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Post by denysjones on Oct 21, 2023 20:12:02 GMT 12
First up..this week the views on this thread passed the 100,000 mark. Many thanks to all the folks out there who find this of sufficient interest to keep coming back as it is of encouragement to keep beavering on. Now a wee bit of a diversion into puzzle land as this week a parcel of these goodies arrived from Mike Nicholls. The top three are the E-2 lights I was seeking a couple of weeks back but of almost as much value is the bottom left $5 special which is a dome light cover and is the last of those I needed for the aircraft, being for the navigator's area. (If you want to revert to page 21 and the posts of 24/11/20 and 8/12/20 and page 29 20/11/21 you can follow the process that this will round off). The green on the new piece is darker than the Hudson interior green and so reveals this to be a Ventura part, as was another that Mike had gifted of old. Now if in this photo you look at approximately 10 o'clock around the aperture is stamped 13644, with the last 4 cut off. This is the part number of the cover in the Ventura parts book. The cutting off of the last digit reveals that the cover must have been pressed, then stamped with the number, and then the aperture cut out which seems to raise the question about the how and why the number was stamped where it is as it should have been known that it would suffer that fate. However if you look at approx 3 o'clock there is a double stamping in a much smaller font and which appears to read 136445. In the parts book there a four locations in the aircraft where this part appears and all four use the number as 13644. But...(there has to be a "but") the previous cover I dealt with was stamped, in the original large font, as 13644-2 so is this latest one supposedly 13644-5 and that last bit got cut off? Perhaps to the right of the original stamp you may see the top of the -x digit and it looks more like the top of a 2 not a 5. Anyway what's the go with this extra digit? The cover is such a simple item I can't believe it has gone through versions 1-5. Moving on to simpler pastimes the day was spent on three more units of plumbing for the anti-icing systems.
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Post by denysjones on Oct 28, 2023 20:11:48 GMT 12
This week's home project time was mainly focused on the three recognition lights for 2035 and it very promptly became another puzzle. The parts book and E&M manual were no help regarding the installation of them, merely confirming what is obvious, namely three lights in a row under the nose. I delved into the blueprints archive and turned up one for a simple piece of plate with a 4 5/16" hole in the centre surrounded by six plate nuts, lights-for-the-fixing-of. The holes in the lights themselves corresponded to it with six dimpled holes showing that countersunk screws were the order of the day and indicating that the units mounted external to the underskin and that's where things came unstuck. The belly skin on 2035 in this area is original and around the light holes shows no holes for screws. Also the inside of the skin doesn't show any plate nuts but rather has this fitting. The surrounding skin doubler matches the one in the blueprint, if you count the peripheral rivets, but nowhere could I find info on the round fitting which is far too small for the lights- to-sit-inside-of. On the top ring of the fitting there are three screw holes and beneath therebe plate nuts. Alex suggested that the pattern of those nuts looked akin to those in the Mosquito for its equivalent lights and a test with one of the lights for HR339 confirmed that. Given that the parts book calls out the E2 US lights I've proceeded on the path of making up adaptors to fit to the lights and then attach to these three nuts as a best guess answer, and which don't preclude changes in the future. When I originally started cleaning these fittings I found the crystalised remnants of rubber donuts inside them so am now contemplating what that all means but for the moment here's a test positioning! With the lights Mike kindly supplied a common US control box, that he knew of from other aircraft types, and I started to delve into where this would mount in the aircraft (of course nothing of any help about that in the parts book or E&M manual). Luckily I have the pilots notes for the RA-28/RA-29 US bomber equivalent of the Hudson which showed it attached to the control pedestal. From the blueprints archive came this which reveals it to be a Lockheed job using an OEM part from a radio parts firm in LA. Anybody out there got one in their treasure trove? The box Mike supplied turned out to be appropriate to Harvards and as Team1058 didn't have one, given Mike's blessing, it has now moved to that project. All of this lighting stuff did produce a welcome bonus in the solution to a three year old puzzle. As part of a parts swap with Stu Atkinson came a plywood backed envelope style satchel, stenciled 2046. Since then I've pondered where it actually fits, the sole clue being that it had 6 domes on the plywood for fixing it in place. This week during the trawling of the RA-28/RA-29 book I happened upon a page with this illustration that appeared to yield the solution. Today I looked at that place in the w/o's den on the kick panel on the wing spar carry-through. Damn! Yet again 2035 is different as you see an so poses the question as to what these mounts are for and of course still where goes the satchel? Ah well there's always next week or one thereafter!
