Ferrymead News

[denysjones]

Last week's mystery floor piece's story continues....

I removed the attached parts from the wooden base, paint-stripped them and then I could see their P/Ns. The flat back plate to the base is 165063 while the major object on it is made of two pieces, spot welded together, one is 167797 (subsequently I've identified the other as 167796). None of these numbers are in the parts book and it is rather interesting, or peculiar, that the related objects are not sequentially numbered, just the two which have been affixed as an assembly. I wonder what the procedure was at Lockheed for the allocation of numbers.

My mind began churning away on matching the floor piece, with its access panel cutout, in relation to possible locations relating to such a cutout (there are eight such access cutouts spread over 4 flooring panels) and I'd resolved that to be a task come Saturday, when a couple days later ....

I was trawling through the stash of blueprint images on another quest when I was confronted by Image 14252 and staring out at me was the dish part from the mystery panel. The image's title is "cup jump seat back stowage" and the P/N is given as 167762..BINGO! I know exactly where the jump seat gets stowed, based on some brackets on the starboard wall of the W/O's office so the location solved.

After painting, today, the items took up residence as they should.



I left the cover off the access panel cutout to show why it's there. The unit attached to the underfloor junction box is the plug point for the bomb rack adjacent to the lower circular cutout, in the bombbay roof.

The home front saw the PD12 finished off this week and so to gladden ChrisM's heart and with gratitude for his supplying it here it is



and late in the day's works it got mounted on the stbd Cyclone.

The non-glamorous job of the day was a result of damage to the hangar roofs some eight weeks ago in winds which saw the departure of some of the clearlite panel. Since then we have faced the usual rigours of insurance claims and then being mucked around for five weeks by a contractor who we fired last week and whose successor in a week and a half did the business. Now somewhere in Heathcote are a pair of now homeless swallows who find their way into the building blocked and the evidence of their occupation has been attended to with mop and sponge.

[chrism]

Wow that carb looks amazing! Well done!

[denysjones]

Evening folks, the homefront project this week was this baby



It's what I call the heat shroud which forms the top part of the cowlwell (interesting Lockheed term) between the Cyclone's cylinders (the hot bit) and the assorted accessories. It has to come off to allow the carburettor to go into place. As you see this one could do with some love.

In our parts collecting phase we accumulated four of these pieces and interesting they all exhibited the same type of damage to varying degrees. That is outwards bulging dents and resulting creases (small in nature) on the two protruding corners of the carburettor surround.

So after a couple of sessions of garage-based metal bashing (which strangely none of my neighbours have passed comment on yet!) and plenty of elbow grease it was tarted up.



It's not 100% perfect, as I've never done a panel beating course, however it is a lot better than it was and is now back in place (a mere 40+ nuts and bolts later).



The P/N on it, 70847-2, is yet another not in our parts book and the shroud itself isn't even depicted on the relevant page, while the rest of the cowlwell is shown, which all seems a tad bizarre as surely this aspect of things is common to the Cyclone installation and nothing to do with the use of the aircraft.

Today Team1058 were in action working on the process of connections of various controls from the cockpit through the firewall to engine accessory bay items. Sunderland Dave worked on dealing to small fit items of the cockpit and Rob was beavering away on the R22.

[denysjones]

Today was the day, or so I had decided, that come hell or high water the bombaimer's bench was going in. It turned out to be much easier than I anticipated, the tricky bit was getting the two pins at the far end engaged in their sockets whilst not contributing my body weight to hindering the job. However here it is.



I then moved onto more engine bay stuff. Today's focus being figuring out the details of an item that I only have this shot from the E&M manual for it being the support running rearwards from the engine bearer in the foreground to the other member to the right.



It is the mount for a bracket for a dual pulley for a forwards heading cable, whose function I also have yet to discern, and I've not been able to find a blueprint for it. So I've headed off down the path of making it by the best informed guess principle.

Team1058 were up their usual stuff and fwd of the firewall more and more bits are taking their place, the sticky tags all mean something to the guys in the process. Further forward other things such as refurbed prop governor and ignition harness have taken up residence.



633Sqn were like me with their wind-up-of-the-year job. This was what they are saying is a test fit of the tailplane but I do wonder if it will possibly turn out to be permanent.



Finally here's a shot from the rear, sorry about the stunned mullet looking Alex, though he had thanked me for keeping you posted here :-)



If you're not going to be there next week...merry xmas and hopefully we'll see you next year, but some of us will be onsite next week so should have something to show for it.

