Sunday Night: Very cold, 6C wet and windy, colder than in the winter. The weather changed last Monday and has just got worse since, the pool is brown again, which pisses me off because I had just got it really clean following the last red rain.

Monday was Chrissie’s birthday so Beccie came up here and we went to Sussie’s restaurant over the mountain for lunch.

The band were getting ready to play and suddenly turned towards us and began to sing happy birthday to Chrissie…..

The band play for us…….

We had a lovely meal and a really nice day.

We all went down to Jalon on Tuesday, I had a hair appointment and Beccie wanted to see Lue, who is her old boss, to catch up. Afterwards we had a tostada then went on to Benissa to get the post.

We went to Calpe on Wednesday to have a look at some garden furniture and go to the bank, we parked near the bank and ended up walking to the sea front for lunch.

We went food shopping on Friday. The weather has been unsetteled all week and it has been wet and cold since Thursday.

Sunday Morning: Today started out clear and sunny, although it has clouded over again now. yesterday and Friday were much cooler at 14C than the rest of the week which had seen temperatures in the low 20′s even up to  24C Thursday afternoon. We had to go to Javea early Monday morning to visit an office in the old town, which is a maze of narrow lanes, far too small for cars, so we had to park and walk in. Very pretty though.

There was a misty low cloud covering the sea and causing fog to form a way little inland on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but up here we enjoyed the warm sunny and nearly calm conditions. Needless to say I did have a number of flights during the week, as well as continuing to clean the pool, which incidently reached 22C on Thursday afternoon and mow the terrace, which now looks like a lawn.

Wednesday and Thursday evenings I flew Skylark for 18 and 16 minutes repectivly, landing with an average of 3.84V remainaing in each cell of the battery, which means she could saftly streach to 20 minute flights in calm conditions.

This morning I went out early to take advantage of the unexpected calm and sunny start to the day and flew each of these models, The Skylark, The Pioneer and the Bixler before the easterly wind began again.

Sunday Evening: Today has been mostly clear and sunny, 23C with a moderate north easterly breeze interrupted by thermals. Late in the day a small front came up from Africa causing some cloud to form in the West.

The Bixler waits on the terrace for the wind to drop indicating the presence of a thermal. Shortly after the picture was taken it did just that. I launched and was instanly carried upwards, the model was going up so fast I began to get nervous, I had never been in a thrmal this strong before. The model grew smaller and smaller, then after a couple of minutes of flying circles I noticed it was getting larger again and as the model slowly decended the wind came back. After that I needed the motor to keep the model flying and to hunt for another thermal/ I have had a couple of flights this afternoon, the hasn’t dropped as expected later though.

Here is Benji relaxing in the courtyard.

Saturday Night: Clear and sunny, moderate easterly 23C. I had one fly this morning and have had another this evening, waiting for the wind to drop completely s I expcet it to shortly.

Here are some pictures taken this morning in the mountian terrace.

Tuesday Afternoon: Clear and sunny yesterday 20C with an easterly wind, today is sunny and warmer at 22C with a westerly wind, which may or may not calm down later. We had to go to Javea this morning, then we did the shopping in Benissa on the way home.

This afternoon I mowed the top terrace to keep it looking good……

I usually take off from here so I need the grass/weeds short for that, then I land on the larger lower terrace, which I also partly mowed. In this picture, the building on top left is Maria’s restaurant.

Sunday Morning: Clear and calm to start, there is a light to moderate easterly breeze now. Friday it rained and blew, but wasn’t too bad as there were some sunny spells but Saturday was really cold and windy at just 8C with dark cloud. I re- covered the model yesterday whilst listening to the “doom and gloom” on the computer (Reaing football).

Today I looked out of the window and at 8-30am it was dead calm, so I decided I would test fly the Skylark. I still had to pack the radio gear back into it with the foam padding, but that only took a minute to do.  As I hadn’t cut the grass since the other day, I used the lower runway to take off and the model rose gently into the sky, no trim changes although the motor is a little more audible now, guess I grazed the bearing. The prop driver is also bent a little, but not where the prop sits, so the nut looks a little excentric, but the prop is running ture, it will do until I order a replacement.

I flew the model for 5 minutes then landed as I wanted to apply more downthrust to the motor. I had intended to do this anyway, so I added two washers under each side on the top motor mount position. I think I will add a couple more yet too as it did improve things.

The model flys just as well as before and after two flights and two perfect landings, she is back on her wall looking as good as new.

I have also had a couple of flights with the Bixler this morning and found a couple of nice areas of lift in the building easterly breeze.

