| After a quite long lasting period of cold weather it's finally getting reasonable to think about hovering. We had about three weeks of about -10...-25C (14...-14F). | |||
| It's been about two months since last operation and i was kind skeptical if battery is still alive or not. | |||
| But my fear turned out to be unnecessary. After we dig the craft under the snow (that took about 20 minutes alone) i turned on the main switch and ignition to let fuel pump fill the fuel lines while i was preparing myself for the ride. When i was ready i tried to crank and it started immediately. | |||
| But next problem was that it had been two months and craft was located in this particular spot because of high water level and it had been weeks of freezing temp since. It was frozen down a bit ,but nothing too serious to get it loose. Funny thing we noticed: soil underneath the craft was not frozen at all. There were numerous shrew passages and i bet that family lost a good place to stay over winter. | |||
| I first took a short ride on the river too check everything works as it should before going any further. It's again slippery i noticed. Compared to riding in summer ice hovering is totally different game. Craft slides on the ice so easily that's it would be hard to even imagine that without experiencing it personally. Other than that craft seemed to work perfectly. I left a trace of debris behind me when frozen bits of grass started to drop from hull and skirt. | |||
| Maybe carb was freezing a bit or just have too high setting of idle speed, but it was very difficult to get engine running slow enough for hovering on a narrow river on ice. Tach showed 1600-1800rpm so have to take a look at that before next trip. | |||
| We headed to the bay. There ice was going to be strong enough for us, we knew that and we also knew that there would be strong ice quite far away from the shoreline. We were not going to check how far it would hold us, though. But what was quite surprising was the number of ice fisher's out there! Luckily we were able to find a way without running over any of them. | |||
| There was a wind element too which we didn't notice until it was time to turn back. It's funny when in summer conditions tail wind means you're going to get to your destination faster and head wind means you're going to struggle to get there. But in winter conditions head wind means more control over craft and you'll get to your destination, tail wind meaning close to zero control over craft and you have to play to get to your destination. Time to time i had to slow the speed and gather it up again. Whole tail wind drive is a series of continuos 360's to keep the speed within the reason. We had few "that was close" situations, but thanks to huge skirt in Sevtec Explorer we got through. Although i was a little skeptical about it few times... | |||
| All in all 40 minutes of successful hovering in a sunny weather. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon. Didn't have my GPS with me to check the mileage or top speed, but never throttled more than one third of the full throttle. Have to learn to be easy on the throttle for winter use. | |||