[Dave Homewood]

Great stuff. Both projects seem to be ticking along nicely now and a lot of progress has been made this year. Well done team, and have a great Christmas.

[agile]

Dec 16, 2023 20:11:45 GMT 12 denysjones said:

Finally here's a shot from the rear, sorry about the stunned mullet looking Alex, though he had thanked me for keeping you posted here :-)

If you're not going to be there next week...merry xmas and hopefully we'll see you next year, but some of us will be onsite next week so should have something to show for it.

Cheeky blighter! In my defence after a day out in the sun at the cricket the day before and the heat of the workshop yesterday plus a fair bit of heavy duty fettling to get the tailplane in position and mounted (definitely temporarily, I might add) I was not feeling at my shining best just at that moment. As Denys suggests I will be skiving off next week for Christmas so as a final micro-update for the year here's a few more pics:



Fabric starting to come together on the top of the fuselage. Around the HF mast and LR refueller opening the fabric 'in the book' is quite different to what was actually in place on NZ2328 (mainly in that AP2019E calls for strips of tape around the mast opening whereas the builder of NZ2328 just slapped a massive rectangular patch over the whole area). We've talked it over and decided to make it authentic to the original aircraft, which coincidentally will be much easier.

As we've never managed to acquire a rack for the TR5043/TR1143 VHF set, the good blokes at Avspecs let me measure up theirs, and from this Dean fabricated us a very serviceable facsimile:


Dagy painted it and I stuck on a few Lord mounts, and hey presto - the dynomotor is the box on top, the transceiver is on the bottom:


It is astonishing to me how little fastening holds this whole setup (which probably weighs about 30kg) on to the side of the aircraft. The bottom is secured by a single 2BA bolt! L

Angus has finished wiring up the armaments panel (the one that sits vertically in the middle of the cockpit) with his usual consummate workmanship:


George and Oscar have been working on the rudder from NZ2328 but taking time out for small jobs like this radiator shutter:


Hope you all have a great Chrimbo, thanks to the forum for all the support and I'll catch you all next year.

Cheers
A

[denysjones]

I started off the week's home works thinking about where might the cables from the pulley unit, as per last week's post, might go. The only possible end to a path up the left side of the engine where it appeared to head would be the prop governor on the engine front. So looking at the E&M manual one finds the diagram for the pitch control cable system from which this is the final segment in the engine area.



Cable P3 comes along the centre section front and through the firewall via pulley duo 20 to join P4 and it then heads up the firewall face and over the first of the two pulley duos 11. The second duo is the one shown in last week's post viz



The first duo of smaller pulleys marked as 12 is mounted on the carburetor heat shield and guides the cables out through it to the second duo on an inter-cylinder baffle of the engine. Here you can see the two larger holes the cables pass through and the puzzling (until I find out what it looks like) support bracket is presumably mounted by the two smaller holes but perhaps also could be off the two bolts securing the shroud pieces.



Having got forward of the shield the cables turn via last 11 set to head out and round to the governor pulley 23. Here you can see the ones off the cowl front and the governor below.



The replica mount as per last week's illustration got positioned to allow measures etc but also pending refurb of more mounting brackets.



While I was cleaning up various pulleys for this I also dealt to some sets that were to hand awaiting attention. These are on the top of the forward wall of the bombbay and are for assorted cables from the rear of the aircraft heading to the control pedestal in the cockpit. After struggling with these this morning my sentiments towards Lockheed's designers were somewhat taxed.



Do have a merry xmas one and all......ttfn.

[Dave Homewood]

Merry Christmas Denys, Alex, Daggy and the team!

[Deleted]

Terrific work all, Merry Christmas and I hope to see you all in the New Year in person!

[kiwi285]

Have a great one to all in the restoration section from all at Classic Flyers.

[denysjones]

Thanks and the same to you guys up there Mike.

We'll hold you to that ambition Zac.

:-)

[denysjones]

During the week things were focused on the completion of the pulley bracket and its mount and the attachment thereof to the engine plus the corresponding set for the other engine.

With that sorted thoughts turned to the two pulley sets 12 on the diagram and hunting through the blueprints I found one described as "bracket - prop pitch control rear". The piece makes sense in terms of being the one on the heat shroud but also seems to be familiar so time for another rummage in the parts stash. The description then suggests that somewhere, hopefully, is a blueprint for "bracket - prop pitch control front" for its mate...time will tell.

