MPE Suspension Upgrade

 

I've been a bit slack lately with keeping this blog up to date. I just haven't been feeling it to be honest but if I don't get a few things written down I will kick myself in years to come as this blog, if nothing else, is a great diary. Things that would otherwise be easily forgotten are right here to refresh an ageing memory.

With that in mind, I recently (well, actually back in September! Told you I've been slack!) organised to get the Desert X's suspension upgraded by MPE in Caloundra to better suit my weight and riding (lack of)style. I had to be up there for an 8am opening as I needed the work done on the day and it is an approximately 7 hour job. An early start saw me arrive at about 0730 and hang around the car park. One of the staff who arrived early pointed me across the road to a gym where they made decent coffee. That done, MPE was open for business when I returned, so I handed the bike over and caught an Uber into Caloundra to kill some time. After wandering around for a few hours, going into the public library and reading some magazines I was up to midday.....what to do for the rest of the day? Hey, Caloundra has an aviation museum at the airport that I had never visited.....so I caught another Uber out there to check it out.

So, the QLD Air Museum doesn't look like much from the street but they have an enormous number of aircraft packed in there!

Walking through the front door you are immediately confronted with their prized possession. A frickin' F-111 !

It takes up the whole length of the entry hangar and is very imposing.  So imposing that I couldn't get a good photo of it in this confined space!

These aircraft are an amazing feat of engineering considering they were designed and first flown in the mid 1960's. Swing wing, Mach 2+ capable with ground following autopilots to keep them below enemy radar! Think about where car and motorcycle technology was in the mid 1960's for comparison. Here are Ford and Holden's best work at the time....

The 'Pig" was pure rocket science by comparison and being able to practically climb all over one of the few remaining ones was a privilege.

The rest of the museum is partly outdoor and partly covered static displays. Each aircraft has an information board by it's side and many have stairs so that you can look into the cockpits. I'm just going to (mostly) do a bit of a photo dump of these and the details are on the information boards.

This first one is a Metroliner III. This is close to what I was flying in my previous job, some 21 years ago. A simple but honest commuter/freighter.

Hawker Hunter.

Bell UH-1 Iroquois.

DC-3 on the left.

De Haviland Meteor and North American F-86 Sabre.

North American P-51D.

Lockheed Ventura.

English Electric Canberra.

The following was Australia's front line fighter, along with the F-111 bomber when I was a lad. 

It's still "dead sexy"!

Beech Starship! 

This is the first Starship I have ever seen in the flesh and I have no idea what it is doing here!

Lockheed P-3 Orion.

Mig 15 Trainer.

Transavia Sky Truck.

There are many other displays in the main hanger and I found this one to be particularly interesting. Deb Lawry was a pioneer for women in aviation here in Australia. I am proud to say that I assisted her in the simulator earlier this year as she completed her return to work training with my airline after the Covid 19 shakeout that saw many pilots put out of work. Yep, she is still flying!

Just as I was finishing up I had a call from MPE to say my bike was done. A couple of hour early too! Once I had managed to get a cab (Uber wasn't responding) back to their workshop, the big girl was waiting for me. 

She had new spring rates both ends to accommodate my "mass", along with revalved damping to better suit Aussie conditions. I must say, I like the red spring better than the standard yellow one. It is definitely more "Ducati".

MPE provide a sheet with all of the specs of what they have done and how best to set the pre-load and damping for various loads. They transformed the handling of my Africa Twin and I am very confident that they will have fixed the shortcomings of the standard Desert X suspension of too soft in the rear and the waaay too harsh fork reaction to small, sharp bumps.

Now to get it in the dirt and see how it goes.

Cheers.