an exercise since we didn’t have a replacement anyway, so we couldn’t remove it, just educate ourselves into how to get it on and off. We also worked on the throttle cable hook-up to the throttle lever, and that went together OK. The next step was to crank over the engine and get it started. I had one gallon of gas and 2-cycle oil, which I mixed as instructed. I turned on the ON switch and we both held our breaths and I pushed the starter button. After a couple of cranks, the engine fired up and ran very smoothly. Very exciting! After a half-minute or so, we saw gas pouring out of the carburetor overflow tube, so we shut it down and Richard took apart the carb and found a sticky valve which he fixed, and that solved that problem.

The last thing we did was to install the instrument panel (on that airplane the ”instrument panel” consists of a single piece of aluminum about 3 inches wide where the tachometer is mounted, along with a CHT and/or EGT, if I had them, which I don’t!). I do have a TinyTach, which we mounted, fired up the Kawasaki again, and saw it registering RPM’s like mad.

So the day went well. The next step is to order the 3-blade propeller, get the wing done, and think about flying the old bird.