Today was a continuation of yesterday's maintenance.
I made my way to the hangar late in the morning and started working on the gyrocopter. After changing so many parts and readjusting others in the rotor assembly, the next step was a rotor balancing.
I won't get into details, but it's similar to balancing a wheel on a car after changing the tire. Without it, you would get a lot of vibrations in your steering wheel and that would obviously make it very uncomfortable.
So in my case, the process is to go for a test flight, record some data thanks to sensors attached to the rotor head and then analyze this data once back on the ground in order to identify which change I am required to make.
It takes a lot of time, because each alteration I make means another test flight to repeat the process, and so on, until the best result is achieved.
During one of my test flights, I noticed a ship passing in the Tañon Strait which is the body of water between the island of Negros and the island of Cebu. I couldn't help but go closer to check it out. It was the M/V Mighty Star which is a brand new bulk carrier. The crew on board waved at me a few times before I turned around and headed back to the hangar.
The controls of the aircraft are much smoother than they were yesterday before I started the maintenance but I'm not completely done with the balancing. It started to rain heavily so I had no choice but to stop for the day. I'll hopefully finish it tomorrow.
