| Sunday weather turned out to be better than at Saturday. It was around 0C (32F), 5cm (2") fresh snow on the ground and breeze. Sky was cloudy. | |||
| Primary target for this operation was to replicate minor problems we had yesterday with engine and hopefully to fix them. On our way to hoverport i called one of my friends to ask him if he was interested to get a ride in a hovercraft. He was interested and we agreed to meet 12:00AM at parking lot few kilometers west of hoverport. | |||
| We had a bit of work to do to get there in time. First of all had to get rid of snow before starting the engine. Engine started fine and idled for a while, but after i tried to throttle engine started to run unevenly and did not tolerate any throttle. Good thing was tha we didn't have to work so hard to replicate problems we experienced yesterday. I shut the engine down, took the tools i had brought with and crawled to engine bay. It was clearly a case of moisture in electrical system. Engine was still a little bit messy after disaster we had few months back. I wiped distributor cap, spark plug wires and ignition coil with clean rag and sprayed some cleaning spray over them. I checked also fuel pump and cleaned&sprayed that too. | |||
| By the time i was finished with cleaning the engine electrical system, my girlfriend finished cleaning the soft top and windshield. Engine started right away and run smoothly. We took of at 11:30AM. There was time to checkout if my father-in-law had catch any big fish while fishing. It was easier to operate on a snow than on plain ice. Steering actually had some effect this time and it was easy to speed up even on tight curves before entering bay. We did a quick stop only to see that fish were still sleeping today. While we throttled away to get to our scheduled meeting we got a phone call: something had dropped from the craft after recent take off. I knew right away what it was, but still turned back to check it out. I wonder how i managed or (anyone else for that matter) before cell phones... And i was right, piece of floatation foam was loose and had found a way out of the bag skirt. No biggie, we were on our way shortly. | |||
| We were there on time and had enough time to remove snow that was in rudders and on skirt and to answer few questions made by people on their way to do ice fishing. Our passengers arrived few minutes late, but well prepared. I gave a few words of precaution to passengers who were in a hovercraft for the first time, including tips where to grab if bad thing start to happen and when it's good time to start grabbing. We did a half an hour tour including open water, thin ice, thicker ice, cornering around boulders and transition ice to land although there isn't that much difference at this time of the year. | |||
| After we dropped our passengers where we picked them we made a few phone calls if there was anyone else in around available for a ride in a hovercraft. But we couldn't get anyone on a such a short notice, so we called it a day too. We played a while at river upstream of the hoverport. Years ago this river was dredged and remains of that are still on some parts of the river. It's a sort of a sandbar crossing for me. | |||
| We did 20,9km (13miles) in a cloudy weather. Even though in advance weather didn't seem to be good for hovering it was, mostly because of the new snow we had yesterday and during the night. It made steering lot easier than on smooth ice. | |||