Thanks to Bumper (John), Marc, and JJ for passing on your knowledge. I
am going out to work on this today and test the pluming and see what I
find. Hopefully I'm get everything working early as it looks like an
excellent soaring day. I went flying yesterday but with, in retrospect,
the pitot and static TE ports blocked had no working vario or computer
so was not able to take much advantage of the conditions then - I was
wondering why my LNAV kept telling me I had a 50 kt tailwind! I might
have already damaged the mechanical vario per Marc's comment as I went
up to 8000 ft with the static port apparently blocked.
Regarding "leaf rollers", a few weeks ago I had to work on my
motorglider's (bear with me here JJ, stop gnashing your teeth) motor
retraction and the motor was extended for a long period. I happened to
notice an insect which seemed to be periodically flying in and out of
the motor, near the metal cooling fins on the cylinder. Finally when I
again saw it disappear in there I went and looked and found way back a
bug's eyes looking out at me! That thing did not want to budge, as I
tried poking in with a screwdriver (which could not fit all the way in
to the hole) and the bug stubbonly remained. Finally I found a long
very thin screwdriver and managed to kill it, but the fact that this bug
was seeming to want to make a hole in my engine certainly made an
impression! So perhaps this was one of those "leaf rollers". I had
been putting some white tape over the TE probe hole between uses, but
one time I noticed that the tape had not stayed attached so it is
certainly possilbe that something got in there, particularly since there
have been long periods when the plane has not been flown. Anyway, will
see what I find today.
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