That then got me started on the cables, marked as P2, P3, P4 on the diagram.

By way of an intro for people not familiar with cable systems....The stranded cables get fitted with ends which are swaged on and are threaded to screw into brass barrel turnbuckles. The two ends of the barrels have opposing threads, as in left and right handed, so turning the barrel in one direction pulls the ends of the two cables it is joining together and the other way reverses (undoes) the join.

It is normal for a cable to have one end that is a right handed thread and the other being left handed so a cable run looks like (L-R)-(L-R) etc as they run. The pitch control system is a closed loop, from the control pedestal out around the governor and back, thus they run (L-L)-(R-R)-(L-L) with P1 and P4 as (L-L) and P2 and P3 (R-R).

The other interesting thing about these four is that P3 and P4 are 3/32" cable while the other two are 1/16", presumably something to do with the force loads they have to deal to.

We've a fair stash of old cables and so can salvage materials from them, the major thing being that the viable solution for reusing the swaged on ends is to cut them and then fit a sleeved join.

I've settled on the method of cutting a coarse thread to the cutoff swage and fitting the piece of stainless tube, then filling it with molten solder, which hopefully flows down the cut thread inside to lock the tube, and plunging the cable end into the solder to secure it. The result seems adequately strong and as it is never going to be subjected to operational forces is good enough for us.

However in our stocks of stuff we've several examples of similar technology such as this...



Here's a stage by stage of the job. On the left an end cut off an old cable, then just for comparison an example of long version of the end piece but the pitch run uses the small version, then the swage end shortened, threaded, sleeve fitted, and a cleaned up barrel. On the right is cable P4 which today got put in place and the second end fitted.



So here P4 is looped around the governor, where it is affixed to the pulley



and then running backwards and descending to run down the firewall, as per the diagram, albeit missing pulley sets 12 and not being under tension as yet.



Do have a happy new year and hopefully a great 2024.

[Deleted]

Thank you both for the update and the detail on the procedure, Denys. Fascinating stuff that I occasionally wonder about and then my brain hurts!

[denysjones]

Following the success of last week's installation of the starboard pitch control cables this week I made up the set for the port engine and this morning it was task one...easy peasy...it's remove split pin, off with nut and washer, gently extract pulley bolt capturing two pulleys and four spacer washers and then reverse fitting each pulley with cable as we go.

Damn..this unit did not feature a single bolt carrying both pulleys but a bolt per pulley. However to make it worse it must have been bench assembled in two sub units, one for each pulley between two supports, but then their assembly as a total unit had the nuts on both outside faces and the heads in the gap between the two subunits; where a spanner won't fit so we can't undo the nuts and even if we could can't withdraw the bolts.

The result was to take the whole unit out of the front cowl ring, disassemble it, and reassemble but using a single long pulley bolt as per the starboard unit.

So much for the half hour job which turned into an elapsed two hours or so, though it did provide for some cleaning and replacement of items.

Hopefully not a sign of how the year is going to go!

There was a plus side to the day.

Dean called in this morning and went off with a wee mission of fabrication based on this blueprint figure



for the support for the rear pair of pulleys marked 12 on the recent diagram but I said that I hadn't yet located the corresponding one for the forward pair then when I uncovered the port engine to commence battle I found



so now know what's needed on that topic.

[denysjones]

A busy old day today but in the end not a whole lot of visible wow type results.

After more home works during the week more control cables were readied and so now both power plants have their pitch control and throttle control runs fitted out with cables 1,2 and 3 from the front of the engines back across the accessory area and down the firewalls ready to pass through them.

This today all involved the fitting of more brackets, pulleys, keep pins and of course damn split pins a plenty.

Here's the forward pulley block on the starboard engine which is a new fabrication based on the one found on the port last week and using re-purposed bits from stocks.



Today attentions then turned to the next set of engine controls which are the mixture ones and these don't use cables forward of the firewall so time went into sorting out tubing and end pieces to fabricate rods, homework for the week.

All of this is now at a crunch point where we are desperately in need of the pulleys to handle the translation of the control runs through the firewalls as this diagram shows.



Any help out there will enable things to keep moving forwards.

ttfn

[denysjones]

he other week, having complete his work on assorted Mossie tail pieces, George was facing a bit of a lull in the works pipeline and a conversation between him and Rob to led a fill-in project on the dark side in the realm of things Lockheed.

