Pandora's box . . .

Firstly, there was the flood . . .

I picked up the flight box from the shed to take it to the car and actually heard a sloshing sound from inside it! On opening the box, I discovered about two-and-a-half inches of fuel in two of its three compartments. Surprisingly, no fuel had crept into the third compartment and there was absolutely no trace of fuel outside the box - a good testimony to the sealing properties of Unibond PVA adhesive that I had used to assemble the box, I thought! 

What had happened? The delivery pipe from the fuel bottle had come out of the little parking hole in the bottle cap (or had I forgotten to park it there in the first place?), dropped to the bottom of the box and the fuel had siphoned out of the bottle into the box until it found its own level! Lessons learned? Pump the fuel remaining in the pipe after fuelling back into the bottle and cap the pipe before parking it and closing the box! 

One of the flooded compartments contained my electric starter which was now impregnated with fuel, or at least its sticky lubricant component. Initially, I did not think I could confidently strip it down to investigate the extent of the soaking and actually nipped up to Neville's and bought a new starter. It came fitted with large crocodile clips, so I stuck a couple of uncapped banana plugs into the connection sockets of my power panel and clamped the crocodile clips on to them for starting. 

I then thought I would have a go at stripping down the sticky starter after all, and found that the oily impregnation was confined to the starting switch which I was able to clean up satisfactorily. Be warned, though, if ever you strip one of these starters down and slide the outer casing off the motor, watch out for the spring-loaded bushes to go free-flight; there's also a special little trick to hold them in place as you re-assemble and then to release the springs just before you close the case! Anyway, having salvaged my starter, I decided to fit large crocodile clips on this one also, and therein lay the seeds of the second problem.

. . . and then came the fire!

I was at the field preparing for another lesson with Gordon. The tank was fully fuelled - filler pipe from the fuel bottle emptied, capped and parked, of course! - and I was starting the engine of my New Yamamoto 1600 trainer. Suddenly, in the corner of my eye, I saw a wisp of smoke and as I then looked towards my flight box, I saw dense grey smoke billowing out from under the power panel. "I'm on fire here, Gordon!" I yelled calmly, as you would, and I pulled the crocodile clips off the terminals and snatched the power panel from the box, which in turn pulled the connectors off the 12 volt battery stored underneath it - what a good job I had decided to not permanently fix the power panel in place when I first fitted out the box or I would have not had quick access to the burning leads. At the same time, Gordon quickly grabbed the fuel bottle and removed it from the box to a safe distance.

   
This was the cause of the problem. One of the large crocodile clips had twisted on the banana plug spigot and come into contact with the other, short-circuiting the connection from the battery to the power panel and thus cooking the leads!

For the curious, click on the thumbnail image to the right to see what a few seconds of intense heat can do!