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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 29, 2021 14:09:08 GMT 12
Thanks Alex.
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Post by agile on Apr 30, 2021 18:15:41 GMT 12
The mystery rams in my previous post have now been positively identified as Airspeed Oxford. Ewww and I touched them.
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 30, 2021 19:49:35 GMT 12
Bahahaha
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Post by denysjones on May 2, 2021 15:53:15 GMT 12
A good day's work yesterday with a 6 man team on the job bright and early to deconstruct a 20metre long internal gutter in the workshop. This was installed in the early 1980s as a wooden base structure lined with sheet rubber acquired from my then employer Skellerup Industries. The unit has done sterling service but always looked the cobbled up effort that it was. Now it's successor is a purpose designed and fabricated steel unit whose $961 cost was partly funded with a grant from Mainland Foundation, one of the pokie operators in the city, and the balance from our other funds. The big thing is it looks a lot more the part for the job! On the during-the-week-in-the-garage-at-home front the final storage bin for the Hudson navigator's station has been made up and primed ready for topcoat and the addition of the straps to restrain the contents. Work has also started on some of the items removed from the firewall as mentioned last week. These are a collection of what are termed Jackshaft assemblies and as you see below are sets of brackets supporting various types of pulleys for cables to run over or levers to actuate things by way of rods. At the base of the firewall are another set of corresponding levers and pulleys to which the cables from the cockpit run and from there transfer up to these units and then out from there to the various engine units they are to actuate. This unit which will be this week's wee project has a lever which links to the carburettor mixture control and two pulleys for the throttle control cables to run via. It mounts near the top of the firewall, in company with another two pulley unit, for the propellor pitch control, which is already part way through processing. As you can see time has not been kind to them. The firewalls we have didn't come from 2035 nor from 2039 (the source of the centre sections which now grace 2035) but I can't recall exactly where we did get them from but obviously they spent quite some time out in the elements. ttfn
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Post by agile on May 2, 2021 21:44:12 GMT 12
I'd just like to add my thanks to the small but effective gutter replacement team yesterday, in particular forumite RobB (of Mosquito simulator fame) who isn't even a member but who offered his assistance unbidden. We had been staring down the barrel of that job for months, it was great to get it (at last the hard bit) done. The results of our days' labour: One other thing for the weekend - we are down to our last 4 new copies of the Illustrated History of NAC - if you want a copy of this definitive work on the subject, act now. We've also had another small donation of used aviation books for fundraising purposes, all of which are available by clicking here. [/shameless plug]
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Post by denysjones on May 8, 2021 21:28:05 GMT 12
Follow-up day on last week's building R&M and a great pleasure to have the assistance of blast from the past member, and lurker hereon, Dean last seen getting his hands dirty on site 15+ years ago...not to be so long again eh mate! The follow-on on the storage bin has seen a new field of endeavour into the field of fabric restoration. We had a surplus storage bin which actually had a pair of straps still in place but in a sad way. The years had dirtied the fabric and rusted the fittings but also, I guess when the RNZAF resprayed the interiors of the a/c, light overspray had covered some parts of the fabric. So I first soaked two of the pieces in some bleach for a few hours which did a great job of removing the general dirt aspect but also lightened the overspray somewhat. Next they've moved on to a softer product to see how it might help with the rust stains (don't ask the other half about her finding strange things soaking in the laundry). Here are the as yet unassailed smaller pieces of the straps and below them the others after their bleach treatment to show how stage 1 worked. Back on the firewall items front the project of the week was broken down and stripped back to bare metal (my how I'm eternally grateful to the inventor of the plastic striptex disc!) followed by a coat of cold zinc and then aluminium overcoat. This process yielded up the P/Ns stamped on them which I was very keen to find because the IPC calls this unit out as having not 3 but 4 of the metal brackets (and I also checked what the Lodestar IPC had just in case we might actually have had firewalls from a Lodestar and if that explained the difference but no they are the same). Brackets 1 and 2 (from the left) don't match the IPC but 3 does (and the four brackets from the other two units on the firewall also match the IPC) and there are no holes in the firewall which would provide for attaching the additional bracket which is shown fitting between 1 and 2. The firewall illustration photo in the ERM matches our situation so it seems it's just another case of a mod coming out and adding the fourth bracket and that our a/c (and obviously the one whose firewalls we've got) predate said mod and timing differences with the manuals. Anyway here are the three units as currently on the bench. The two brackets on the left need another of the lever arms (P/N 54101-23 if they are so marked which doesn't seem to always be true) as per the unit to their right. To make the whole kit of a fire wall requires two such levers so four for the aircraft and to date I've only located two and then there's the ones at the bottom of the firewall but that's a tale to come! ttfn
