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Post by aeromedia on Sept 15, 2011 14:43:35 GMT 12
Lyndon, great to have you join the thread seeing as you star quite a lot in it !!!! I'm def heading your way at some stage, although I have the rather pleasant interruption of the Temora Warbirds Downunder Airshow in November so wont be around then. Maybe before, . . more likely afterwards. Can't believe you hadn't seen that pic of the MkII's on the rail wagons. I thought you'd seen everything available. I can't lay claim to finding it. I borrowed it from elsewhere on this excellent forum. I agree with Dave H, your own story about finding, acquiring and the journey with 1051 would also make a great story. I'd read it ! At this point I should explain to fellow forumites that lately I've been trying to stitch you back into another T6 project. I found this one for him everyone . . . www.courtesyaircraft.com/Current%20Inventory/N713AW%20North%20American%20SNJ-5%20Project.htm . . . . . . . . . but he's not biting. Seems to have fallen for helicopters along the way. Very disappointing. ;D I looked up "helicopter" in the dictionary and it said "f***up waiting to happen."
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Post by baz62 on Sept 15, 2011 15:05:13 GMT 12
Yes being an ex harvard restorer myself (although not in Lyndon's league!!) i would be keen to hear some stories too! yeah I know why Lyndon's not biting, there doesn't appear to be anything from the firewall forward in that project. I was chatting to a T6 owner who swore he would never do another one unless it was complete nose to tail. It cost him close to $100K to get everything that was missing from the firewall forward. Don't know if he was exaggerating or not but thats a lot of coin in US dollars alone! Mind you if you can get the bits for the right price I'm sure it would be no problem for Lyndon. ;D Helicopters? They don't fly, the ground rejects them! Ha ha apologies to the rotary fans! ;D
EDIT: Oh I see there is an engine mount and an oiltank so there is some things there. ;D
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 15, 2011 17:21:16 GMT 12
Yeah, itd be hard to go past an aircraft like this, complete and annualed at $89.500 US ! From Barnstormers website. Have to be the cheapest airworthy T6 I can remember seeing since the 70's !!!! 1943 N. AMERICAN SNJ-4 (AT6-C) • $89,500 • SALE PENDING • 1943 North American SNJ-4 (AT6-C). N7055K. Airframe 5965 hours (Hobbs). Engine 1526 hours (Hobbs). Prop about 20 hours since overhaul (cost $7500). Current annual, will include annual with sale. Mostly original. Flown weekly. Well maintained. Great ride airplane or for personal ownership. Older avionics and intercom - but all work well. Glass OK. Make me an offer! Open to trades. Call Travis 858-531-1228. • Contact Travis N. Daniels, Owner - located San Diego, CA USA • Telephone: 858-531-1228 . • Fax: 619-334-8440 • Posted August 27, 2011 • Show all Ads posted by this Advertiser • Recommend This Ad to a Friend • Email Advertiser • Save to Watchlist • Report This Ad • View Larger Pictures • Finance New Lower Rates!
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 15, 2011 18:01:38 GMT 12
Let me see, where are we? So I have most of the bits I had foolishly let go, back, and we have bought a bit of dirt near the Ashburton Airport and this is great because back in 1974 when I was 17, I placed an advt in the local paper and called a meeting from which sprang the Ashburton Aviation Museum and that was now going to be my neighbour over the road! More bits were arriving along the way, I remember a parcel of panels from Mike Nicholls among other things and warbirds have engines right??, and I could probably do with one of those. Lying alongside the AAM's hangar was the carcass of a P&W 1340 with a couple of cylinders still attached and blanking plates over the other 7 positions, with mounting lugs on two of them. I wrote to the museums curator and managed to buy the engine from the museum for 3 hundy. Anyone care to suggest what this might have been used in since its Harvard-powering days?
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Post by jasonmac on Sept 15, 2011 18:17:59 GMT 12
My garage is fast becoming the north island storage receptacle for this project - Lyndon, if you've got some bits that you need to move on due to space etc, I will happily home them. I'd also love to catch up and chat planes one day.. ! Cheers
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 15, 2011 18:24:42 GMT 12
I rang Greg Ryan with a request. Greg, bless him, is a good guy, but sometimes hard to pin down. Anyway, I was coming up to Auckland for something and I wanted to know if he would sell me some cylinders retired off active engines, that would be suitable for bolting to my 1340 which was only going to be a display engine looking externally complete. He said yep, he had some and arranged to leave them in a particular container which wouldn't be locked and I could collect them at the weekend. Also a back plate casting for the 1340 and some other bits and bobs. So I grab a rental, drive out to Ardmore wondering if the bits would really be there and Glory Be To God, . . THEY WERE ! Hallay Frikin Looo Yaaa !