On the shelves I've long had this



and its mate. They are the "Fairing Assem.-Oleo". Last week after some scrutiny and a head nod George left with them and by day's end had reduced the first to components and was busy in his work on them.

Today's heat wasn't conducive to many tasks but progress was being made.

Gerry was solo on 1058 busy pimping the R1340. Paul and Rob are parallel building the R22 and R44 projects and their current focus is the engine and mast installations. Paul handles the paint works and Rob the mechanicals.

Dave continues on with the Sunderland fitout and is currently cleaning up the Nav's bay structure before it goes back in. Items being thus.



During the week I made up the two mixture actuating rods for the carburettors for 2035 and fitted them today. One lucky engine has also got the pulley for its rod while the other has to make do with a lash up of the end of the rod for now.



The rod pushes the lever on the carb forward in two stage for the three positions it has.

The afternoon saw some more tidy up stuff and sorting out bits for the next couple of weeks. Finally I bit the bullet of a deferred job which was the last set of pulley on the forward bombbay wall.



The nasty bit of this job is that while you see four pulleys clearly there is a fifth...it lurks to the left tucked between the longitudinal channel member and the angle you can just see the bottom of between the two channels. Even worse is that there is a spacer in there as well. The icing on the cake being that the bolt comes in from the very left through the hole in the second channel member.

All very much a job for tiny fingers and not hot day temperatures like today.

ttfn

[denysjones]

This week I made the decision, based on drawing blanks with various approaches, that the pulley items I need are rara avis and so some manufacture looks inevitable.

The two upper items on the firewall, that are rod-centric as opposed to cable-centric, are quite simple affairs. They comprise two flat pieces with the lever arm on them and sandwiched in the middle is a plate with a bearing pressed into it.

Their correct name is bellcranks and in the parts book there are 3 different P/N and looking at photos I saw that there are Short and Long lever arms and units thus S-S, L-L and S-L...makes sense.

Some surplus Callair spar material provided the source from which to cut the two plates and Team1058 came up with surplus and damaged Harvard items, material from which I could salvage appropriate bearing plate. Thus left side of this progressed to being the right.



This process solves the needs for the starboard firewall.

In the research phase I was keen to find a home for a long held bellcrank with a very long rod attached. This rod is simply too large to fit in the area between the firewall and engine case. I came across this photo in an E&M manual and bingo item 3 calls out as "carburettor heat control rod (upper)" heads off through the heat shroud for points forward.



The parts book in a very tiny form has a "carburettor air control rod" which I've assumed connects to a flap gate on the carburettor intake and hence was much shorter. I had a look at the upper cowls in the racks and lo and behold there is a lever arm on the side of the top tunnel duct so the bellcrank and rod now have a home...I just need the obvious seal for where it passes through the shroud (currently supported on a bit of red rag).



cheers

[denysjones]

Another day of slow steady progress but of matters small and fiddly.

The two facsimile bell-cranks now grace the starboard firewall which also saw more split-pinning and cable keep-pinning going on.

The last of the pipe runs from engines to instruments also went onto the starboard engine. This was the suction feed which for some reason, which eludes me, is only taken off the starboard side but it is what the manual says so it is!

Seeing I've been dealing to bell cranks and actuating rods I thought it best to turn my attentions to this one.



This is on the port side of the navigator's den and the cylindrical object it is mounted off is the flare tube. This crank is driven by a rod which comes down from a bracket on the forward face of the pilot's floor support above it. It opens and closes the door of the tube to the outside world.

Our one looks to have taken a wack at some stage so straightening appears to be the order of the day along with manufacture of the actuating rod and levers for it, which look like these in 2013.



Meanwhile down in the hangars Dean was beavering away tidying up this wip which was the subject of a concrete pour last Sat and is the forerunner of things to come, hopefully sooner than later.



toodles

[denysjones]

Rather quiet day on site as this weekend the park is hired out for the annual Nostalgia music festival which restricts visitors to being festival ticket holders and then being confined in the township area so we don't get any callers. Makes for uninterrupted working plus funds into the general park operating budget!

Leading on with the flare tube and its bell crank I hauled out various shots of the same in the other three Hudsons and concluded that ours may only have a minor extra bend in it (evidenced by some paint damage) and so conducted a trial fit of the door actuating and checked things for motion. All appears to be ok for working so we'll leave the shape as is.

