Projects blog - Fly Micro restore, mod & repair

11/08/201407/06/2023

new Streak kitset nearing completion

Recently I had the opportunity to visit some Shadow owners in England (as I was en-route to the Skyleader factory in the Czech Republic).

I visited Tim Walker near Manchester who is building one of the last wide-body Streak kits to come out of the CFM factory. It’s fitted with a 75hp Rotax 618 engine, carbon-composite main landing gear and a digital cockpit display. It should be exciting to fly.

Since I hope to upgrade some components of my 1988 CFM Shadow microlight (e.g. main landing gear, cooling shroud, etc), I was pleased to see beneath the surface of his Streak, get close-up photos of construction details and make some measurements.

It was neat to spend time with yet another enthusiastic Shadow owner. I hope that Tim will be flying his Streak soon.

09/08/201430/01/2018

G-MVAC – the Shadow in my website’s header image

What a surprise? When I was in Shadow Flight Centre’s hangar at Old Sarum airfield, I spotted G-MVAC hiding beneath its covers.

This is the very Shadow that I have used for the main header photo on my Fly Micro website.

I love MVAC’s simple colour scheme, with yellow and grey fuselage stripes. Maybe I’ll paint my Shadow in these colours?

07/08/201407/06/2023

Shadow Flight Centre @ Old Sarum

My personal project is restoring a 1988 2-seat CFM Shadow microlight. Recently, as I was en-route to the Skyleader factory in the Czech Republic, I had the opportunity to visit some Shadow owners in UK.

One stop was at the iconic Shadow Flight Centre near Salisbury. Fiona Luckhurst and Raymond Proost host a myriad of C-D and Streak variants in their hangar at the Old Sarum airfield. They have built up a vast knowledge of the CFM Shadow series, having operated a flight school for many years and repaired/maintained a lot of these classic microlights.

Raymond was kind enough to show me some of their unique equipment. The ‘historic’ red boom jig (for accurately making replacement Shadow or Streak booms) allowed me to definitively solve the mystery of the correct tailplane incidences on the 582-powered Shadow D-D and Streak models. Raymond also has a nifty pattern for getting the nose leg wires correct. I inspected a brand-new Crosbie undercarriage – it was reassuring to find that the mods I have done to strengthen the undercarriage of my Shadow in New Zealand are along very similar lines.

27/04/201430/01/2018

Old timer in the air again

ZK-JPA, an historic Williams Mark 4 homebuilt, needed some TLC recently. Before it could be issued with an annual Permit-to-Fly, a cracked stringer underneath the fuselage needed to be repaired .

Mike Nicolson, the current owner, asked me to tackle the job. Although it was very easy to glue the spruce, it was tricky to work in such a confined space with access only from underneath.

It was great to see the inner structure of such an aircraft. It reminded me of the plywood/spruce frames of 1950’s canvas canoes. everything was nicely sanded and still well-sealed with varnish.

Job done, JPA is once again airborne and awaiting a buyer.

25/01/201407/06/2023

Skyleader GP One

I’ve been unloading, assembling and generally preparing a carbon-composite Skyleader GP One microlight aircraft for its initial Permit-to-Fly and CAA certification.

This aircraft is owned by SkyFreedom Aviation, a company that my wife and I set up in June to import and sell Skyleader light sport aircraft from the Czech Republic. We hope to sell the GP One trainer to flight schools, aero clubs and individuals.

Over a period of 3 weeks, we calibrated fuel tanks, measured lots of things, checked control systems, ran the engine, etc. The Czech registration marks were removed and the new ‘WLB’ New Zealand registration applied to the tail boom.

I was very relieved when CAA inspected and approved the GP One to fly.

24/10/201330/01/2018

electric spaghetti

Wiring up electrical systems gives me the ‘heebie jeebies’ – I’m never very sure whether the sneaky little electrons will go where I want them to go or if the wires will suffer a melt-down (thereby letting ‘the smoke get out’ of them).
I’d already spent hours on the computer working on wiring diagrams – colour-coded wires, switch banks, earth buses, filtered avionic supply, etc. That’s all very nice, but eventually someone has to cut
actual wires and crimp on actual connectors. I’ve sat at the nose of the Shadow for quite a few hours tentatively cutting, labelling and crimping. After the first session, I’d done five wires, and only made two mistakes! One was too short. Another had the wrong label.

The final result is OK I think, but needs a better way to support the bundle of wires.

18/10/201320/11/2017

centre section covering

Now completed the covering of the wing’s centre section.
With the help of my brother-in-law and his wife, we flipped the fuselage/wing centre upside down (and carried it back into the workshop) so I could work on the underside of the wing stub. It was very easy to cover it with lightweight Poly-Fiber fabric and then gently heat shrink it smooth. I was pretty pleased with the zipped access panels that I’d sewn in before gluing the fabric on.
The brushed-on sealing coat was Wattyl “Solagard Gloss” water-based roof paint (with Floetrol conditioner) thinned with BarsBugs. This flows across and through the weave, gripping the polyester fibres much better than conventional fabric sealers. Next were several sprayed coats of Solagard Gloss/Floetrol thinned with water.
My brother and I carried the inverted fuselage/wing centre out of the workshop and flipped it back onto its wheels. Then, I could cover the top surface of the wing’s centre section. It took some ingenuity to sew and glue fabric shelves along each side of the tail boom, so that I could eliminate the foam shapes that normally surround the boom as it exits the centre section.

I also fitted the underwing luggage locker. It’s a hinged divinycell tub, which can hold a sleeping bag and small tent. In the open position it give easy access for connecting the port-side aileron pushrod. When its closed the luggage is prevented from fouling the pushrod. The starboard-side aileron pushrod is accessed thru the zips mentioned above. There is a 28 litre fuel tank above and aft of the pushrod, which more than doubles the Shadow’s range.

01/10/201320/11/2017

it’s starting to look like an aircraft again!

Today I wheeled the Shadow out of the workshop and took some photos to show progress on my re-build. It’s looking like an aircraft again.

It’s been a satisfying couple of days. Yesterday I’d attached the wing centre section and tail boom to the fuselage. Obviously the undercarriage had been mounted underneath to hold it off the ground.

Over the past week I’ve been able to tick off a whole bunch of tasks from my list, including assembling the polyurethane flexi-rod tail skid, mounting the fuel transfer valve with its on/off control rod, crimping the limit wires for the rudder pedals, nose-leg suspension and flap lever. In addition, I have sprayed the instrument panel black, made the polycarbonate side windows and finished sanding the leading edge of the wing centre section.

Very pleasing to see this amount of progress in a week.

main undercarriage mounted on 40mm fibrelam spacers (to gain more prop clearance)

Main suspension with stronger ‘carry-thru’ (not butt welded) axles and upgraded pultrusion rods (made from Plexinate P-100 polyurethane resin with 73% glass content)

upgraded nose-leg with machined spacers, adjustable retaining strop and welded webs (supporting the trailing arm pivot)

fuel transfer valve (wing tank to main tank) – 3/8″ bore shifts 28 litres in 10 mins

05/08/201311/07/2018

re-assembly

The gyro has now been re-assembled. The broken fibreglass console was repaired and re-painted in it’s ‘Kermit the Frog’ green colour, before re-fitting the instruments and re-connecting the wiring.

Ian Crook, a local gyro enthusiast fabricated a special fuel chamber to eliminate the fuel starvation/aeration problems, while I have completed the final assembly of the rotorhead and flight controls.

28/07/201318/04/2017

assembly has started

The tail boom has been fitted into the centre section and the nose cone has been repaired and trimmed to fit around the footwell fairing. Now its time for painting the fuselage.