| I had a business trip for few days and managed to get back home early enough to do some hovering. Weather was cloudy about -2C (28F). | |||
| When we got to hoverport is started to snow. Not much, but some. There wasn't much cleaning to do with the Explorer anyway. We had it running quite quickly. | |||
| We had again three people onboard and started our trip carefully and managed to get out of narrow section of the path easily. | |||
| When we hit the first bay i realized what was coming up. I was doing only 30km/h (18,6mph) but it was like someone was all the time sticking small needles to my face. Snow that so gently seemed to fall down was actually more like tiny particles of ice. Windshield was mostly frozen and beside that i had to watch carefully for fishermen's gadgets. | |||
| We checked the situation with largest cracks and noticed that it had changed. Still passage over could be found for snow mobile also. | |||
| I really kept a low speed because of snow hitting my face. We headed to open side of the bay just to be able to steer sitting and thus avoiding snow hitting my face. I kind a hoped to see that sea eagle again and we headed to island where we saw it last time. I noticed a red canister on ice and had to check if that's just a garbage or some mark for under surface rock or mark of net or something. I have been tidying the archipelago ever since i started to boat there few years back. This seemed like it had just floated there with current, but it was so much frozen that i couldn't lift it away. | |||
| There was no sign of sea eagle and as it was getting darker we decided to play around in more protected area before going home. We went to spot where we had taped water-ice-water transitions few weeks back. On our way there i checked couple GPS waypoints i had marked during the summer. We drove around few islands and i decided to make a new route through rocky shoal. It was tail wind so i had to take it carefully by dragging the aft of the craft. I had to throttle to get over few rocks sticking though the ice. Aluminium landing skid crashed slight to one of the rocks, no biggie but there was more to come. As soon as Explorer jumped on the full cushion and started to rush forward i noticed that were just about to go under tension cable holding electric cable pole in upright position. Only thing i managed to do was to release throttle and halfly say #@%& and then i heard a quick "zip, zip, zip, zip" sound from propeller... | |||
| Soon after that sound craft drop off cushion. It just took too long to slow down/drop off cushion to prevent this from happening. There was no flying debris from the prop and sound we heard was kind a light so i didn't even stop the engine to check possible damage. Actually passenger who were sitting didn't hear it at all. But it was a sign to get back while we still could. To analyze this incident: sky was cloudy (white clouds) and there was snow on ice making it also mostly white. As it was about 16:15PM it was already dusky. From the direction we approached this place this steel guy rope blended with dark woods in the background to be observed too late. I didn't saw it until i personally was under it and i could see it white clouds as background. | |||
| As it has become customary we live and learn. After this kind of incident you tend to be extra cautious, at least for the rest of the trip anyway. We got back safely and landing was close to perfect. About 12km (7,5miles) was recorded by GPS today, top speed being 40,9km/h (25,4mph). | |||
| After shutting down the engine i inspected the damage of the prop. It was limited to one blade and only to tip section where there is a leading edge tape. It only had small dints spaced ~30mm (1-1/4") apart on leading edge - nothing else. Also it happened to be the very same blade that hit the bearing housing few months back. I'm now thinking of buying one spare part blade in case i actually break one of them sometimes. I wouldn't want to wait for a new blade for couple of months as i had to wait this first delivery. And maybe i'll put full cage over my propeller. It should be made to tilt as i have to go under some low bridges sometimes. | |||