Thursday Nght: Disaster! The Skylark has had a serious accident, an accident called stupidity, old age… pilot error. Anyway yesterday dawned dead calm, clear and sunny, for the first time in ages it seems. At 7am I was way too tired to go outside. This time the clocks changing has really messed with me. At 8am it was brighter and still calm, so I grabbed the Skylark from the studio inside, grabbed the transmitter and went out to the strip.

I turned on the transmitter and wiggled the sticks and all controls moved, as I accelerated I was surprised at first how well it went through the thickening clover, but as it reached take off speed to lift off, the nose dug in and I aborted. I decided to do a  hand launch instead and under full power the model went up to 50 feet. It takes a couple of seconds after a hand launch before your fingers get back to the sticks and you take control, but as I did something was horribly wrong, the model was uncontrolable, I shut the throtel and tried to turn back toward the strip but as I did the model went into a vertical dive straight into a pile of rocks… Not good.

The damage was severe, every former to the back of the wing was either destroyed or seriously broken, the fuselage side was split and punctured where the servo tray and wing seating plates had ripped out, the rudder servo was broken. The left hand front end of the nose was destroyed for 4 inches, prop destroyed, wheel disloged. The first 2 inches of rear fuselage top decking was also broken with a split in the side where the wing had ripped off.

The wing was damaged in three places, both right and left wing leading edges had at least 4inches of crush damage from individual rocks all the way through the leading edge, leading edge sheet and ribbs right to the main spar, the left wing was also completely  broken off half way along where the aileron begins resulting in the aileron servo also being stripped.

The battery has some front end damage, (but is holding a charge), ESC and reciver seemed OK, the motor has a graze from a rock, (but the main shaft is OK and the motor runs true with a new prop) Prop was destroyed and the two servo’s mentioned. What a bloody mess! I didn’t feel like takng a photo of it, perhaps in hind sight I shoud have, but it looked broken

I glanced at the transitter and it dawned on me I hadn’t changed the model, it was set to Bixler, not Skylark, Dick head! I checked the controls, but I didn’t take notice as this setting caused the elevator to work in reverse. First clue was the nose digging in when I tried to lift off, so after the hand launch my turn back toward the strip would have included some “up elevator” and with the resulting dive I would have added more, except it was set to down…. So as i said old age, stupidity, breaking the number one pre flight check rule, at least it explains why. After that I certainly didn’t feel like flying anymore and spent the rest of the day (except 2 hours trip to town and luch) working to try to fix it.

I had to remove a lot of the covering and then cut out all the damged parts. Using cyno I fixed the splits in the fuselage. I rejoined the broken part of the wing with cyno, it went back together very well indeed and I would be sure of no loss of strength there. Next I set about cutting out the sections of broken leading edge and all the broken ribs, at least 5. I had to cut out large sections of the leading edge sheet too and I removed some interspar webbing that had split with the twist of the impact, but fortunatly there was only the one mentioed break in the main spars and the all improtant centre section was OK. the right wing still has 2/3 of it’s covering in place

Once everything was removed, it was time to start repairing what could be repaired and replacing the rest. It took all day yesterday and a couple of hours today, but I am pleased to say that I have now reconstructed the model completely. It has a new front end including engine former and nose leg former, the wing has been rebuilt and the new leading edge sheet fitted in very well.

It is back hanging on it’s curtain rail tonight ready to be re-covered. I am pleased with how well it has gone back together and once re covered will look none the worse for wear, in fact I also repaired the dent I put in the wing last week, so it will look new again. Stupid thing is that I do enjoy rebuilding them, it would have to be pretty bad for me not want to. It should be flyable again sometime tomorrow, although the wind is back and the forecast is for rain, so waiting game begins again I suspect.

Tuesday Morning: Very windy, mostly sunny, feels cold even though it’s 17C – I have no idea how we would cope in the UK temperatures. The wind must be blowing the red dust around becuae I keep having sneezing fits and a blocked nose, in fact I haven’t been right for the whole month having suffered from some sort of flu and a chesty cough the whole time, which is only slowly improving.

As it was Easter Monday yesterday, there were quite a few visitors to the plaza. Spanish families tend to visit the plaza during these holiday weekends and often sit and eat and play ball games, some even let off fireworks.

Tammy and Lucy keep watch from the kitchen terrace…..

Growling like a dog, Tammy spots some “intruders”

Amber joins in too…..

Later there was a little black dog in the garden barking at the cats, when I went chase it away I saw a kite flying very close, I soon realised it was flying from the bancale, so I went to invstigate.

It turned out to be Javea and Maria from the restaurant, with their family. I thought it was nice they felt they could come here and fly their kite, after all as Javea pointd out, this is the only place in Pinos with enough space and no trees….. At least there is no chance of me wanting to fly at the same time!

Here’s a picture from the other day, an orange moon rises over the Med, the lemon tree is lite by the plaza lights…..