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Post by agile on Apr 12, 2019 18:55:52 GMT 12
Thanks Dave, and thanks to RNZ for the exposure.
The more I have learnt about Dempsey the more remarkable his story is. He survived at least one tour on Halifaxes including an attack on the Tirpitz and ditching in the Channel, as well as his 487 Squadron service which included having his aircraft shot up on Operation Clarion (on which 5 out of 18 487 Sqn aircraft were lost) and Carthage, on which he again brought his aircraft back in bits. He survived the war and transferred to the RAF, where he served out his career.
The film on our FB page is an incredible find - we are so lucky it was brought to our attention.
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Post by johnnyfalcon on Apr 12, 2019 21:28:35 GMT 12
Yes, a great piece of historic film. When you know the sinister reputation an engine-out Mosquito could have on landing, not to mention full of battle damage, it speaks volumes for the quality of airmanship these guys had.
What is the identification letter for HR339?
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Post by agile on Apr 12, 2019 21:32:31 GMT 12
At the time of Op Clarion HR339 was coded J. When she returned from being repaired she was coded H.
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Post by johnnyfalcon on Apr 12, 2019 21:37:25 GMT 12
Cheers Alex. What is Ferrymead's intention?
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Post by agile on Apr 12, 2019 21:49:56 GMT 12
Marking wise? Watch this space...
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Post by denysjones on Apr 13, 2019 22:43:53 GMT 12
Lets talk BXG When she was gifted to the Air Force Museum she was in her last AirNZ colour scheme and equipment fit of her AirNZ days but with some items of course parted out. Especially in view of this topic some of her antenna had been removed, and other seem to have later vanished before she came to us. So when Peter Mac got her and repainted her in NAC colours this meant that the antenna fit was inappropriate/incomplete for the image she now portrayed. Luckily some years back Mt Cook had given us a large assortment of radio gear, presumably ex 748's, and so we have been able to make good the visual image of livery and antenna so now she wears the correct complement on the fuselage top and belly for her NAC colours. Inside work is underway replacing the trim that had to be removed to take the centre section off. One item of interest that is now back in place in the port hatrack is the fatigue meter. Some of the figures of the number of instances of certain G occurrences may be of interest! As always hopefully of interest
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Post by denysjones on Apr 27, 2019 22:12:12 GMT 12
Not super spectacular stuff to report but things ongoing. In BXG we have the matter of the re-installation of the in-fuselage centre section attachment pins. When we put the centre section back on the aircraft we only attached the four outside of fuselage junctions but in the cabin are another four due to time of crane hire and other things to get done they were put off till another day. So a couple of weeks back their turn came around. The two portside ones were easy enough to deal to but the two starboard were more difficult. The holes were out of alignment by some 2 to 3mm vertically and so had to be aligned to allow the pins to be driven in. This ended up as a process of four incremental tapered drifts being formed and then progressively alternately driven partly in from fwd and rear until the actual pin could be engaged and driven home. Now all is in place as per this one On the Hudson front one of those long deferred jobs has come to the fore. We of course did not have the undercarriage actuation rams originally. However in years of old in my working life I had frequent trips to Melbourne and often factored in visits to the B24 team there and once therefrom acquire two rams. These were in fact not Hudson but Ventura ones but the difference centres around the downlock mechanism. The Hudson has a bolt type unit which screws to the side of the top of the ram and fires into a notch on the ram shaft , akin to the action of a common door lock. The Ventura one has a mechanism encased inside the ram case. So after some 35years of frutiless searching for Hudson rams I'd reconciled to using the items in hand. The next problem was how to mount them in the aircraft as we only had one of the four pivot units. A few weeks ago Dave Brew from GAPS found a couple of parts to said units and so he's now got some instruments for the Lodestar and I'm part on the way to getting our rams in place. So time for us to take one grotty old ram spend a couple of hours stripping years or grime etc and then prime and paint and move onto solving the issues of finishing the mounts.
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Post by agalbraith on Apr 28, 2019 20:41:52 GMT 12
Thanks for the update Den, I must say, that ram came out looking great. Good you were able to figure out how to adapt a Ventura one....lets hope Murphy dosent locate some Hudson ones!
Cheers Ants
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Post by denysjones on May 18, 2019 22:33:29 GMT 12
This follows on from posts of Jan 1st and Feb 21st 2016...where did the years go by when busy on F27 stuff? As recorded back in those posts we inherited a heap of Hudson cables via Don Subritzky and since then from time to time I've been unrolling cables and measuring their length and then establishing their function in the Hudson via the cable specifications in the manuals. In the flap system there are 16 different cables, as in cable thickness and then length of the item, while all up there are 28 cables in the system. Many are the same port and starboard and a few are different. Then to go with the cables one needs a heap of pulleys, which again we luckily have stocks of. So recently I've picked up on the work in the flap bay and so we're now at this stage on the starboard bay. Just a few tidy ups and the odd paint touch-up to be done. As you said yonks ago Baz, sure is a lot of head scratching work but now the starboard is done the port should be a breeze. cheers
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Post by denysjones on Jun 4, 2019 15:30:55 GMT 12
It's not all cable games at the moment BXG is still WIP. On Saturday Rob, John and I attacked the next must do job in the order of things which has been awaiting a while. Mike Nicholls very kindly sent us a present some time ago in a rather large crate, namely one disassembled propellor. We'd had a promise from a knowledgeable person who was going to come and show us what was what but we've never been able to nail him down. So we attacked it by first principles and it was remarkably straight forward. The eagle eyes may note it is a paddle blader which means it is off a 500 series and not correct for a 100 series like BXG but short of managing to get one of BXI's ones back from the Chathams we've run out of alternatives. Also work goes on up top attending to the fairings around the wing. These are fibreglass items and have something approaching 1mm thick paint on them and in heaps of places there's flaking and cracking occurred and hopefully this shows why its taking some time. In some cases such a large area has left the scene it requires filling to match the contours as it should be.