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Post by denysjones on Nov 4, 2023 20:17:01 GMT 12
2035's progress today was the fitting of the second of the recognition lights plus last week's tubing fabrication. However as a follow-on from last week's bit about the pouch on the spar plate I measured the centres between the two riv-nuts you see near top right of the plate as these look to have been where the male portions of dome fasteners would attach. I compared these with the female fastener parts on the rear of the pouch and it turned out that the separation between items 1 and 2 was different to 2 and 3 but the latter matches the ones on the spar plate so that's where 2035 had a pouch. Down near the bottom of the plate you see the second row of riv-nuts. I had a new task on the list for today stimulated by Emron's post on the MoTaT thread of the air drying system board for the Sunderland. The minute I saw his picture I was sure I recognised the topmost component as being on a shelf in our store. This morning before delving into the store I checked 4112 and had no problems locating where the unit should be in the cockpit as there it be complete with the recognised top item. Out in the store I indeed found the one I remembered plus three examples of what I believe to be the bottom-most of the three in the vertical line (refer Ron's post) . One's gone home for cleaning this week but on the basis of a metal disk attached, which after de-rusting showed the word "dehydrated", would seem to be pretty likely to be confirmed. Meanwhile 633Sqn have completed the major fuselage woodworking task and Dag is now off onto the wing leaving Alex to finish off the fabric covering of the forward fuselage. George and his team have also finished their aileron rebuilds and so the workshop has had a sort out and tidy up pending new works starting. Following the old tradition where builders erected a flag in the course of a house building major milestone the team put up a fin. Amusement factor aside there was purpose as it now allows for the sorting out of attendant items for fitness and absence. Rumour has it the tailplane and things aft will follow shortly. In the rotary wing section Rob was gleefully reporting his success in aggressive panel beating the rear of cabin heat shield on the R22 project to sufficient straightness that now the doors and front perspex panels are coming into alignment and actually fitting. cheers for now
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Post by kiwi285 on Nov 5, 2023 10:39:20 GMT 12
Great work Denys and your team. We know how slowly these projects can proceed at times but it feels great when parts are finally nailed onto the fuselage etc. After reskinning the Canberra Fin I would like to spend time working on the Mosquito and seeing how that all goes together.
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Post by emron on Nov 5, 2023 20:31:05 GMT 12
Denys, you have the air dryer bracket in the correct position. Here’s a pic of 4115’s cockpit, forward of the dryer, that might help you to identify more parts. I’ve found that Air Force Museum’s photo MUS19100 has the best detail of this area and has already been most useful when trying to fill in the remaining gaps in MOTAT’s one. I’m sure you will enjoy the other ones in the series too, MUS19102 and MUS19103. cockpit_port_side by Ron Wilson, on Flickr
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Post by denysjones on Nov 6, 2023 7:46:47 GMT 12
Great stuff thanks muchly Ron.
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Post by ZacYates on Nov 6, 2023 12:08:09 GMT 12
Some great updates there but I have to admit seeing the Mossie with the vertical stab in place was a real "WOW!" moment!
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Post by agile on Nov 6, 2023 21:17:35 GMT 12
Dagy and I spent a cheeky Friday installing the fin and sorting/making hardware to fit the tailwheel, rudder, tailplane etc. Working on old aeroplanes with a good mate and the radio up loud = a good day.
