The re-acquaintance with my original Edge was a pleasure and I spent a couple of afternoons roasting around getting my muscle memory topped up with Edge roll rates and feel. This Edge is set up as original and there is something very satisfying about flying an aeroplane that is as the designer intended. There is nothing wrong with my race Edge but it is set up for exactly that: racing, whereas this older Edge in standard trim is a joy to fly.
Meanwhile we’ve been playing with engines… we’ve yet to get the confirmed details but it seems that we’ve not been running with the power that we thought we had. Several components do not seem to have been tweaked as advertised and we’ve had to sort out various clearances which were costing us some power. Whilst we will still not have a huge increase of power for Budapest, at least we’ve tidied the engine up and know that it will run within tolerance. The engine was dyno tested yesterday morning and it is virtually identical to my last engine (which was tested last week) which is a little disheartening… I’m looking forward to the official report on what was actually inside my engine.
Budapest… the track looks like fun and could suit our aeroplane (emphasis on “could”)… and watch out for the incorrect knife-edge penalties because on each run of the course there are four knife-edge passes. The real challenge will be the bridge this year if we’re allowed to fly under it. There is a water level limit which will determine whether we start under or over the bridge… so the weather in Europe will be the deciding factor… lots of rain and a high running Danube and we will probably be over the bridge like last year. If we do go under the bridge we will have the added challenge of monitoring our speed as well as missing the bridge. Previously we didn’t have the start speed limit so we could concentrate 100% on the bridge and water but this year will be different. If you meet a pilot during race week, don’t be surprised if they have shifty eyes… it’ll just be habit from swapping views from the bridge to the speedometer to the water 100 times a second (which let’s face it… you’d do if you were going to squeeze between a bridge and a river by 3 metres either side at 370 kmph!)