Spitfire PT462 joins the 'belly landing' club 27/02/19

A very exhaustive report for a comparatively minor incident. Good reading.

There are microswitches on both legs – plunger switches on the uplocks, as well as microswitches to determine that the gear is down.

Electrical Gremlins…..

Separate m/switches for each leg would be a better system,and less costly……

AAIB report…

PT462’s recovery – the story so far….

Indy’s Road to Recovery Pt.III

To help distract from those post bank holiday blues, we thought we’d bring you the next instalment of Indy the Spitfire’s repair diary.

It was a rewarding week for the repair team as the first of the Spitfire’s wings was re-fitted to the fuselage! The port wing is up next, however, with Rib.1 and Inner Web repairs now complete, and the undercarriage leg back in place, this shouldn’t be too far behind its starboard counterpart.

The undercarriage bay door is edging ever closer to completion with Terry now in the final assembly stage, once he has finalised the fabrication element it will be into the paint bay for prep and finishing before going back onto aircraft.

With the project moving at a healthy pace it shouldn’t be long before we are checking in again with Pt.IV of the series. Thanks again for all of your support!

You can see the progress here:

https://www.facebook.com/aircraftrestorationcompany/posts/1219251141564884

An update will be up on their facebook page within the next 24hrs The Right wing is back on. Great progress so far.

Put your money away…… a slip of the tongue, a bronze alloy, of some sort! point being a really clever design, that allows for very little error in set up/operation!

Brass? My money would be on Manganese Bronze.

Mark

This is me having a less stupid day, what you can see here is a brass plunger that works just like a door latch in your house sprung loaded, and tapered, the “clever” bit is that it rotates via chain and cog (not shown) so that it can latch and unlatch (via the hyd rams) by a simple push or pull; I believe there is a sensor located on the main body but this system operates at fairly tight tolerances . [ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:”none”,”data-size”:”medium”,”data-attachmentid”:3859822}[/ATTACH][ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:”none”,”data-size”:”medium”,”data-attachmentid”:3859823}[/ATTACH][ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:”none”,”data-size”:”medium”,”data-attachmentid”:3859824}[/ATTACH][ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:”none”,”data-size”:”medium”,”data-attachmentid”:3859825}[/ATTACH][ATTACH=JSON]{“data-align”:”none”,”data-size”:”medium”,”data-attachmentid”:3859826}[/ATTACH]

Hi All,
This update courtesy of:- http://www.facebook.com/aircraftrestorationcompany/

Indy’s Road to Recovery Part II.

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The repairs to Indy the Spitfire have been progressing well inside the restoration hangar over the past couple of weeks. The team have made some real headway and hopefully it won’t be too long before Indy takes to the skies above Imperial War Museum Duxford once more!

The inner web repair is now complete which has enabled the undercarriage leg to be fitted into the bay. Now that the leg is back in place work can begin on fabricating the new… bay door, the new door is built from raw alloy shapes which are cut and shaped by the team down at Airframe Assemblies Ltd on the Isle of Wight.
The repairs to Frame.5 have also been completed and it has now been re-fitted to the front of the fuselage. The next task here is to begin building up the front end of the Spitfire ready for the installation of it’s freshly overhauled 27 litre V12 Merlin engine that’s currently being finished by the team at Eyetech Engineering Ltd.
Rib.1’s repairs are also making good progress with the bulk of the work on the rib itself now complete. After the repairs to the rib are finished, and it’s been re-fitted into the wing, our attention will begin to turn to putting Indy the Spitfire back together!
And there we have it, part.II is a wrap! We will now begin collecting images ready for the next instalment but until then, we hope you’ve all enjoyed the update!

For 20 more pictures please follow link :- http://www.facebook.com/aircraftrestorationcompany/photos/pcb.1205332129623452/1205293846293947/?type=3&theater

Geoff.

Great to get such a detailed update. Many thanks.

