Saturday april 2nd, a nice day for a ride with beautiful weather.
After take off, turning out of the circuit and towards the lake, having a
passenger onboard, a ride over water is always a bit more smooth.
After 15 minutes of flight a Whoosh sound was noted, I did not take long to
realize that the pilot door had disappeared and had actually departed the
aircraft. Was I glad being over water.
The aircraft was undammaged and flying it was not different, except for a
lot of noise due to the wind.
After an uneventfull landing and a couple of days of thinking and
investigating this mishap, it is most likely that the door did lock at the
forward position, but the aft locking pin was outside the fuselage.
Being a quite new Europa flyer I have been asking around and this seems to
be a frequent observation.
Now working on a solution, probabely a set of microswitches and a small
light will do the trick, since it is almost impossible to verify by the eye.
A thanks to Andy of Europa, who responded quickly and is trying to get the
parts over even this week !!
Cheers
Sven den Boer
A168 (Cabrio)
|