The next thing was to make the long rod from the bell-crank up to operating handle. The matter of solving its length was sorted by its P/N of LS1600-25 1/4 (reading that that's 25 and 1/4 inches for the non-imperials) which checked with the rod from the bell-crank to the door being LS1600-7-1/16 and our one, which was still set as per the 1940's, verified this as it measured that hole centre to hole centre from the ends.

Luckily we have considerable amounts of NOS and used end pieces so making the long rod was no sweat and some available time during the week saw appropriate prep and paint of the door area. We even have a genuine Lockheed drawing 160742 for the door's rubber gasket!

Here's the inside a/c view with the 25 1/4 rod temporarily lashed up at the top pending fabrication of the twin lever actuators.



Below the a/c is the door and tube exit. The actuating rod is temporarily wrapped in bubble wrap to protect it from the edges of the aperture as only when the top rod lever actuators are settled can the final orientations of the ends of both rods be set.



cheers

[agile]

Down in wooden wonderland things have been moving along. Having completed his work on the armaments panel Angus has been building up the cables for the TR5043 VHF set. The originals are covered with an internally armoured braid which we haven't been able to source (even Avspecs has struggled with this) but earth braid provides an adequate if not brilliant facsimile. The two cables pictured run from the beam approach amplifier to the junction box behind the radio, and thence to the radio itself:




The 'W series' connectors are quite hard to find, if anyone has a 12-pin right angle one floating around I'd pay good money for it. The radio install so far looks like this:


On the right of shot the radio and RI compass cables will eventually be lashed onto a tubular 'bridge' running over the batteries. NZ2328's was missing but incredibly, I found one in the world's best scrap pile. To make Angus' life easier I think we'll hold off installing it until we get the wing centresection out.

When not working on Deny's leg fairings George and his merry men have been cleaning up the engine side cowlings from HR339 ready for painting:


The starboard inner reveals an adventurous past, with this large flush patch presumably the result of the flak damage received on Operation Clarion, which holed the starboard spinner 'like a pepperpot' and filled the starboard radiator with holes necesitating a return to base on one engine:


When you look at where the offending shell passed through the fuselage, you realise how incredibly lucky Dempsey and Paige were - 6" up and it hits the machine gun rails and likely explodes inside the fuselage, 2' aft and it goes throught the unarmoured cockpit side at foot level:


The inside of the cowling is a clutter of rivets:


Compared to an unmolested example:


New potential recruit David has been working on attaching the radiator shutters to the trays - a task more difficult than it sounds as the two parts are not from the same aircraft, so much fettling was required:


In the haberdashery department we're approaching completion of the top of the fuselage, with the tape around the canopy and the strip over the fuselage doubler (the latter cut by my sister on her Christmas holidays, cos there's no such thing as a free lunch at mine) completed:




And the patch around the dinghy opening, fuselage refueller and aerial opening done. In AP2019E the aerial opening is supposed to be done with a piece of tape around the edge, but NZ2328 just had a big rectangular patch over the whole area - a much easier solution which I was happy to replicate:


Dagy has started into repairs on the port wingtip as a bit of a learning exercise about the wing structure while we wait to free up room to do a wider assessment of the wings. Removal of the remains of the smashed port wingtip revealed an unusual green paint and mysterious markings:


The wingtips are bolted to strips of Paxolin (Tufnol) veneered with 1mm ply. One of the two had the veneer rotted off, so Dagy re-veneered it, then young Oscar took on the job of riveting the anchor nuts back on - if he goes into the aircraft trades I wonder if they'll teach him riveting onto wood!


When the wings were recovered from Pigeon Bay the inboard ends were on blocks, but the tips were resting on the ground, with inevitable results:


Surprisingly/fortunately much of the structure inboard is in pretty reasonable shape.

And down the back, the elevators were fitted without much ado:


And then connected to the trim jackscrew and the connecting torque link, which was a ball-ache of the highest order and cost me and Barrie (borrowed from Team 1058) a lot of sweat:


To my utter amazement the tailcone went on without any trouble despite belonging to a different fuselage and picking up on tailplane mounts that we fabricated - we must be doing something OK:


The lower fairing, which is held on by 11 Dzus fasteners, took many times as long. The fin fairing we think must be off HR339 as some of the holes are in weird places, but it will look OK when we eventually fabric over the joins:


So there she is. Don't get too used to it though, we'll pull all that stuff apart and carefully pack it away in a few weeks, once we have measured up for the few remaining bits that are missing inside:


Cheers
A