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Post by denysjones on May 15, 2021 21:22:41 GMT 12
So here we are moving on down the Hudson firewall..... This is the IPC illustration of the jackshaft unit at the base of the firewall. The cotton reel type pulleys have one end to receive the cables from the cockpit and the other to relate those to the engine units by way of the previously detailed items at the top of the firewall. I've never seen any of these items on any Hudson firewall I've come across in my years of parts scavaging but perhaps maybe someone out there has some? So after removing lots of 3/8 nuts and bolts that hold it to the firewall, and the firewall to the rear engine support frame, I got the jackshaft assembly off and so took it home to keep me busy this week. As per the norm it was a somewhat battered and affected unit but now has resumed most of it's former glory and leads us to the problem of sourcing the assorted pulleys and levers to flesh it out, these appearing to be Lockheed specific items. So today we started giving the face of the firewall a clean and polish to ready it to receive assorted units back. Cleanest it's coming to be for many a year me thinks!
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Post by Dave Homewood on May 15, 2021 21:37:12 GMT 12
Looks like new!
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Post by davidd on May 19, 2021 17:01:36 GMT 12
Nice job Denys, a group of parts ever so humble, but obviously vital. David D
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Post by denysjones on May 22, 2021 21:12:28 GMT 12
This week's homework was chosen from some items that have been patiently lurking bagged up awaiting their turn. Some many years ago we received several rear engine frames in very poor condition, beyond any use, which didn't worry us as we already had two pair of good ones. The plus was that these newly received frames still had numerous items attached that we had not got examples of and even better we had frames from both sides of the aircraft. We documented the positions the items held on the frames and then removed and bagged them to wait for the day that has now come. The first ones to be dealt to are these. The junction box on the left mounts in between several of the members of the frame suspended by the legs mounted behind. There is a third leg which is broken but in our possession so will come back to life. The box's function has been devined by locating it in the IPC as "switch assembly throttle" and then looking up in the ERM. From this it appears it is an alert device to sound a horn when the throttle lever is 1/4" from idle cutoff. All the other pieces to the left are interrelated. Obviously the three top items should be one and so will be a template for making two new ones as these are the only example we have and you'll see holes in the bottom face as you see it to attach it to the rusty piece below. These items collectively appear in this clip from the IPC where you'll see on each frame is a crosswise member spanning between two of the uprights. The one for the starboard looks similar to our rusty one, but perhaps with the upkicked end on the opposite end, while the one for the port appears to be a different design deeper in section and with two knuckles each end, or are they two more mounts for something else peculiar to the port installation? So application of the proven stripping to bare metal methodology was called for on our rusty piece to try and locate a P/N to see if it is 163143 which the port is called out as. Well it isn't but it seems Lockheed themselves were confused on what it was as on the inside face of the long leg of the cross member it was called as 163551-2, which looked promising as the IPC called the stbd one as 163551-1, but on the reverse side of the member it was marked 163551-L. Never mind I reckon it must be the right beast so on we go. Also today we had a parts drop from a many project trade which yielded these items I'm not 100% sure where the top left item goes but recall seeing a photo of something similar on the upper wall area starboard side of the navigator's den (as a by-the-by this one is stencilled 2046 on the rear so presumably came from her). Also from that area is the foreground box which, unfortunately the label is not clear in the photo, is the nav's pencil case. The gem is the top right which is an NOS holster for the flare pistol in the main cabin. Once fitted with the eight dome fasteners it will attach to the emergency exit panel in the main cabin near the flare gun apertures to which it obviously belongs. Yet again it's not listed in the parts book despite being stencilled 167144. Good day stuff!