Now the interesting bit starts. I have a rental car with the boot and the back seats loaded with nine cylinders (which take a bit of room) and the other castings. How the heck am I going to get all this home? Mmmmm,.. well you better get thinking Peter and come up with something quick.
So I drive out toward the Auckland Airport and pull up at a service station on the way and did two things. A: bought HEAPS of packing tape, and B: Managed to acquire a stack of cartons from a recycling crate out the back of the service station. So here I am, with the car opened up, feeling like the special needs aeroplane nerd, as I'm individually boxing up all these cylinders with old cardboard cartons and embalming them heavily in packing tape. Then the whole performance goes back into the (quite small) rental car. I return the car and proceed to stack all this stuff on two airport trolletys, and proceed to herd the unweildly load across to the terminal and up to the airline counter.
What I made sure I did was get to the counter wayyyyyy ahead of time and fortunately, I was about the only one near the counter and a very nice checkin lady watched and wondered as I approached with what must have looked like an utter circus.
"and what have we got here?" . . she enquired. "Vintage Aeroplane Parts," said I both proudly and nervously. "And here's the thing," I continued, . . "I need to get these to Christchurch and I really need your help to get these on board the plane for my vintage Harvard I am restoring. I promise, if you can make this happen for me, I will personally come around to your place and mow your lawn next time I'm in Auckland," I said.
Fortunately she had a good sense of humour and agreed to check everything through, although she made it quite clear she didn't want me at her house, ever !!
What a sweetie. I finished, relieved by this stage, by saying to her, "please tell the pilot that if any of this is useful for the flight down to Christchurch, please help himself."
All that stuff, nice check in lady, and not a cent excess baggage.
How good can it get?
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 15, 2011 18:38:24 GMT 12
Back in the early 90's I'm over at the Aviation Museum, and Jim Chivers says "there's a fella you should probably be talking to about your Harvard, he was just in here. He's an Air NZ wheels and brakes man, John Skene." I got hold of John, and found that he, like me, was really into old planes. He had a lovely collection of stuff of his own, much of which he had "brought back from the brink", and he took a shine to my Harvard project. He'd come over to my shed, on many occassions and we'd talk old planes for ages and he'd disappear with some crusty old bits out of my various boxes. In next to no time, he'd be back, within weeks, and these same parts looked factory fresh, stripped, painted, tagged, bagged and ready to "bolt on" when required. Wow ! Two fairly shoddy looking instrument panels disappeared and duly reappeared looking pristine ! This went on for quite some time and I certainly wasn't complaining, thats for sure. Great work John. I'm still digging out bits you did up, and figuring out where they go.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Sept 15, 2011 19:21:44 GMT 12
Great story about the cylinders. I too have found when shifting from base to base in the past that the check in people are great if you are overloaded but get there well ahead of the flight.
John Skene is a great chap, he contributed a lot of info to my website back a few years ago. I haven't heard from him in a while, i hope he's keeping well.
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 15, 2011 19:24:30 GMT 12
He's very well I believe. A CAA man these days, lives in Wairarapa, works in Wellington, and plays at Hood.
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Post by propellor on Sept 16, 2011 18:47:35 GMT 12
Hi Peter, Just read this thread. I am glad I am not the only "insane" person in the world. Keep up the writing and more pics please. Apart from my DC-3 project I did other things as well. I restored a 1964 Porsche 356 and owned an Ex-RAF Air Sea Rescue boat. So the hunter gatherer virus is in me as well. One line of yours got me thinking again though: "I learned a very very valuable lesson. Never let something go you've fought so hard to acquire, without thinking about it for a very long time first!"Bart, Amsterdam www.propellor.tv
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 16, 2011 18:59:57 GMT 12
Hi Bart, pleased you've found my thread. I think that line might be coming back to haunt me !!! But you have to do what's right for you. I'm waiting at the other side of the planet with my catching mits on should you go through with it.
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 23, 2011 17:56:51 GMT 12
One major T6 item that had eluded me (apart from the battered example mentioned earlier) and was continuing to elude me in NZ, was the rear fuselage. I wondered whether fabricating one in timber might be an option for my purposes, after all as you know a number of Harvards in NZ had wooden rear fuses. I was looking around on-line and came up with an outfit called California Texans, located in Auburn California. They owned a reasonable holding of T6 parts that they'd put together from various sources and their mantra was "T6 Parts for the next Fifty years." After being enthused by what I could see on their website, I pinged off an enquiry about rear fuselages and I got a reply back from Ken Dwelle. Now its time for a bit of background. If that surname sounds familiar, The Dwelles have been joined at the hip to serious aviation for generations. Tom Dwelle, Kens dad, raced Sea Fury Critical Mass at Reno and Ken was a former USAF Stealth fighter pilot. As well as other family business interests, he was running Californaia Texans and he couldn't have been more helpful. At one point I communicated to Ken that pehaps, I would just settle for mocking up something in wood. He came back with,"You obviously have a much better set of shop tools than me !!!!" He agreed to sell me a rear fuse absolutely suitable for a static project at a VERY reasonable price and asked me what else I was looking for.
