Ferrymead News

[denysjones]

Thanks Dave, I got hold of a copy of AP1566A and from it have learnt that there are only two manually adjustable trims, elevator and rudder, it says that aileron is permanently manually set, and riveted, to what is determined by flight tests.

Your narrative means to me that there is an elevator setting crank and indicator either side so each pilot can operate and observe the position, and that they share one central to the aircraft for rudder trim.

We'll see what Corsairarm's investigation turns up.

Do you have AP1566E-PN in digital or just physical form?

cheers

[davidd]

Just in physical form Denys, if you want to borrow for copying I think that could be arranged. I also have the AP for the Sunderland III (AP 1566C-PN) as well, but doubt it will give any further enlightenment. My phone number, [phone], now live near Church Corner.

No actual documentary proof that there is an indicator for the elevator trim on BOTH sides of the overhead central structure, but I think that preventing the captain from easily viewing this extremely important information would be (morally) entirely wrong! The diagram for the "Roof of Cockpit" (labelled Fig. 4) in the case of AP 1566C-PN is very similar to that in 1566E.

Reading Para. 64: "Check List before Take Off" (for the Mk. III Sunderland) it states:

(T - Trimming Tabs).

Rudder: Neutral to 2 & a half Divisions Port.

Elevator: Neutral with C.G. normal, or 1 - 2 Divisions Nose Heavy with C.G. aft.


Instructions for setting trim for take off on Mk. V are somewhat more elaborate, and also take into account important fact that the Mk. V's P&W Twin Wasp engines/props rotate in opposite direction compared to the Mk. III's Bristol Pegasus engines/props, so instructions for latter model (Rudder trim) reads as "Neutral to 2 & a half Divisions right" (and not "Starboard"!)

[agile]

Happy New Year from the woodwork shop! I've been feeling a bit guilty about not providing a Mossie update for a couple of months. Life got a bit chaotic towards the end of last year with work, travel etc, and 5 days out from Christmas we lost one of our fur-children, which was very distressing. Anyway, progress on the Mossie continues apace. One of the aforementioned distractions was a trip to see the good blokes at Avspecs. As the result of a swap we came away with some really nice additions to the project:

A windscreen which is way better than the one that came out of NZ2328:


And a pair of 'saxophone' flame damping exhausts:
[

Huge thanks to Wal and Dylan for their patience and generosity. I should say that while I was in Auckland forumite Emron and his MOTAT colleagues also took the time to give me a good look around NZ2305 as well as the Sunderland and a general tour of what they were up to, which was very much appreciated.

We already have another RH sax exhaust so we're only short one now to complete the aircraft. Alternatively we have considered displaying one engine with the cowls off and single/paired stubs, but we'd need to track down a set of 8 single stubs for that.

Now that the nose repairs are externally complete Dagy has sorted out the mountings for the machine gun door hinges. Trial fitting the doors really changes the look of the aircraft:

First time that door has been on hinges for at least 50 years!





With the outside sorted we can look at cleaning up the inside of the compartment. The first thing was to remove about a million 6x1 1/4" woodscrews to lift up the deck. Note the mount for the G45 gun camera at the top right.

Under the deck is the compartment where the spent .303 brass accumulated. Note the 'wings' to protect the wooden fuselage shell from the hail of hot brass from the outer pair of guns. All the bolts visible here were peened over and had to be ground off before removal - a lengthy task.


The underside of the deck was in reasonable condition apart from a hole in one corner. The wood has been well-protected by its thick coating of brown 'hydraulic-resisting' paint:


The bottom side was a quick easy repair:


The top was a bit more sad - this side would have been fairly exposed to the elements when the fuselage was outside:


After a bit of a clean:


Stripping back the top skin shows typical Mosquito deck construction of spruce framing packed out with balsa, the rottenest bits of which were removed:


Balsa repacked and glued:


And reskinned. As always skin joints are feathered and overlapped 10x the thickness of the material:


Interestingly the deck in 2328 was not entirely shaped to fit the curve of the fuselage. Instead the sides of the deck frame were trimmed back to leave a gap, then the top ply skin was made to overhang the frame, and only this layer was fettled to exactly fit. We have a spare deck which was shaped 'properly' but which of course doesn't fit our fuselage. You can certainly imagine why they did it, as fettling even the edge of the new top plywood took a while. Here it is trial-fitted:


When the deck goes back in for real, the joins with the fuselage sides will be sealed with a strip of doped fabric as per the original. With the repairs finished, a coat of paint, and we'll be ready to start re-assembly:


Meanwhile Dagy has been hard at work on the side panel. Here the inner skin is being shaped to fit:




And the original laminated vertical members are reinstalled:


While the panel was on the bench Dagy also repaired a damaged area around the fuel gallery opening:




As ever, my 2023 resolution is to keep more regular updates coming. We'll see how that goes...

