PROP TO IT
There are many things I don’t like. Surly waiters, the price of fuel and pretty much all music from the last 10 years, just to name a few. But I have a new thing I really don’t like at all: hand cranking props.
I guess it all started back in the model airplane days when I tried to deli-slice my thumb with an OS 25 remote control engine. It required many stitches and the end of that thumb is still numb. That and some physical and mental scarring.
I’m old enough to remember when Jack Newton ruined his golf handicap by walking into a prop. There’s just something very unnerving about spinning what looks like a giant chopping blade just in front of your face. Make it a 160hp slicing machine and it makes my skin crawl. Does that make me a coward? Maybe. Or maybe it means I have a good instinct for self-preservation. Actually, on thinking about that and my other activities, this would be one of the few areas where I behave sensibly.
Anyhoo, when I got in the plane at Broken Hill to fly home the other day, I was met with a click and nothing more. Rack up another thing I hate. Oh, and parmigianas. I don’t know why. I just don’t like them. It’s all that tomato and where the hell do they get a chicken that big? So, here I am in February, stuck on the GA apron at Broken Hill, temperature climbing to a balmy mid-30s and click, click, click. Choices from here were either hand crank it or fix it. Maybe.
Some time later, we got the damn thing going. I found the local LAME who came out on a Saturday morning (big thankyous) and established… it was working perfectly. It was completely fine when we pulled it apart and put it back together. No explanation. Now, I have already mentioned an intense dislike of hand cranking engines and contemporary music. Actually, that Gotye song wasn’t bad. But I’m not hand cranking engines by choice.
We could have motored on and seen what happened. That model of starter is known for being a little less reliable. But the next week we went back to our friendly LAME at Horsham to replace the starter and relay. With the places I fly – where even the remote guys say is remote – I don’t need a dodgy starter. I also rely on the aircraft to work when I need to go somewhere. And hand towing the aircraft across 200 metres of tarmac on a mid-30s day to get it to the hangar underscored my resolve. Sometimes you have a choice in maintenance. I’ve decided to err on the side of safety. The main reason we don’t undertake this sort of ideal maintenance is money. I look at some of the things I’ve wasted money on (for a complete list of money wasting with excruciating details, talk to my wife), and not many of them would save my life. Once you realise that, the choice is easy.