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Post by ErrolC on Nov 7, 2023 16:41:13 GMT 12
I might get around to processing the photos I took a month ago in the next couple of weeks!
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Post by Antonio on Nov 7, 2023 17:10:40 GMT 12
Dagy and I spent a cheeky Friday installing the fin and sorting/making hardware to fit the tailwheel, rudder, tailplane etc. Working on old aeroplanes with a good mate and the radio up loud = a good day. Station?
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Post by denysjones on Nov 7, 2023 19:46:09 GMT 12
Antonio,
There is no option for them as every Friday at 0800 Radio Ferrymead comes on air for the weekend :-)
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Post by agile on Nov 7, 2023 20:40:31 GMT 12
Too right. The computerised playlist is actually quite reasonable - on Friday I recognised Nataly Dawn singing 'Je Me Suis Fait Tout Petit' which is approximately 50 years newer than anything I've ever heard on a Saturday. After 14 years of 'Country Round Up' every Saturday afternoon I have heard more yodelling than is healthy. Some of it even comes from the radio.
Anyway, aeroplanes...
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Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 7, 2023 21:01:57 GMT 12
Good grief. Maybe more people will visit the museum if they ditch the country music.
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Post by planewriting on Nov 8, 2023 8:20:18 GMT 12
Antonio, There is no option for them as every Friday at 0800 Radio Ferrymead comes on air for the weekend :-) In Classic Flyers engineering hangar in Tauranga, the morning (Wednesday and Friday) is started with Kiwi285 turning on his radio set to the Magic station for all and sundry to hear hits from the 50s, 60s and 70s. :-)
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Post by Mustang51 on Nov 8, 2023 8:53:28 GMT 12
When we did the B-25 and Ventura in California we were on the local Stockton-Modesto station with heavy and good rock........."Owner of a Lonely Heart - Yes" and ""We Built this City - Jefferson Starship" come immediately and happily to mind...........ahhhh, the memories
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Post by agile on Nov 12, 2023 10:21:26 GMT 12
Time for a quick Mossie update. Following on from the last update to the ailerons, George and Reid did a bit of quick filling and sanding: Then the two ailerons went into Dagy's van for spray painting at the Halswell satellite facility. They came up very nicely and have now gone into the storage racks for when we need them (Oscar and George seen mentally preparing for the impending heavy lift): The lads have now started on the rudder. This rudder is from NZ2328 and while the fabric is entirely missing and the steel trailing edge is predictably rusted to buggery, the structure is pretty good, presumably due to being painted inside and out, unlike the metal structures: While we have the rudder from HR339, we have decided not to use it in the restoration since it has the original fabric which is in a fairly fragile state. We're thinking we might eventually marry the fin from NZ2328 with the remaining fuselage and rudder from HR339 to make a display showing some of the construction detail. I've started the main fabric cover on the top half of the forward fuselage, with the usual first step of pinning out: Doping around the edges then infilling and getting rid of wrinkles: Then trimming the edges - fairly roughly at this stage in some cases, I like to make sure everything is nice and smooth before the final trim: The second side is just underway, but I haven't had a chance to make much more progress due to various distractions: One of the aforementioned distractions has been giving Dagy a hand with fittings for the empennage. Along with the fin in Denys' previous post we're planning to temporarily fit the tailwheel, tailplane, rudder and elevators partly for a nice piece of RVP and partly to see what we're missing in terms of hardware. This picture shows the elevator mass balance, trim link and bellcrank, the tailplane struts and the tailwheel retraction jack along with some of the associated hardware. Everything in red has either been made from scratch or by re-threading bolts (long UNC/UNF re-threaded to shorter BSF): We don't have a resident fitter and turner at the moment so this has kept Dagy busy on the lathe: Finally we made a bit of a score recently in finding the last missing radio box - the incredibly rare (even John Smith only had a couple) A.1271 beam approach amplifier which is part of the TR1143/TR5043 VHF set (it's the black cube shaped doofer): This came from the Netherlands at great expense, and a big thank you is necessary to forumite and supporter extraordinaire Skyhawkdon, who made a very generous donation to help defray this cost - thanks mate! I now need to finish my CAD drawing of the VHF rack since Dean is keen to do a bit of brazing and it'll be nice to get that fitted. In any event hopefully the next update the bird will have some more tail feathers!
