| Ride with Erich B. (A.K.A. Gargamel or Catweazl) | |||
| Forecast was nothing but sun shine and it really was. Day was almost calm and temperature close to 20C (68F) during the day. Nice day for Erich to drive his Caddy for few hundred kilometers one way. | |||
| Erich is also building Sevtec Explorer and now it was time to make few final seam for skirt for his Explorer and put two large pieces together. We used the same shop that did skirt for my Explorer. But what's all this has to do with operation report ? Well, after welding those seam we took a short test drive in my Explorer of course. | |||
| It was after 8:00PM when we finally got to hoverport, but weather was still looking good. We started right away allthough there was still two hours of sun left for the day. Just normal route down the river to bay. Total of three persons were onboard. | |||
| We were doing 25km/h when engine suddenly stopped working. I and Erich started to look for possible problem and noticed steam coming from the radiator, but that shouldn't stop the engine. I checked engine wiring and fuel filter. And there it was, fuel filter was empty. Fuel pump was not running and reason for that was bad connection between fuel pump relay and relay foot. We were lucky that we still had that relay and it hadn't dropped off... | |||
| I let Erich drive a bit, when we got engine running again. No one else hasn't shown any interest in driving this hovercraft allthough everyone wants to go for a ride with it. And i've asked this few times actually. Erich got to drive a bit and get a feeling for Explorer. Let's see if i get to drive his craft this summer ? We got back and water was quite low. I really had to drive to ashore with speed to get far enough. It's not the speed that kills you but ratherly the sudden stop. I had to drop craft off cushion so that i wouldn't hit the shed. | |||
| We did 10km (6miles) and spend less than an hour hovering. This operation again confirms that bigger radiator placed lower and in better in air stream is needed for summertime operations. But more of this in future Construction report. I wrote the same after last operation only changing propably bigger radiator to bigger radiator and added placed lower statement. | |||