Cheers
A

[Antonio]

You guys......

www.wildgratitude.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/magician-archetype.jpg 

[tbf2504]

what great craftmanship!. Interesting to note that the different panels wouldn't fit this particular airframe. A statement of how individual British aircraft of the period were, noting the problems faced with repairing
Spitfires etc out in the field, no two the same!

[agile]

Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, I think even by British standards of the day each Mosquito is uniquely unique. They will differ depending on the mould they were taken off, by how accurately the door panels were cut (by hand) from the fuselage halves, by how accurately the halves were mated together (not very in the case of NZ2328, one side is at least 1/8" misaligned vertically compared to the other) und so weiter und so weiter.

[ZacYates]

Welcome back and what a return!!

[denysjones]

Bit of a mix day today.

First up installation of the last couple of pipes on the starboard side into the fuselage. The biggest accomplishment being the double right angle fuel feed seen backmost in this shot.



Then Sunderland Dave arrived and I showed him last week's little treasure and he replied that he'd seen something similar just recently. So off we went and sure enough found the other elevator trim indicator, the rudder one, and the unit which they all belong to, so that's this week's homework. Seen here last week's unit and it's two mates approximately where they go with the trunking unit upside down.



Then a diversion to a team project.

When AirNZ donated us the JT-8 a couple of years back we found we had a wee problem...the unit on its stand was too high to go through the public display hangars doors, as well as too wide. So over the last couple of Saturdays Dean has been attacking said stand to reduce it in two dimensions and today Dean, Rob, Barry and self faced the issue of fitting the right hand side unit that Dean had severed and wanted to refit with internal sleeves in two cross-members.

Notice the off-centre appearance in this shot to show how we've reduced the left (as in shot) width. During the week we'll get that welded up and then turn our attentions to the other side. On the right of the shot on the cross member you might just make out the two marks for the cuts to remove the appropriate piece of width.



Having got over that, back to Hudson stuff and inside the fuse now that those last plumbings have gone in it was time to fit the retaining fairlead.

This is three rubber blocks each of which on each of two sides clamps up on assorted tubes. Given my tube forming has been ad hoc twas a tad pressure-required to get them all to conform to the original rubbers but we got there.



This is all below the upper step down to the nav's den and above the area shown the other week in respect of the emergency undercarriage plumbing.

Ah well next week..new dramas. :-)

[corsairarm]

I took photos of the Sunderland elevator trim setup last Wednesday and Dave is going to post them shortly.
If there are any other questions don't hesitate to ask. Mike has a stack of photos of our Sunderland over the years and I,dear I say it, have photos of your one being chopped up at Hobsonville.
If you want copies of yours I can email them to you.
Cheers Richard

[denysjones]

Great stuff that couldn't be any better help thanks guys, unless you know where I can get some cranks and marker slides. :-)

[denysjones]

The last couple of weeks have been a variety.

Some time has gone into giving Dean a hand on the JT-8 stand.The narrowing of it's width is now completed and bits of original support structure that are now redundant have been removed and general tidy up works are in progress and on Saturday Dean continued his merry noisy ways with that work.

Thanks to Richard's help hereon, with the shots of the Sunderland cockpit trim adjuster at MoTaT, ours is now refurbished.



It is interesting that the MoTaT one is two tone nearly in exact sync with the division of the cockpit wall colours above it. However this old photo of ours in situ, plus the condition we found it in on the shelf before stripping shows that it was all black....just another example of those variations in life.



Sunderland Dave engaged some manual assistance yesterday and the port seat base rejoined the Sunderland cockpit with its mate to follow.



The whole area is much improved over the earlier photo above.

Over in 633Sqn land aileron rebuilding also continued in the hands of George and his band of youthful helpers, we have to resist the temptation to nickname George as Fagan :-)



Yesterday's work piece on the bench at rear.

ttfn

[denysjones]

The temp today meant it was way too hot to be rummaging in-fuselage of 2035 on tubing work so I decided to review yet more bits and bobs on the parts racks.

First came this piece which I'm sure isn't Hudson...but what is it? The colour suggests something Pom. The two components are marked as TC4162-2 and -3, so anyone out there
can id?



Next was a small piece of metal clad wood with a folded metal mount for something unknown. So I gave the mount a wizz with a striptex disc hoping to se a P/N appear ...no luck.



Next was to take the base on a rove in 2035 and see if I could find a fit. This turned out to be at the foot of the throttle pedestal where 2035 currently has a simple metal
plate in-situ...origin unknown. I've yet to check but I think persons before me put that there on assumption or convenience.

The base I had was plywood sandwiched in two pieces of metal as in a cake tin and on the bottom I found three digits 160 interrupted by a hole for one of the screws holding
the aforementioned mount in place...160xxx fits Hudson parts.

Off to 633 Squadron I went and with a bit of surplus ply from there and some stock sheet we have the new kitset, now off to homework as you see the originals are definitely u/s.