Hi All,
Update for anyone interested. Below from the ARCO FB page 06/03…..:eagerness:

Indy’s Road to Recovery Part.I …

So, with one of our two seat Spitfires, Indy, being a bit under the weather at the moment, we have decided to document her journey back to the skies. Before we do that, we’d just like to say how overwhelmed we were by the messages of support left on the post announcing the incident. It was a humbling reminder of the passion that exists for these beautiful flying machines and the engineering associated with them. It is that very same passion …that fuels the work we do in these hangars every day, so thanks for topping up our tank on a day where it was getting a little low.

Indy arrived home at five to midnight last Thursday after a huge effort from our team of engineers who went to recover the aircraft from Denham Airfield. They battled through torrential rain and blustery wind all day to get the job done and we couldn’t be more proud of them for never giving in! The team from Welch’s Specialist Movements & Welch’s Crane Hire were exemplary as always and we’d like to thank the guys at London Denham Aviation Ltd who were voluntarily on hand to assist our team throughout the recovery.

Now that Indy is back in our facility at Imperial War Museum Duxford things have already started moving. After a meticulous analysis of the damage, a repair plan has been established and the work begun. The engine was the first thing out as it will be replaced with a fresh one that’s currently being overhauled by Eyetech Engineering Ltd. The team there are really bending over backwards to finish the replacement engine and we can’t thank them enough for their constant support. The propeller was picked up today by the talented guys over at Skycraft Services Limited who have risen to the challenge of overhauling it. They know these props inside out and we have no doubt that it’ll be as good as new upon its return!

The rest of the repairs fall to us and our in-house Spitfire restoring dream team, Historic Flying Ltd (HFL). The whole front end, including the firewall, is now off the aircraft and the damaged wing will be going into a wing-jig before the end of the week. Fortunately the spar is undamaged, however, the wing will need to go into the jig for repairs to be carried out on Rib.1. The lower firewall has also sustained damage at the point in which the undercarriage rams mount. This has necessitated the removal of Frame.5 in order for us to carry out the necessary repairs.

So there we have it, the first update on Indy’s road to recovery. We hope you enjoy the photos:- http://www.facebook.com/pg/aircraftrestorationcompany/photos/?ref=page_internal

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Geoff.

As surmised, ARCo are straight onto the repairs. The schedule is outlined and photos posted, on their Facebook page, but in brief..

”The rest of the repairs fall to us and our in-house Spitfire restoring dream team, Historic Flying Ltd (HFL). The whole front end, including the firewall, is now off the aircraft and the damaged wing will be going into a wing-jig before the end of the week.

Fortunately the spar is undamaged, however, the wing will need to go into the jig for repairs to be carried out on Rib.1. The lower firewall has also sustained damage at the point in which the undercarriage rams mount. This has necessitated the removal of Frame.5 in order for us to carry out the necessary repairs. ”

Photo from Spitfire survivors page on FB (No credit on image posted )

Looks as though gear has been selected down at some stage, prop tip substantially intact

Not seeing any evidence of it sliding in that pic. (although TBF, I haven’t had my morning coffee yet)

I would say it looks bent. If you line it up with the panel lines at the top of the fuselage near the exhaust stacks, it’s not pointing the same way.

Denham has a hard runway and a grass cross runway I believe. Hard to tell which one was in use from the photo. Does the angle of the gun (cannon?) on the starboard wing look a bit odd or is it photographic distortion?

Also if you have a look at the photo, I certainly wouldn’t call that a smooth grass runway!

Normally in that circumstance, the locks are rotated by forcing the lever into the down position and then operating the blow down system, which will push the legs onto the locks. As I said above, once the locks have been rotated into the down position, and the gear has pushed past them, it cannot then fold.

However, if you have an engine out (and I’ve no idea if that were the case), I would guess there are an awful lot of other things to think about at the same time! Only one thing matters – that the crew are safe. Everything else is just engineering.

John Romain has said elsewhere that an engine out wheels down landing can be very tricky, and while the hydraulics are out in these circumstances the wheels can be unlocked so they fold up on landing. I wonder if this was the case here.