It still blows me away, but here was an avaition professional, up to his armpits in serious business and air racing endeavours, and this is what he did. He constructed a beautiful crate, a work of art in itself, to ship my rear fuse in. It was a thing of wonder from plywood and framing, all screwed together and a LOT of effort obviously had gone into it.
I arranged with a mate who knew a bloke that brought containers into Port Chalmers from California, and I secured some space in that. When I collected it from MAF and Customs, I couldn't believe it. This beautiful crate with my rear fuse braced and screwed within it, AND a stack of things from my wants list that I hadn't paid for but were thrown in to "sweeten the deal" Among them a really nice front windscreen assembly and duck bill fully glazed, a major side panel for the starboard side, and my tailwheel unit even came from there. Plus various other sundries also. Ten years on, I'm still stunned at the effort this man went to for some bottom-of-the-food-chain static project at the other end of the earth!!!! Incredible, an enormous help to my project and a neat association formed along the way. Ken, by the way, built up a T6 Reno Racer from the family companys parts holding. it was a scracth built T6 that hadn't existed previously. it raced at Reno as "Kitchen Pass". Thanks Ken, you went WAY beyond the call. Just wonderful!
I sometimes still wishfully google up "California Texans" in the hope that they will magically reappear, but sadly, the Dwelles moved out of the T6 parts business some time ago now, and California Texans is just a pleasant memory. A big pity, cos they kept some healthy competition in the T6 parts business, and obviously, really great people.
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 23, 2011 18:15:25 GMT 12
Ken Dwelle "turning a wrench" on another of the familys famous T6's, "Tinker Toy." Ken set a new record in this at Reno back in 2008. Reno Air Race 2008 At-6 Gold AT-6 Gold race on Sunday Sept 14 2008 at the Reno/Stead Airport. Ken Dwelle took first place in this race and set a new Course and Lap record speed in Tinker Toy at 244.523MPHNot bad for an aircraft with an original top speed of 208 mph.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Sept 23, 2011 20:15:24 GMT 12
It is great to read such a generous story as that Peter.
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 24, 2011 6:21:02 GMT 12
Cheers Dave. I'll try to keep the story running without too many gaps, although I'm up to my armpits in the AAM Superhangar Official Opening for the next week. I'm taking Wed, Thur and Fri off work to build staging, fly lighting, set up tables and install greenery. Should be a busy but great occasion.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Sept 24, 2011 12:02:54 GMT 12
No worries - take whatever time you need. Please post some photos of the superhangar opening. Who'd have thought, NZ opens two brand new aviation museum superhangars within a month, amazing stuff considering the recession we're in.
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 24, 2011 20:24:03 GMT 12
Front cockpit of 914. The blank plate on the lower left will be replaced by the refurbished electrics panel shown earlier, eventually. When I find the other bits.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Sept 24, 2011 20:29:05 GMT 12
Wow that looks really nice!
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 26, 2011 14:33:52 GMT 12
Thanks ! More of John Skenes handiwork there. There's another one just like it for the rear cockpit, but still a few gaps to fill there. I managed to trade a few instruments and a prop with a large museum that specialises in military aviation. They wanted something I had, and vice versa and the planets aligned.
It is a journey.
With the advent of the Classic Cockpits which I put together for Wanaka, it was time to cobble what I could together and get the frame to Wanaka for 2006. It was a real race against time but we got there. The biggest challenge was lining up the tube frame with the rear fuse and gettting the missing bits of the rear of the tube frame welded up to receive the rear fuse. Even though the rear fuse didnt go to Wanaka, I needed to get the roughly amputated rear looking respectable.
I have those photos somewhere, will post them here as soon as I locate them.
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Post by aeromedia on Sept 26, 2011 14:37:16 GMT 12
The spade grip came via Lyndon and is a very nice piece. Kind of crowns the front cockpit really. Still looking for a wooden stick for the rear.
I had two really really cruddy throttle quadrants that were on the frame when I got it. I mean they were shite. I managed to get another couple of really good quadrants and used those and gave the rubbish ones to JS. And you guessed it, he played with them and they turned out looking fabulous after all.
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