Just wishing all those that might be visiting this blog-site a very happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year – here’s hoping for some good flying in 2012 and I look forward to sharing some more Auster flying tales with you in the coming year.

JT is in the middle of her Permit renewal as I write and to date we’ve sorted quite a few little snags out:

The Exhaust and gaskets have been removed for replacement, the Flight / Ground switch, which had practically seized, has been serviced and now works like a dream, the generator brushes have been replaced with nice, new ones and we’ve replaced the pitot line out the back of the ASI after discovering a nasty leak in the system. We’ve also removed the long dead ( and heavy ) Air Driven AI and the hosing for the similarly defunct Air Driven DG, as well as tidying up generally with things like cleaning out the spark plugs and lubricating everything. There’s still quite a lot to do – all the recurrent ADs and SBs and replacing the rudder cables, as well as cylinder and hose compression and leak checks etc, but it’s progressing well and we hope to have it all sorted and JT flying again by the end of January – giving us a clear run for a full year’s flying in 2012.

So here’s to the ups and downs of vintage flying and looking forward to a hopeful trouble-free year ahead for us all. Happy landings folks!