Hi all,

Just a quick update to say that we will be running up WR963’s engines on Saturday 15th August, with engine start commencing at 2pm. The next one after this will be a members only event on 13 September for the VTTS, so if you can’t go without your Griffon fix those are your dates.

Howard – I’ve just seen your post, I missed it as we posted more or less at the same time. It was a pleasure to have a chat and great to make Newark Air Museum my little boy’s first aeroplane experience! He seemed in a good mood the rest of the day, so hopefully thats a good indication of things to come. 🙂

Kind regards,

Rich

Just wondering why you are converting her back to MR2 spec now, rather than during her restoration to flight. Won’t that involve having to remove the components you have just fitted ?.

Hope you guy’s achieve your goal to get her back in the air.

Bob T.

Hi Bob,

Some but not all will have to get removed again. We’re doing the conversion now as we can get everything built and in place and make sure it all fits and works, and some of the more major bits which impact on airworthiness are getting inspected and signed off properly as we go.

Regards,

Rich

None as yet. We’ll still keep our eyes open as if they’re found, we need to know why they were taken, and by who. We have a few leads on other sets of blades (which we’re following up) so we might be able to replace them.

Not ideal but not as much of a hurdle as we initially thought. Morale is still pretty high on the team.

Regards,

Rich

It will, though its causing a few more headaches than we would like!

Hi all,

This Saturday saw us get stuck in on WR963 removing some of the AEW2 components to start putting MR2 components back in, as we’re finally at a stage where we have enough to be able to carry out a large proportion of the work. It was thought that some of the removal of parts would be fairly easy but it turns out that despite Airborne Early Warning only being a temporary use of the aircraft, it was very well put together, adhering to the British tradition of “Why use one bolt when nineteen will do..”

As for making sure the retrofit is genuine its surprising what parts crop up through eBay finds or trades, but the good news is there’s plenty out there that will allow us to do the job properly. As well as several new acquisitions over the last couple of years, we’ve requested the return of some long term loan items, so watch this space for more interesting bits of gubbins showing up.

Starting at the front; the oxygen crates in the nose were depressurised and removal started by Mark and Curtis. One side is out the other remains to be done, allowing access all around the area for fitting of something a bit more in keeping with a gunners position! Two of the bottles will be making their way back into the leading edge of the wing and the rest will probably be disposed of as the MR2 carried its oxygen in a bomb bay mounted crate as and when it was required.

One recent acquisition was a rather battered but recoverable sonobouy plotting table. I arranged to collect it early on the Saturday morning, delivering it to Coventy mid morning. It had the frame removed and is now safely stored inside WR963 though to fit it will require some more component removal over the next few weeks. Its missing a few parts such as the lighthouses and the GPI, but we’ll find those in time.

The low voltage power pack/radio rack in the beam seemed to be fitted with more bolts than the spar booms but was eventually removed, it is stored under the aircraft while we raid it of fixtures and fittings – in particular anti vibration mounts which will be used to fit the plotting table mentioned above. The racking is redundant in our case and will be replaced with flare and photoflash stroage, and also we’ll be fitting some ASV parts and hydraulic rams in the beam so we need all the room we can get.

We traced the wiring through for the removed AN/APS20 and while there’s more to finish up (wiring removal and excess pipework for the most part) we’ve taken the first small steps to putting our aircraft back to an MR2; and it will no doubt surprise a few people how much we get done. Most of it is easy to get to, as shown under the bunks here.

We’ve also started having a look at the bomb bay jacks, but to refit them up at the front will require removing a few packing pieces up at the front end that were put there to space out the bomb bay floor longerons once the mount was removed.

So there you have an idea of whats coming over the next few weeks. In amongst this we have a few engine run coming up, one on August 15th (possibly an evening run) and then again for the ‘Farewell To the Sky’ Vulcan event in September.

Photo credit for this week’s update – Gareth R Morgan.

Regards,

Rich