Yes, its all good to go!

It was a hell of a lot of hard work. We were on site for around 11 hours and some of the team had travelled from quite a way out and didn’t get home until gone midnight… but it was the only way we could be sure that WR963 would be properly ready, rather than trying to deal with a braking system that was past its best. It was a near run thing though, as the big aircraft jacks only arrived on site at midday.

A little update ahead of this coming Saturday’s work.

On the last run up we thought we’d solved our brake issues. After starting to sort out various pneumatic leaks, we were confident we’d got to the point where the brakes will hold, and we were right. However, the pressure loss was still a problem. After a good run up, the brakes were holding but only sustaining pressure while the inboard engines were running at quite high rpm, and attempts at using the parking brake bled off pressure in minutes.

After wasting most of the day chasing tiny leaks in the charging side and storage side of the system we finally got WR963 holding decent park brake pressures for a good while, but the brake expander bags were still going down one after the other as the pressure increased. They are the ones the aircraft flew in on and in age terms they’ve been on far longer than is proper.

We can taxy, but with no guarantee it will be reliable. This means our only option is to get some brake changes done!

So, we raided our stock of new old stock expander bags.

Then we borrowed a suitable jack and tried a test lift. The problem we have is that jacks of a suitable height and weight are few and far between at the airport. This one was suitable, but will be replaced at some point as we’re still waiting for some refurbished ones we have on order to be delivered to site.

And success… up she goes.

Next Saturday will see both wheels off, brake bags replaced, both wheels back on, then a pressure test. Then we’re not only ready to taxy, we should be good to do so repeatedly and reliably.

Regards,

Rich

Howard, Peter, thank you both.

Peter, if you already have the manuals scanned and could send me a copy that would be great. You’re right about the cost of AP’s from the RAF Museum, we had a radio AP copied last year and the cost was eye watering.

Howard, if Peter already has the manuals scanned I think I’ll take him up on the offer; though thanks for the offer of copies from NAM – I appreciate the amount of time it would have taken to do that.

Thanks again,

Regards,

Rich

VTTS or CAF, yes.