Microlighters

Saturday morning 10th and a few of us decided to go for a flip up to Delta 200 Dassenberg area nice and early. SUDDENLY, I hear this shrill that sounds like a special effect from either jarasic park or the Adam's family; "shhhhhhpeeeing ping ping blaavo goff ox shhhhh shreek routshhhhing shhh fromshhhhh deltashhhhh 200shreeeekpingshhhhhhhh to shhhhhhhhh dassss shhhhhenberg shhhhhh shreekhowsyourfather" over the air. I almost caked myself. Did the owl thing and almost twisted my neck off looking for the pre-historic flying, "something" rex.
Just after this experience I hear Mark B from the skydiving club at Delta 200 announce : " Come on guys, lets all club in and get Gadget a new radio".
So tell me now Mr Gadget. When are you going to get yourself a radio system that works? I've got Paul aka Zulu's tel no for you.
Jy maak ons mal my ou.

Phone you for a beer later.

Ranger wrote:So tell me now Mr Gadget. When are you going to get yourself a radio system that works?

Gadget - are you are making a "monkey" of us

Buy you a beer later ou pal.

Regards
John ZU-CIB

OK OK OK. Me screwed up and down heavily. So like it was a nice morning to go fly and I must say the first one for quite a while. I fully charged the radio two days before but the morning i plugged it in there was a problem. I use on of the vertex standard radios wich in my opinion is quite a good radio. However, it seems the radio does not want to charge from the trikes electrical system.

So, I got to the hanger, did pre-flight and averything checked ok. Taxi-ed, radio check all fine. Got into the air and went over to FADX frequency and the crap hit the fan. This radio was fully charged two days before and now the battery went flat. The battery is not even a year old and has only ben used for 98 hours worth of flying. But, prepared as I am, I plug in the power from the elctrical system, which has been capacitorized, ionized, regulized and everything else you can think of to get it clean. No go. So I kept my mouth shut and flew around a while to see if the battery will charge, I did not want to go back to the airfield if no one could hear me, the airspace was quite busy and we have had a few issues in the past with aeries not doing proper radio when joining.

This didn't help either so I went back following close on rangers tail so as to shadow his radio calls. THis worked fine and I landed without incident.

As to buying a radio, this radio is fine, i think I just need one Paul's charging circuits to draw clean power of the trike for a situation like this as all my efforts at cleaning the power has come to nothing. My intercomm works perfectly, got it from Junkie just before he left us. But I will be replacing it shortly with one of Pauls units, just have to screw some un-suspecting frined out of a few bucks when I service his server again, right RANGER... he he he.

to conclude. Yes it may have been a tad wrong of me to continue flying when I figured there was a problem on the radio but i also believe that my decision to wait a while and shadow someone else up there and see if the radio charges, was valid.

generally my radio is one of the best when flying anywhere and i do not know why the battery went down in just two days, i did not forget it on as i do a double take on post flight on the radio, intercomm and instruments.

no excuses, just facts.

Nice post Gadget – fully agree with your technique of shadowing Ranger home …

Your Ni-cad has died from being charged infrequently – “just a few hours at a time before the battery was fully discharged”. This caused a memory to develop.

I designed and fitted a charging circuit into my trike and have in fact removed the radio battery completely.

ZULU 1 should be able to sort you out – it’s worth it. IMHO, good comms adds to peace of mind.

Regards
John ZU-CIB

Thats totally correct John, the Vertex is a good piece of kit, no problems.

BUT a nice feature that they have over the Icoms is that you can repack the batteries your self !!! (not 710)

They take AAA rechargeables and may be un clipped from inside the battery housing with little effort. That will solve Gadgets short term problems.
If possible Gadget from my experience try to purchase Hi Watts from Electrocomp. Tobie on the forum is at the Cape office. I have found them to be the best yet. The ordinary Hi Watt alkalines are as good as the bunny brand..possibly better ??

I am unsure of the model Vertex radio you have; but a quirk of the 710 is if the radio is off when you plug in external power it only charges the battery, when you switch on it runs from the battery, if you switch the radio on then plug in external power it runs from external power. This may have given you some hassles in flight. Just have to check this out.


eish Zulu1