a fairground life(learning curve)

alas yesterday evening the dropzone would not work again.for three hours we tried cleaning the brush gear and the bands to no avail. the ride would go 3/4 the way to the top and then stop. the alarm code shown on the display reported an air fault in the restraint system, but after checking this system we concluded the fault alarm was the symptom and not the cause. it seemed to be a connection fault on the bands. we could not get to the top area were we thought the fault was (12m high) so we decided to leave it until this morning and then lower the tower so we could get at the problem area. it was raining this morning and i said to "r" the ride will work because the rain water will bridge the connection. thats exactly what happened! the ride worked without us doing a thing. not to leave anything to chance we deliberatley isolated brush connections until we recreated the fault alarm. this indicated to us which band to inspect. since there are 12 bands each with 3 sections this did save a lot of searching time. we lowered the tower and inspected the correct band at the problem area. a mega meter confirmed our suspitions as there was a voltage drop across the joint. it turns out that the wire connections are not soldered or bolted to the band's copper rail , but only clipped on by means of a small copper horse shoe. this slip on connection had some corrosion around it and as soon as we moved it the connection resumed. it was only a matter of cleaning this and tightening the clip again. job done. this is our first season with the dropzone and all systems are still a little strange to us, but by the end of the season i'm confident we will have learned all it's querks and ironed out the wrinkles. after all it's only a learning curve!

after 1pm we started on preparing the foden for its mot, while ajusting the brakes I noticed we had a leaking brake chamber. Sometimes you can get lucky and repair it by changing the diaphram, but apparently luck isn't with me this week as I was informed I needed another chamber. it should arrive tomorrow.