22 Oct

Today was one of those days where despite best efforts nothing seemed to go right.

It started off well enough, with work starting on No 3 engine almost as soon as we arrived, with the intent being to fit the new plugs, A bank inlet ignition harness, and get it all connected up and working.

First problem was a rather attractive distraction:

Then back to what we were doing before… The new inlet harnesses are great, but we quickly discovered that despite looking alike, they are handed, and we had two of B bank.

While a couple of the guys went off to sort that problem out, I set about fitting the new spark plugs.

The rear five on both sides are pretty easy to get to, but the front two are awful. With a rag stuffed down into the gap between the induction tube and the inlet manifolds (to make sure anything dropped doesn’t disappear!) it was a case of using your fingertips to get the plug started. This is fairly difficult to achieve from all but one angle – above.

You can then slip a length of rubber hose over the end of the plug and hand tighten it. Nip it up with the plug tool and the job is done.

Lacking one brand new harness, we went back into our little store, and rechecked the one we had taken off the engine. We were pretty sure it was dead, and this was confirmed when we tested it again – and the lack of a couple of the ends that screw into the plugs didn’t help it any.

Another rather scruffy harness was found and this one was cleaned and put on the HT tester. Success! It worked perfectly. The problem with this was that something had fell on it years ago and squished the locking ring that secures it into the magneto slightly oval. We may end up robbing a harness off a spare engine to solve this problem swiftly.

All rather trivial stuff, but enough to slow us down, and irritate.

Underneath the aircraft maintenance goes on. A team in each undercarraige bay are chasing out all the dirt and grime from the last few years. The less oily residue when in here the better; it makes the aircraft look better cared for when visitors are looking inside, and we don’t get as dirty. We still have the generator to fit behind No 2 engine, and the compressors are coming off for overhaul soon.

A couple of other notable things that happened today –

Shortly after midday our prop was dispatched to CFS for inspection and build! I’m hoping we get good news and it gets assembled fairly quickly.
😀

The nose of the Strathallen T4 VP293 is getting some attention now that several replacement parts have been found. I will get some progress pics, and either add them to this thread or start another. There was only a vast amount of cleaning going on in there today – hopefully once the remains of damaged parts are removed it will look a lot better.

Kind regards,

Rich

Hi all,

The first set (24 in total) of new Champion plugs are with us now at Coventry. Being a military style shielded plug – despite being for vehicle use originally – they have the same screw on connection which allows us to use them as a direct substitute for the originals. This is great as it means we don’t have to alter the harnesses in any way shape or form from the original design. 72 more plugs to acquire and then we might be getting somewhere!

Visitors to AIRBASE’s website will see on the “What’s On” page that a certain old Avro aircraft has been added to the list for the Night Runs on 10 Dec. (and I’m not talking about the Anson!) Nothing further other than the date and a provisional list, but I’m sure once the details are sorted it will be updated, and I’ll cross post onto here if people are interested.

…and another little story.

I had a young visitor (and his parents) aboard WR963 yesterday who wasn’t too interested in sitting in the pilots seat. He wanted to be the Flight Engineer. His reasoning? His grandfather who passed away a couple of years ago had been a Flight Engineer on Halifax’s flying with 158 Sqn out of Lissett – and this young boy was very proud of that fact.

His grandfather’s operational career finished when his aircraft collided with a Lancaster over Belgium. Luckily, he managed to get out but was captured and became a POW. The memory stayed with him though and apparently a visit to Friday 13th at Elvington resulted in nightmares about the collision coming back many years after the event.

Now ‘963 can’t claim to be the legend that is a Halifax, but for a brief moment yesterday, she did her best to stand in for one. A little lad was able to sit in a bomber with twin fins, four engines, trying to imagine what his Grandad went through nearly 70 years ago.

Last I heard as I left, him and his parents are going to visit the Halifax’s at Hendon and Trenton.

Interesting link.

