Firstly, the good news. Oscar Romeo’s engine has been rebuilt and will be fitted to the airframe in the next couple of weeks. This process has obviously taken far, far longer than anyone envisaged.
The engine was condemned at the end of October, and the rebuild has taken approximately three months longer than expected. The delays were caused by there being a backlog on the new crankshaft part, and a Lycoming service bulletin on the new engine bearings. I’m told that our engine is on its way back to Biggin Hill, and should be fitted over the next few weeks.
I’ve been keeping current flying G-CEIZ, the PA28 I used to have a non-equity share with at Biggin Hill, and I am extremely grateful to the owner for his generosity. I genuinely can’t wait to get back in the air with Oscar Romeo, but my experience tells me there will be a running-in period, and I doubt I’ll be making any long or challenging trips for a little while longer.
My next video
Thankfully, I’ve been able to keep the videos coming on the channel, owing to the amount of flying I did last summer. I had built up a library of flights that I was able to release during the down-time, but now my stock is depleted.
There’s one last video in the can, and that’s a flight I took in India Zulu a couple of weeks ago with one of my original followers, Stefan from Sweden. Stefan and I went on a one-hour sightseeing tour of Kent and Sussex in poor visibility into the sun.
As we turned at the coast, the views improved. During the trip I talked Stefan through all the news stories I’d covered over the years in the towns and villages below as we flew over them. I’m hoping to get this video edited in the next few days, and it will be released to my early bird subscribers soon thereafter. General release will follow in a week to ten days.