Kathrine AND THE DISASTER

Well after travelling to across to Katherine I was starting to get worried about the oil pressure in the engine of the helicopter. I stopped into Milton Jones setup at Katherine. I met Milton and he offered for me to use his base to conduct some tests on the engine. "Thanks Milton". I did some hovering at the base to test a few things and found the engine was vibrating a little more than usual. I removed the oil cap to have a smell of the oil and it smelt burnt. O dear not good. I removed the oil filter and the pics tell the story

                      Well thats it GAME OVER
Aluminium all through the filter. Thank god for being a mechanic home builder. My gut feeling was not good and was telling me their was an issue. I had thrown one of the main bearings on the crankshaft. Good thing I didn't do that flight over Katherine Gorge other wise I think I may have been a statistic. Game over for the trip and B line home from here.

After arriving back home I had a chance to tear the engine down. This is what I found

The engine had thrown the centre bearing. This engine was sent to the states prior to the trip for a company to build me this supper dooper engine that was going to be reliable and give me more horse power. The guy that does the mods to these engines is quite a intelligent mechanic but this time he made a mistake. The crankshaft was not line bored as stated it was and the balancing of the crankshaft was 180 deg out. I gave the bottom end of the engine to a trusted old school engineer here in my home town of Nowra. He came up with the problem and said the engine was not built properly in the first place. As I have said many time, Do it myself and at least I know what I have done. Line Bored crank cases, new bearings and a rebalance of the crank and thats all the damage I had to fix.
I took the chance to change and re-design a set of updated roller rockers for the engine as well

Looking fantastic and all aligned properly this time, on they go and back together it goes

Fifty hrs of flight have passed now and the engine is running fantastic and smooth

BACK IN THE AIR AGAIN :)

Northern Kimberly

A drive out to Wyndam to get as close to departure zone as I can. Leaving from Wyndam I flew over to Drysdale Station where I used this overnight accomadation as a Base to travel further into the northern Kimberly area of Mitchel Falls and around down to Prince Regent River. These flights were to also be very scary to fly. Over hundreds of Miles of deserted land, and some of the nasty weather conditions that this area can give. Flights were fantastic to see all the beauty this area possesses, here are the pics off the video footage taken

Argle Dam and Kununurra area

With the Bungle Bungles done it was up further towards Kununurra. The ranges around Argle were beautiful. Once again the wind made flights a little scary and bumpy at times . Here are a few screen shots.

Bungle Bungles

The Bungle Bungle first flight was horrible with next to no wind on the ground and twenty knots gusting up to god now how much. I couldn't keep the helicopter still, let alone try and get close enough to film. I re-flew it another two times with no wind and I was able to get the footage I wanted for the video
These are the screen shots off the vids

The video of the Bungle Bungles