Tonight I took advantage of a break in the weather to go for a quick late afternoon flight.  The conditions were perfect, a broken cloud layer at 7000 feet, mild temperatures, dappled sunlight shinning on the emerald green valley floor, and perfectly smooth air.  I practiced more take-offs and landings and just flew around the valley enjoying the scenery.  I should have been performing flight testing but I just couldn’t resist playing tourist instead.

I had a minor incident this evening as I was making the last landing of the day.  I was on short final, approximately 60 MPH and I pulled in the last notch of flaps.  About 5 seconds later I heard a loud noise, like a bang or pop, and then both flaps retracted themselves.  The flap lever was still in the fully deployed position in the last notch.  After I landed I was able to push the flap lever back down.  As I did so I heard some pops that sounded like metal threads slipping.  I examined the rod ends and everything looked okay.  I worked the flap handle again and everything seemed to work normally.  I fully deployed the flaps again and was not able to duplicate the problem by pushing up on the flaps manually.  I’m going to give the flap push-pull cables a more thorough examination tomorrow when the light is better.

I’ve got an email into the technical support folks at Rans to see if they have any ideas.