Pictures of the once proud Pelican 1716, taken July this year. The desert, and the locals have not been kind.

http://www.cape2tangiers.co.za/images/mali-mauritania-western-sahara-morocco-and-spain/dsc_5786.jpg/

Regards,

Rich

15th Oct

Well today we had a good day. A decent turn out and nice weather all good for fitting new parts.

I’ll apologise now for the state of the photos, I had to resort to the back up camera. 🙂

First job of the day was to start by doing a spot of light greasing round and checking of levels, and all appears to be well there. We have been in the store and have the new bomb bay ram ready to fit, but we think there’s a couple of other weeps that need looking at so we only want to break the system open once if we can, so the AP’s are being studied before we tackle this task. The various points that are used to bleed the system have been cleaned and oiled in readiness to hopefully make the task a little easier.

Roger White was back chasing intercom gremlins – being unsatisfied with the response he had got from a few of the outputs around the engineers station (I’m not guilty – when have any of you known me be quiet?!) By the end of the day after swapping a couple of the intercom boxes out it appears to be working well.

They were a devil to get to, with Roger having several of them under maintenance at once.

Roger had a chap working with him named Steve who used to be part of the team many years ago before moving out of the UK. He is still very knowledgeable and was able to coax 963 into doing something we haven’t in a while… he managed to persuade the radio into life! 963 managed to talk to Coventry Airport for the first time in a few years which was great – usually we’re working off a handheld item or by proxy through Classic Flight.

Steve took time to chat during the day, with a couple of stories coming to light about VP293 (the T4 ex-Strathallen) and its adventures at Farnborough. Apparently the aircraft had a peculiarity – which was every so often it would shake slightly, then resume normal flight. When investigated, it was found that a particularly hard landing had distorted the airframe slightly which caused the aerodynamics to be a bit ‘off’!

And of course, I had to ask about how it came to be known as “Zebedee”… the answer? Well, Steve insisted it was not the aircrafts fault! The famed bounce was supposedly a certain pilot who was reputed to have similar difficulties with landing the Hastings.

Main effort of today was to get started fitting these:

Brand new (back in 1989!) ignition harnesses, ready to go on No 3 engine.

The harnesses are now on, with all the plugs removed for cleaning. On the inlet side, the left harness feeds to the right bank and vice versa. The inlets are a pain to get to as they hide under here:

You can just see the hole in there. Have some more Griffon engine shots….

I’ll take comparison shots next week, showing the harnesses in place.

This is by no means the end of the ignition saga, as we’re starting getting information (from Roush Aviation and a couple of other places) regarding the use of automotive style plugs in our engines. It would help with low speed running as they’re less susceptible to fouling, make servicing slightly easier, and cost a hell of a lot less for new plugs.

There may be a midweek update too. Stay tuned..

Kind regards,

Rich

Occasionally even a bad day can turn into a good one.

Feeling rather under the weather, I decided to spend today in our archive rather than working on the aircraft herself. Moving boxes of drawings, manuals, and paperwork is a way to while away a good few hours, as I get easily distracted by engineering diagrams and wanting to find out what makes the old bomber do what she does (and why!)

The archive is an amazing place… wall to wall with bundles of original Avro blueprints – some of which are 6ft x 4ft or larger when unfolded! AP’s covering all aspects of the aircraft, parts schedules – you name it. Even the MOTU training books, lessons, wall posters, and a bunch of weight and balance calculations for the last six Shackletons in service. Some of this stuff really ought to be where the public can see it rather than in a locked room.

I was already enjoying some of the reading material I’d found, when on shifting some filing cabinets I came across a document wallet; the contents of which left me sitting there after reading it feeling rather stunned.

I had in my hand today a copy of the agreement between British Aerospace and the Shackleton Preservation Trust detailing the purchase of all rights and titles to the drawings and design of the aircraft type “Avro Shackleton”, and of the purchase of the drawings themselves…

😮 😮

More to come tomorrow after the ‘Friends of WR963’ autumn meeting.

Regards,

Rich