Brendon Deere's P-51D Mustang NZ2423

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Brendon Deere has posted a terrific run-down of the cockpit and avionics setup, which I've shared below for those not on Faceboook (the link to his post is here):

Any aircraft restoration project involves a lot of planning. With NZ2423 we had an aircraft with a cockpit that was largely untouched from when it left the Grand Prairie factory in July 1945. The P51D left the factory with a TR5043 radio transmitter/receiver fitted behind the pilot’s seat which was controlled by a remote unit in the cockpit for selecting the channel and also switching between transmit and receive. Behind this unit was the IFF transmitter (Identification Friend or Foe).

In designing the avionics installation we obviously had to turn to modern equipment but install it in such a way as to not compromise the originality of the aircraft. In New Zealand two pieces of equipment are compulsory – the ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) which is designed to transmit to rescue personnel should the aircraft crash (or if the pilot activates it in an emergency). The other mandatory requirement is ADSB (Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast) which constantly transmits the aircraft identity, location and altitude to Air Traffic Control.

The box which housed the original wartime radio is quite large and provided more than enough room to house all of the modern avionics equipment. The ELT unit is self contained but usually has quite a large external modern aerial – we followed a similar technique we had employed on the Spitfire - the mast on the Spitfire was used to run an aerial wire back to the tailplane. So we designed a carbon fibre version which incorporated the ELT antenna and hid it out of site. With the Mustang the mast behind the cockpit was a an antenna tuned to the right frequency band so we were able to re purpose this to act as the ELT antenna and test it to ensure it met the regulations for ELT transmission.

For both the radio and transponder/ADSB systems we chose equipment from the Scottish company Trig Avionics based in Edinburgh. The company offered both radio and transponder systems which were split into two parts with a small control unit which mounted in the cockpit and a main electronics unit which we could mount in the old radio box behind the pilot. The control units in the cockpit fitted the standard small format for aircraft in width but for us also offered even smaller size of the vertical height of the face – this meant they fitted into the case of the old radio cockpit control case once its innards were removed. Although not a perfect “hiding” of the modern cockpit equipment, it doesn’t look out of place and provides the pilot all the necessary access to radio frequencies and transponder codes

The ADSB system also requires a position source – once again this Trig electronics unit was mounted in the radio box and we mounted the GPS antenna on top of the radio box on one of the opening lid panels on the radio box. The GPS antenna has an unobstructed view of the sky through the bubble canopy. Our Mustang has the ADSB identity of MUST23 which means anyone can track its progress in the sky using any of the ADSB tracking apps out there.

ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 01 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 02 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 03 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 04 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 05 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 06 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 07 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 08 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 09 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 10 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 11 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 12 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 13 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 14 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 16 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 17 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 18 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 19 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 20 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240107 Brendon Deere 21 by Zac Yates, on Flickr

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My apologies for the delay in getting Brendon's latest update to you, team. This was posted on Sunday (there are more than forty photos on this update and because my computer has been suffering performance issues I'm only posting a few highlights):

One of the remarkable aspects of the preservation of our P51 was that it was left largely untouched since being sold for scrap in 1958. Our Spitfire, PV270, although structurally complete, had all of its cockpit equipment removed when it was assigned to gate guardian duties by the Burmese. With the Spitfire restoration this left us with the challenge of finding all the missing equipment, a battle in itself. With the Mustang we were much luckier.

Custodian of the Mustang since 1964, John Smith, managed to collect cockpit equipment from some of the other scrapped Mustangs as well as the largely untouched NZ2423. Examples included several of the gunsight controller units on which the compass deviation card for each aircraft was mounted and remained in place .Under John’s careful watch, NZ2423 remained undisturbed for nearly 60 years until it arrived at Ohakea for restoration.

For some people, restoration of an original aircraft is an unforgivable sin, believing as they do that such an original aircraft should remain untouched. With the objective to make NZ2423 airworthy, it was inevitable that some of that factory originality would have to be disturbed. Although the cockpit equipment was complete, its appearance was challenged by the passage of time.

The markings in the P51 cockpit were applied in a variety of ways and we had to reproduce all of them as closely as possible. The cockpit has a number of screen printed and engraved placards – many of the standard ones are available as modern reproductions within the industry. Some of the airframe markings inside the cockpit were applied in paint using rubber stamps at the factory but for our project we used modern “frisk” stencils to apply these by spray painting. Some of the discrete cockpit fittings have engraved markings which are highlighted with white paint, laboriously applied by hand.

A large proportion of the cockpit markings are applied with paint using screen printing and to reproduce these we had to recreate the artwork from scratch for the screen printer to apply. This work was patterned of the original panels and developed in Adobe Indesign, producing modern digital output for the screen printer to work with.

ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 01 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 02 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 03 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 04 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 05 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 06 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 07 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 08 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 09 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 10 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 11 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 12 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 13 by Zac Yates, on Flickr
ZK-BHT Ohakea p20240121 Brendon Deere 14 by Zac Yates, on Flickr

[OMT1945]

Fantastic shots Zac, many thanks for detailing this incredible build.
I am at the stage where I need to re-do the stenciling in 'One More Time' and I have yet to find out the best method to recreate the markings.

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All credit for the photos goes to Brendon - he gave me permission to share them here for those who don't use Facebook. Thank you for the kind words though!

These photos, however, I CAN take credit for! NZ2423's display debut at Warbirds Over Wanaka seemed to go without a hitch, and Sean looked as though he'd been flying Mustangs all his life. He said there's not too much difference between displaying the Mustang and Spitfire. I have to admit to being a little choked up seeing it fly for the first time. These are only cellphone photos - I have some commitments to fulfil before I go through my shots from the Proper Camera.
Untitled by Zac Yates, on Flickr
Untitled by Zac Yates, on Flickr
Untitled by Zac Yates, on Flickr
Untitled by Zac Yates, on Flickr

Hopefully the proper photographers will be along shortly with some better shots