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Post by planewriting on May 22, 2021 21:45:10 GMT 12
"One other thing for the weekend - we are down to our last 4 new copies of the Illustrated History of NAC - if you want a copy of this definitive work on the subject, act now. We've also had another small donation of used aviation books for fundraising purposes, all of which are available by clicking here. [/shameless plug]"
I haven't got any more copies available, sorry Denys, but just as a matter of interest, how many copies have you had?
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Post by agile on May 23, 2021 22:23:50 GMT 12
That was me actually Peter. We had 2 or 3 cartons donated by Richard Waugh some years ago. Sales have been slow but steady, one was even dispatched to a former NAC driver now living in the UK! It's a great book - I think anyone with an interest in civil aviation in NZ should have a copy in their library.
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Post by denysjones on May 29, 2021 21:05:46 GMT 12
This week by reference to some Lockheed factory photos I have confirmed that the satchel pouch posted last week fits the nav's bay attached to the frame of the fuselage top window and out to the side wall stbd side. All in all it's a tad strange and seems to be a retro fit to my mind but that aside we know where to fit it. This morning was a final bit of fit to the new workshop guttering which according to weather forecasts will get a good test over the next couple of days! During the week our friendly lettering maker Owen delivered some pieces for the bins in the Hudson nav's bay and so they and the last bin got installed. Then taking a piccie for Owen revealed the shock that despite the two levels of bins independently being lined up with their top edges on the cross members of the bay they are not parallel to one another! At that stage of the day "damn it" was heard and rectification deferred to another day. One thing that came to hand this week, while looking for something else as so often happens, was that the two enclosures on the right of the view which I had always assumed were to do with flares (the fwd hatch for which is just below there) are in fact specified as for vacuum flasks. That would have to be a cold weather sphere of operations feature wouldn't it? Work in progress saw the repopulation of the Hudson firewall elements begun but more of that once the big picture emerges but certainly the work benches at home and the park are a bit barer! Given the weather forecast for the next few days I've armed myself with a few project items for the garage workshop. Dag arrived on site today with a large parcel from Classic Flyers TRG which was the (finally due to free transport delays) delivery of a bomb rack which appears to be a late model Mosquito unit as the upper support portion of it fits the Mossie but the lower seems to be a later (postwar?) variant. However one way or another we'll resolve it so many thank to Andrew, Des, Peter, and Mike at Classic Flyers and Peter Mac for its donation and assistance in the transport. Cheers and take care in the weather we've predicted to have coming up.
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Post by agile on May 30, 2021 17:09:04 GMT 12
I'd also like to say thanks to Dylan Stace at Avspecs, who alerted us to the presence of the bomb rack. We're still hunting for bits to complete a second rack, mainly the casting across the top, the stay tubes and the release unit. There is another interesting Mosquito development on the cards this week - for now I'll just say that there's a team heading to Pigeon Bay....
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Post by denysjones on Jun 5, 2021 21:28:47 GMT 12
It must be Saturday night so here we are... Last week and this part of the work for the firewall has centred around the black mounting bracket in three pieces from the other week's post. Armed with the bits and the item it supports a template was made so that after the appropriate cutting, bending etc we have a pair of replicas (one per engine required). Here is one set to be installed while its mate is still wip. The mounted unit is a Cambridge exhaust gas analyser cell which basically determines the fuel to air ratio by sampling the exhaust gas stream, using the Wheatstone Bridge principle for all you old physics students out there. The result being shown on an instrument in the cockpit. It mounts on the bracket that figured as a rusty old thing in the same post a couple of weeks back. Today they were reunited in the aircraft and now its onto the plumbing for it all. Also completing its rework is the throttle warning device. It's broken third leg has been repaired while all the other bits have been spruced up. You may make out a brass lug on the rear of the top end of the arm from the internals. Said lug is clamp which latches onto the throttle cable as it passes above the unit. So as the throttle lever in the cockpit advances and retards so does the arm here and when the toe of the arm makes contact with the brass insert on the bakelite bar inside the box the circuit completes and the horn sounds to convey the warning about the throttle approaching idle cutoff. Now delving into other bits of the firewall rear frame trove takes us to this wee fellow which turns out to be an induction blast tube to feed cold air to the Cambridge cell. So he's off the usual treatement this week. It is fed off the under-cowl air intake and up through the firewall to simply blast the Cambridge unit. The bracket on it hangs it off the firewall rear frame. So another bit of refurbishing, metal bashing, and stripping etc looms. cheers now