In 633Sqn land Dag and George were hard at work, Dag trying to see if he could totally exhaust our stock of clamps on the repair he's currently working on starboard side.



He and George also spent time riveting aileron..Sunderland Dave was given to say how interesting it was post-Cold War we now have a member of the Soviet VVS working on a
project with an RN FAA person...ok our sick humour :-)

[planecrazy]

Wow really enjoyed looking through that page, some great progress, well done to all.

[Antonio]

633 Squadron!
Makes me giggle every time I read it.
LUV IT

[denysjones]

Progress on the panel and mounting bracket....

When I stripped the inside faces of the bracket a P/N did in fact appear (in my experience a very non-standard location for such for Lockheed to have used) but the number 75867, of course, doesn't appear in the US parts book I'm stuck with using. In fact the part numbers therein jump from 75771 to 75997.

So I headed into sets of pilots' notes.

I have AP1690C for the Hudson III, AP1690D&E combined for Hudson IV and V, two versions (short and long page countwise) of AP1690F for Hudson VI, and the US T.O. 01-75AB-1 for the A-29.

The first two are typically RAF with no photos bar a general one of a Hudson. The A-29 one has, among the usual US profusion of such, a photo in which the item in question appears exactly as I found our one, namely a naked mounting bracket. AP1690F delivers the goods by way of this



Item 88 is called out as the "beam approach controls". However there is no narrative on the use of such controls. Looking back to the earlier AP's again no mention of such controls.

I'll throw myself at the mercy of Dave Duxbury here to comment on any knowledge he has of RNZAF use of beam approach systems with Hudsons.

It does seem interesting that Lockheed would have been producing a Hudson III with the bracket in place if it only came into use with the later Hudson VI.

All of this also brought something else to light, item 89 above is the "bomb jettison" and 90 is "landing approach flares". These don't figure in the early AP's. But in the early APs the pilot's control wheel has two buttons on it, one for firing the guns and one to jettison the bombs so the transfer of the latter function to become item 89 suggests painful operational experience to me!

All of this also revealed that the switch box on the top of the control column (see post on Page 34 June 22 2022) is not for the bomb jettison circuit, as I believed, but is in fact the "master gun switch".

Ah well we live and learn as we go along.

Just one final thing while we're here. If anyone has a set of the oil dilution switches you see in the photo above that they'd be prepared to part with I'd be very keen to hear from you.

[Peter Lewis]

Sorting through some boxes today and I found a slide portraying the R4D-5L/LC-47H Bu17221 taken at Harewood in the 1960s.
This, of course, is the one now at Ferrymead.

[denysjones]

As the old expression goes Peter...your blood's worth bottling!

I've been after a colour shot of her from that time, 1966-7 season, to see the artwork as I've only had a black and white one taken down on the ice where she is 2nd in a three aircraft line-up.

This is from when she had just come back from the ice as the cowls etc are silver/metal finish not the later grey and the cartoon down the back is Mutha Goose which was removed very soon after arrival.

What is really interesting is the figure up front and the scroll under the window. This is, we assume, from her earlier name of "The Emperor" and the character appears to be Goofey and doesn't come across well in the b&w shot.

Any chance we can get the highest possible scan density done on it so we can zoom in super deep on it?

cheers

[davidd]

Denys, if "that" Goofey is the famous Walt Disney one, I believe his name was simply spelled as "Goofy".

Afraid I cannot help much with the "Beam Approach" question. So far as I know, this type of equipment ("Standard Beam Approach", or SBA for short) was NOT used on RNZAF Hudsons (or C-47s, PBY-5s, etc. for that matter), but they were equipped with a type of American landing approach equipment which probably did much the same job. I think these American systems were characterised externally on aircraft by small, horizontal and vertical antennae on each side of the nose.

[Peter Lewis]

Feb 14, 2023 6:04:23 GMT 12 denysjones said:

Any chance we can get the highest possible scan density done on it so we can zoom in super deep on it?

cheers

Email sent with raw scan attached, Denys.

[davidd]

My guess for type of "Beam Approach" equipment fitted on Hudsons later in WW2 would be AN/ARN-5 (Glide Path Receiver). However, I doubt that such equipment would be retro-fitted to any RNZAF aircraft during that war; it would probably have required a lot of ground-based equipment at all airfields it would normally operate from, and I doubt RNZAF would have a requirement for it. I see that ARN-5 WAS fitted to RNZAF C-47s (Dakota) by about 1952/53, as was ARN-7 (Automatic Radio Compass, D/F loop), and APN-9 (Loran), as well as APN-1 (Radio Altimeter). Interestingly, the APN-1 Altimeter, despite being of American design and manufacture, was also fitted as standard equipment to RNZAF Hastings and Sunderlands, so must have been held in high regard. The British radio/radar industry failed to perfect a good radio altimeter in WW2 despite much effort, so perhaps they just couldn't be bothered trying to better it after the war either.