XH558 Maintenance Day

After a very busy summer of tours around the aircraft the team have been able to schedule some time to carry out a maintenance day and give XH558 a little pampering session. 

The day started with bright sunshine on what promised to be a busy day for the team. Our list of tasks for the day were; carry out checks on the flying control system; dry spin the engines; check the tyres and pressures; give the tail area a good wash; do some cleaning in the engine bays and wheel bays; make good a repair to the nose wheel comms connections; exercise the bomb-bay doors; and check hydraulics. 

First job of the day was to bring out all the equipment we needed for the day’s tasks; power set; air starter; nitrogen trolley; giraffe; and safety raiser working platform. All this equipment was towed out using Dug our trusty tug and it snaked across the airfield like some strange looking train at a theme park. 

Starting with connecting power to the aircraft and running up the power set, then making a few electrical system checks, the team run the powered flying controls.  

As XH558 is out on the airfield we do have some resident birds namely an owl and a Kestrel that like to roost on the tail of the aircraft. We don’t mind this but wish they would find another spot for the daily ablutions as it tends to make a bit of a mess. 

Andy Brown can be seen here cleaning the tail area. 

Before spinning the engines all the blanks need to be removed and all the intakes checked for debris. 

Seen above Andy Deakins and Connor Sykes preparing to take out the intake blanks and Andy Deakins checking for any debris and anything that does not look right inside the air intake. The whole intake down to the engine has to be checked. 

Once all the checks have been made then we can proceed with the engine spin on all four engines. 

Andy Deakins listening in to the cockpit whilst spinning no. 1 engine. 

One of the other jobs we completed was a repair to the nose wheel comms unit which Martin Price had started on a previous day. The task was simply just a finishing off job and all’s well. 

By 1 o clock what started as a nice sunny day turned wet and windy, so the team made the call to call it a day as we had completed all the tasks we set out to complete. 

On our next outing we will be looking at a sticky airbrake and topping up all the hydraulics.