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Post by isc on Jun 5, 2019 1:18:29 GMT 12
Would it be feasible to reprofile the prop blades, assuming they are aluminium, and not hollow steel? isc
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Post by denysjones on Jun 5, 2019 9:08:07 GMT 12
Yes but its again one of those decisions to be made if we really really have to.
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Post by aircraftclocks on Jun 5, 2019 10:46:42 GMT 12
If you need profiling data, I may have it.
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Post by denysjones on Jun 15, 2019 19:46:56 GMT 12
I've been thinking for a wee while that it is time to show the work of one of those unsung heroes. Dave Newman was a founder member of the society way back in the 1970's but he's a dedicated solo project man doing the cockpit of the Sunderland. Dave patiently takes bits out and strips them down to their bare bones and then cleans, paints, and reconstitutes them. In between times his work gets interrupted by playing workshop guide to visitors. This unit is the support for the pilot's seat and the control column transfer shaft. Oh for more people with Dave's dedication.
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Post by agile on Jun 15, 2019 23:09:29 GMT 12
I'll say! In other news, a nice gentleman from Canada has been in touch to talk about Hiller UH-12E ZK-HIK's previous life as CF-MLL on 'Operation Porcupine', a geological survey of the wilds of the Yukon undertaken in the early 1960s. It turns out there is a book on the subject, Flying the Yukon's Bush by Kit Cain which on brief scroll through looks like an interesting read and includes numerous pictures of CF-MLL. I'll add one here for flavour (Dave, I know this is copyright but it's self published and the author appears to have gone offline so I'm not sure how to get permission, and its already wild on the internet - I'll take it down though if you aren't happy with this): ZK-HIK has acquired a new mascot in honour of Operation Porcupine (close enough): We have also had this donated to us: It's an early WW2 era British intercom amplifier (Type B, 10A/9130) for an aircraft with a large-ish crew (based on the AP for it, which I found online). It looks unused and is in its transit case. I'm assuming either Anson, Oxford or may-be Mk III Sunderland? Any further clues appreciated. On the Mossie front the port side of the cockpit is going back together: We have rigged up the engine instrument panel so that our resident electrical wizard Angus can (cosmetically - we can't afford to rewire the aircraft) repair the wiring loom back to the next junction box, which was cut when the instruments were removed from the aircraft in the 1950s. The instrument at the top is the ubiquitous Pioneer Magnesyn remote indicating compass. Our resident boy-wonder Tim has been 3d printing parts for us. Here we have idle cutoff buttons (original on the left) and pipe clamps (these were originally cast in rubber, and I tried cutting new ones from rubber (the left hand black one) but it was too soft to be usable. The 3d printed version is the perfect hardness). Here we have the centres of the 'punkah louvres' (air vents for us regular folk who wear tennis shoes and the occasional python boot) from the instrument panel. The left hand one is the bakelite original, the right hand one is the 3d printed version. The two halves of each fit together to form a sphere that is able to move in a socket (a spare of which we had) to direct the airflow. This would have been a PITA to make any other way. Tim is now moving on to modelling some of the castings we need, so that we can get them cast in aluminium. Finally, we had a bit of a blow (literally) last weekend when the Viscount/F27 hangar lost part of its roof in the wild weather. We are preemptively replacing the undamaged (but some now starting to leak) bits of clearlite, at a cost of several thousand dollars that we hadn't exactly planned to spend just now. Next summer we are also going to have to do some major preventative maintenance on our workshops. If you have ever considered a donation, now would be a real good time to head to givealittle.co.nz/org/ferrymead-aeronautical-society (sorry I keep rattling the tin, but times are extremely tough for small organisations like ours at present). Cheers A
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Post by kiwi285 on Jun 17, 2019 19:26:40 GMT 12
Beautiful work Denys and all of the team. Dave is a dedicated restoration person and boy we need people like that.
I would be interested to know all about the 3 D printing that Tim has done. There are plenty of parts like that, that could be reproduced.
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Post by agile on Jun 18, 2019 21:26:33 GMT 12
I would be interested to know all about the 3 D printing that Tim has done. There are plenty of parts like that, that could be reproduced. What you need, my friend, is a millennial. First time anyone has said that on this forum. Maybe Tim would be interested in the forum meet in September, if you were going that might be an opportunity.
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Post by denysjones on Jun 29, 2019 22:00:24 GMT 12
Another brisk start to the day for the team early on the job (-5C just to shake you up in TRG Mike!) as we had Alister and the arachnid crane back today to move more bits to BXG. First up went the RR Dart, Followed by the Rotol prop and then we get the lower cowl in place But then we found some issues as the front cowl ring on the engine turns out to have 6 locations for the front of the side cowls to secure to and not 8 so it is a Viscount unit not one for the F27 so some re-engineering is called for so after some mumble grumbles we had to adjourn for the society AGM. Things and plans for the forthcoming year to be revealed as time passes on
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jun 29, 2019 22:26:51 GMT 12
Nice work chaps!
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Post by baz62 on Jun 30, 2019 14:02:26 GMT 12
Great progress lads. She is going to look fantastic when she is all together.
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