31/10/2010 Engineering Update
Sorry this is a bit late, but work got in the way.
Anyone who’s been following our trials and tribulations on here will know we’ve had a problem with the Artouste on 231. The engine itself is sweet, however the generator has, well, stopped generating. It appears more volts have sneaked out and escaped every time we’ve run it. We’d exhausted all other possibilities and have finally concluded it is indeed the generator that’s gone u/s. So Sunday was D-day, the Artouste had to be dropped.
I landed at lunchtime, due to being severely sleep deprived due to ‘her indoors’ being very poorly for most of the weekend. (No I didn’t cook!)
The guys had already got the appropriate panels off the wing, and the winch the chaps at Bruntingthorpe have kindly lent us (thanks!:)) was in position. We decided to eat and offer prayers to any Gods that happened to be listening, then lower the beastie out.
Firstly there were things like fuel lines and 70 gazillion wires to label, photograph and disconnect. (OK I may be exaggerating a bit there.)
Once we were confident everything was off the guys up top set-to removing the collar that holds the Artouste in its bay. When the Artouste was last removed about 6 years ago, this was apparently akin to one of the tasks of Hercules. Fortunately, foresight back then meant that everything was well and truly greased which made the job considerably easier apparently. I was part of the group under the jet waiting to guide the lump down out of the wing, and sacrifice our toes to the jet if it all went badly wrong. Then it was a case of lower away…
…And out it came! It really couldn’t have gone any better. We’re just hoping the re-installation goes as well.
For any ex-Victor types, a general view of the Artouste bay after Lindy ‘gave birth’!
We wheeled it into the hangar then retreated to the NAAFI for a well earned brew, before tackling the generator swap. We were fitting the known good generator unit we liberated from our old Artouste currently on display at Aeroventure. I have no pictures of this phase of the operation as I was preoccupied finding new and interesting ways of letting Victor components draw blood and peel skin. But it did go fairly well and few engineers were harmed in the fixing of this Artouste. Victor Sim took, well had taken as he couldn’t lift it, the old generator to the bench to investigate, and many bits of windings came out. It’s always reassuring when you do actually find a fault!
So the state of play is that the Artouste has its new generator, is wired up, and just needs some plumbing doing before its ready to go back in. Before it does go in the bay is going to have a clean and spruce up, so it’ll be a couple of weeks before we know if we’ve cured the fault.
Again, thanks to the Bruntingthorpe chaps for the use of the winch. 🙂
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