Skip to main content

Oh bother

To be thorough, I went out to the airport again today after work. I wanted to look down the rest of the fuselage to see if there was anything further forward from the access panels I opened yesterday. In the event there was, and it was of the deceased avian persuasion, I took a pair of leather work gloves and a plastic bag.

I opened the panel on the left side again and looked inside and forward. Well, I did see more stuff up there. There were some twigs, some grass, a few feathers. I couldn't really reach any of it so it will have to come out later.

I opened up the baggage compartment and removed the panel that separates it from the rear. I shined my flashlight around and looked for anything. Then I looked down.

It was right there, just inside the rear compartment. A deceased bird. I put on a glove, picked it up, and put it in the bag. It was still intact. It had probably been dead for several days, possibly a week or so, but it hadn't fallen apart yet. It was definitely the source of the odor. Hopefully with it gone the smell will dissipate quickly. It didn't look like it had decomposed much, the skin was still intact.

There's a pretty good mess in there, but I am not at all equipped nor qualified to disassemble the cabling that would be required to get down in there. I honestly don't know what I'm going to do about it at this point. It will need to be cleaned out eventually, but I can fly the plane. I'll contact the shop and see if they have any advice or recommendations. I may have to take it somewhere to be professionally cleaned out. More money, I guess, and more time not flying. Crap.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thwarted

The plane is done being fixed again. Well, for the most part, but I'll get to that. The vacuum pump had indeed failed, so they replaced it. They also replaced the starboard fuel sump drain valve. Interestingly, I received an email yesterday from the shop with an invoice attached. It was for a credit to my account, which they gave me because they drained the fuel from the right tank. The invoice notes that 16 gallons were removed. The tank's capacity is almost 30 gallons, and I had filled it almost full on Sunday before my flight. So either they didn't credit me for all of the fuel in the tank, or it had continued to leak and had lost about 12 or so gallons over the course of a few days. I don't know which, but I'm not going to worry too much about it. I went out today to put some Camguard in the oil, run the engine, and possibly even go for a flight if the weather was nice enough. The grass runway and temporary taxiway are open so limited flight operations can proce
2 comments
Read more

Fresh tarmac

The runway at Harvey Field is in the process of being resurfaced. So far they've removed all of the old asphalt, graded the dirt surface, and hopefully laid down the first layer of the new asphalt. I received an email the other day stating that they were scheduled to lay the first layer yesterday, and lay the second layer today. However, that would depend on the weather and it's been raining today. Once the second layer is in place, they have to wait at least three days to paint the runway markings. There are also a couple other things that need to be done. In all, the completion date is likely to be no earlier than October 10. I went flying the weekend before last. The grass runway was open, and folks were taking off to the north, so I joined them. I was a bit too aggressive on the takeoff when it came to my soft-field technique, as the stall horn sounded as I lifted off. I think next time I take off from the grass, I'll leave the flaps all the way up, instead of down one
1 comment
Read more

Flying when you must

The previous post was titled "Flying when you can." Today the weather was so nice that there was no question about whether or not I'd go up. Today is Saturday, and if you have weather this nice on the weekend, at this time of year, you can't not go flying if it's at all possible. I'll probably go tomorrow, too. I hope so. With the work that was done during and after the annual inspection, my plane is finally fully functional. As far as I know, everything on it works. The intercom is even behaving itself, with a distinct lack of loud static during the last couple of flights. The shop didn't say if they did anything specific to fix it but either they did when I last asked them to take a look at it, or it's somehow sorted itself out. Hopefully it will work just fine, at least until I decide to replace the audio panel with one that has the intercom built in. As noted above, the weather today was absolutely gorgeous. I flew north out of Harvey Field up past
1 comment
Read more