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Post by agile on Jun 6, 2021 9:50:16 GMT 12
As hinted at above, Dagy and I drove over to Pigeon Bay on Thursday to visit Richard Holloway. Richard owns the former Goodwin property where the Ferrymead Mosquito story (and arguably the Society) began. We got a chance to look through the shed where most of HR339 was stored for 20 years. The top floor of the shed was formerly used for processing and bagging cocksfoot (a major Banks Peninsula industry) but was latterly given over to several generations of STUFF. The shed has now decayed to the point where it will soon fall under its own weight, and Richard has been carefully sorting through the contents and finding homes for the treasures therein. Needless to say he is an absolute top bloke. At the far end of the shed is the remains of an elevator used to bring the cocksfoot up from the ground floor: Richard asked me not to share photos of the exterior as he doesn't want anyone trying to find and explore it, lest they injure themselves. The treasures we came to collect included a couple of these (British P8M compass as used in the Mosquito among many other types): An ASI (Tiger Moth apparently): And this contraption, which was used to heat and store hot water for tea at local A & P shows etc: Mosquitophiles will understand why we were willing to take a day off work to get our hands on this.... There was also a cooking pot of nuts, bolts and other miscellaneous crap, some of which was obviously Mosquito related. That'll be a boring TV watching job at some point. Cheers A
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Post by Dave Homewood on Jun 9, 2021 19:08:13 GMT 12
Cool stuff, and nice finds!
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Post by denysjones on Jun 13, 2021 14:25:33 GMT 12
This week's work was a start on the repopulating of the port firewall of the Hudson with the assorted fixtures and fittings removed of late. The removed items have had the usual rejunvenation, some of which have figured here, while the firewall itself has seen a good polishing to remove accumullated grime. The day's work only made a start on the job, more next week. I'm not sure of the provenance of the firewalls we've got as the sizes and locations of the apertures in them don't match the Hudson IPC and ERM illustrations. The biggest difference is the absence of a large cutout near the top which supposedly related to an air filter. Perhaps its just another case of our a/c being an early build and the manuals being later revisions as was the addition of the air filter? Anyway here's shots of the two sides of the firewall thus far. In the first you can see the Cambridge analyser from last week hung off the top frame member. The curved tube pointing up to it is Lockheed's solution to keeping the unit cool by way of ram fed air. Forward of the firewall I've to add another piece of tubing to link down to the air intake. (The two magnetos each have the same arrangement as well.) The rubber mounting block on the tube in the upper foreground awaits the fabrication and installation of the feed tube from the exhaust to the analyser and it's buddy that returns to the exhaust. On the workbench, in a myriad of bits, is what the manual calls "support assembly - engine controls" but I prefer to describe as a pulley gang. It mounts on the forward face of the centre section in behind the firewall and pairs of pulleys redirect the cables from the cockpit downwards to pass through the lower firewall to the other pulley set shown here the other week, and of course provide the return. Somehow though the IPC illustrator got it all wrong and shows seven pair of pulleys fitted to it while the documentor call out six in the parts breakdown. In the upper left of the shot are six pieces with holes top and bottom and these secure rubber grommets for the cables to pass through but the original grommets have gone hard and split, there's an example at the right end of the lineup, so this week we'll have to come up with some means of replacement. On a non-aircraft matter, this week I received an email from a vehicle enthusiast regarding the ex Shell Oil Fordson refueller we have. He'd recently stumbled upon a photo of it somewhere on the web and it destroyed a supposedly accepted view that there was only one of these left in the world. Said one lurks in a museum collection in Finland and he sent a photo of it parked alongside a similar unit based on a Leyland Hippo. The Finnish Fordson is a dead ringer for ours but the really interesting bit is that both Finnish vehicles are still in their service livery, non-other than Shell Oil! Perhaps ours has a more interesting history to tell. cheers
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Post by agile on Jun 27, 2021 11:21:05 GMT 12