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Post by ZacYates on Nov 12, 2023 15:07:48 GMT 12
Another excellent update, and how amazing to see the rudder still in its original fabric!
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Post by Dave Homewood on Nov 12, 2023 16:06:11 GMT 12
Great update Alex!
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Post by denysjones on Nov 20, 2023 10:56:37 GMT 12
The last couple of Saturdays have quiet steady progress but nothing photographically stupendous. Having finished the plumbing runs from the engine nacelles into the accessory bay beneath the pilot there are some connections to be made from there to link up to instruments and things like the priming pump. It all adds up to a veritable forest of tubing and time spent checking and rechecking the runs which typically have four sections to them. The set of lines running rearwards at the top right of this photo constitute the third ones of each run, counting from the instruments. Another foray into the shelves of the yet unresolved items was added to the to do list the other week when I was looking at manuals to place that satchel item and saw this view of the w/o's den with the black map case in it. I've often wondered about a similar item on the shelves which looks to be a repro minus the second forward bin. If things check out then a bit of time with the guillotine and bender will soon solve that and create another space on the shelves and fill another gap in 2035. I've only recently been blessed with a quality copy of the appropriate manual whence I've id'ed the satchel's and now the bin's location. I have had a copy that was made on a photo copier some 25 years ago and the photos in it were so dark as to to be nigh useless. Last year I established contact with very helpful aussie via the WW2aircraft forum. This guy, I only know his posting name, has a mate with a veritable trove of manuals and he retrieved therefrom and scanned a couple for me and spent considerable editing time turning them into visually great copies. His mate is sure that "somewhere" he has the parts book I've long sought and my contact has promised to to do a job on that for me. However my last message was that there would silence for a while as my man was heading for an operation so I'm just sitting with fingers and toes crossed that all is progressing well. On the home front the current project is working over another Bendix PD12-H3 carb which Chrism found he couldn't make usable and some horse-trading then took place between us. Meanwhile 633Sqn added to the last week's trial fit. ttfn
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Post by denysjones on Nov 25, 2023 21:07:40 GMT 12
For a small home job this week I picked up a piece off the shelves which consisted of these four bits tied together as they fit and with a much faded tag written in my own fair scrawl coupled with a sketch of it and it's location in the aircraft. Some of the wording had become completely non-complete and now nigh on 30 years post-writing is but a puzzle. The use of AC series connectors onto two bits with a simple hole leading to a pulley groove would suggest that this is some sort of guide for the internals of a Bowden type of cable, presumably to facilitate a tight bend which the outer casing of the Bowden simply can't achieve. After stripping the four pieces they revealed precisely nothing no marks of any sort (P/N or inspection etc) and nothing shows in the part book illustrations that matches. So after painting it now reposes back in place hiding under one of the steps down to the nose bay...even if its role in the scheme of things remains a mystery at this point :-) This morning Rob craved my assistance with the attachment of the trim strips around the frontal glazing of the R22 he's working on. A wee problem of his not having arms long enough to reach around both the inside and outside of the frontal curves. While assisting, from the outside, I perchanced to glance at a shelving rack nearby and thought I saw something familiar... This is a small part of a Hudson flooring panel. The wooden material with metal edging and the general green colour fit but the circular cutout to the front matches those of the flooring access panels to the bombbay. The notch in the periphery is one of an opposing pair through which the securing pawls of the insert fit and then rotate to lock. It's arrival on that shelving is mystery. A wash of the item allowed me to read a P/N 167762 in the small dish object attached. Alas the parts book lists 167761 and 167673..damn more detective work will ensue. cheers
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