On the Mosquito front I have been working on the cover for the dinghy container which lives behind the canopy. I'm not sure where our cover originated, but it was in a slightly sorry state, with the top layer of ply starting to lift, the fabric missing where it wraps around the underside, and the crutch which holds the cover off the CO2 inflation cylinder missing. You can see from this photo that unsuaully the fabric goes over the metal fittings on the underside of the lid, presumably to protect the dinghy from any sharp bolt head or nut. The crutch was originally located next to the 'window. The two strips of eyelets are where a bag would have been lashed which contained tins of flare cartridges, water, soup and rations as well as a baling sponge, flare pistol, matches, leak stoppers and a telescopic mast: You can see all the corrosion product that is present under washers and other metals fittings. Pretty much every part of the aircraft has been like this, regardless of apparent good preservation on the outside. This is one reason this restoration is taking a long time - pretty much every metal part has to come off. You can also see the fabric wrapped over the captive nuts holding the 'window'. Normally fabric would go under metal fittings on a hatch or door: Once the hatch was dismantled, de-fabriced and the top ply reglued I had to make a new crutch. This is a stupidly overcomplicated affair made out of a spruce block, two pieces of 1.5mm ply and with all edges rounded to a .25" radius: With the crutch glued and screwed in place it was time for a trial re-fitting of the hardware which had been corrosion treated and painted in the meantime. And yes, the paintshop staff (Dagy) has been given a hard time over the colour mismatch (due to being in two batches) - ultimately it will all be camouflaged over...: A new fabric cover was cut and the top surface of the lid was doped - here the fabric is pinned over the lid, preparatory to doping. The metal edge strips weer then reinstalled temporarily to get the fabric down nice and tight into the rebates in the wooden structure, wrapped in tape to stop them adhering to the dope(by the time I finished this last night it was getting too dark for photos so that'll be in next time's update): Another little ongoing drama has been the feathering pump motor covers. The feathering pumps in the Mosquito installation are installed crosswise under the rear of the engine, and the actuating solenoid and motor are enclosed in a two-piece cover. One of our two Merlins was missing these covers when we started the project, the other had a set of acetate plastic ones. Dagy made a nice set of replicas out of fibreglass to replace the missing ones. Then in the parts from Cam McKenzie we received a full set of metal covers for two engines. Since these were all in good condition it made sense to swap to the metal ones, especially since the acetone ones hadn't yet been installed. We were halfway through this when I came across mod 907 dated 9/6/47 - Metal Covers to replace existing Acetate covers for hydromatic pump motors and voltage regulator. The mod was apparently required as in tropical conditions the acetate covers tended to distort. The date of the mod is midway through the export of aircraft to NZ, which is why both types are in circulation. Obviously the acetate covers are the most correct for a wartime aircraft so off come the metal ones. Happily in the meantime one more piece of acetate cover has turned up in a parts deal meaning that only half of one cover will be a fibreglass replica, and this one is externally indistinguishable from an original. Here are acetate and metal examples of both halves: Tune in next time for the first signs of repairs around the cockpit hatch - this is a huge milestone for us. Cheers A
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Post by denysjones on Jun 27, 2021 11:45:41 GMT 12
The last couple of weeks of Hudson have been more firewall and firewall component stuff which isn't/wasn't too photogenic. However this week there was a session of re-installation. The first things to put back were the six units probably best described as cable guides. Each provides the in and out paths for one of the cable control circuits for the engine. When I first removed them I took it that the grommets/washers that the metal plates hold in place were age-hardened rubber but once I cleaned them, thanks good old Napi-San, they turned out to be a leather like fibre which was brown in colour and they softened up somewhat but probably nothing like new. Then the set of pulley brackets mounts above them and below it another of the myriad pieces of pipe finds a home. This being part of the return feed to the oil tank. Finally behind the firewall we have the throttle cut-off warning control which is attached to three of the same fixing bolts as the pulley brackets. One thing, well two actually as it's one per engine, that I'm hunting for are the oil temperature regulator and rotary valve units that fit on top of the oil cooler and which the return pipe attaches to. They're made by Harrison Radiator Co and are P/N B-8503274 if anyone can help. cheers
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