This is stood under the bulkhead at the front, which is more or less where the main spar is. You’re looking aft in this shot.
Construction seems to bear very much similarity to the Lanc, with the beams and large channel sections at either side of the bomb-bay roof/fuselage floor.
A lot of Shackleton drawings say something along the lines of “Refer to Lancaster Dwg No …. “, so I shouldn’t really be too surprised!
Regards,
Rich
14 May
Windy again at Coventry, but dry!
Plenty to do on 963 though to get her even better and keep her in good condition for the coming season.
Vic and Rich Marriott are making immense progress on the interior, I couldn’t get photo’s due to getting in their way. When I left Coventry at 430pm they were still hard at work.
Pirtek when phoned arrived at the airport within the hour (the guy on the phone asking “Is it the old Shackleton again? No problem!”) and when we gave them the old pipe we had a nice shiny new one produced inside 10 minutes. The old spec of the pipe isn’t available any more so an equivalent was used.
Thinking about it; there’s now enough non original parts on this aircraft to give the CAA and anyone else a field day if it had to be audited for flight. But as it’s probably not going to happen we can use slightly better materials without getting it approved. Hopefully the work we’re doing will keep the Shackleton ‘live’ for a good many years.
With the new priming line fitted, it was then just a case of switching the internal power on, selecting the fuel tanks and master cocks for that side, and turning the priming switch to No 3 or 4 engine. The pump hummed away with no nasty noises and no leaks… so 963 is good to run again.
Feeling happy with our success we moved on to what would have been last weeks task – the refitting of the air bottles in the pneumatics crate. Myself and Pete Curran took this job on, and braking spiky little bits of safety wire and stiff air hoses, we had the bottles in fairly quickly.
There was a little bit of head scratching to figure out where all the joints ran to avoid chafing and rubbing.
We than fed the bypass pipes fitted to the oxygen cylinders (as they have been used in the past for extra capacity) back into the crate and gently opened the taps.
Hissing noises were heard and then port and starboard pressure gauges started to climb! There is a small leak off the bottom pair of cylinders, and what little pressure we had bled away fairly quickly, so we’ll test the whole system from top to bottom next week.
Volunteers were called for and with one man standing next to each wheel, one down in the nose near the crate, and one in the pilots seat; the brakes were pressed. Port brakes took up and then vented nicely, starboard took a little more persuasion, finally coming on with a drawn out creak and then a puff of years old brake dust out the sides! There didn’t seem to be any sudden great loss of air, so it appears the brake bags are still intact.
So… 963 now has her brakes back. We need one more propeller and then a mainwheel tyre change, then… 😉
The propeller – this is a long standing bugbear, however it is now in the workshop being built up. It appears we’re missing an intershaft bearing and seal, so it might take a little while to find those. Other than that everything seems to be okay on that score.
Next we decided to have a crack at removing some of the stiffness from the throttle linkages. Well, that was the excuse. In reality all of us have been itching to get those front doors open and see what state she is in, in one of the places we haven’t been for a while.
Well we weren’t disappointed.. in there we found graffiti from the radar fit, original 50’s paint, a couple of birds nests and a lot of work!
You never realise just how big that bomb bay is until all the doors are open, the AEW uses roughly two thirds of it and it seems cavernous at that. We’re still planning around the possibility of re-instating the doors. There is MUCH more left over from the MR2 than anybody would think, and the position of where the doors were cut makes it look to be a job that can be done.
Tune in for more fun next week…
Regards,
Rich
Update time!
A wet Saturday down at Coventry but a resonable days work. Two of our guys are busy at work cleaning and repainting parts of the interior, a couple of us went leak chasing and the pneumatics should be back before long.
Leaks:
First up… the heavy rain has shown we have some more work to do. The prolonged dry spell has dried out more of the old mastic around the cockpit canopy frame and the beam lookout windows. We have water dribbles! The next fine day will see it sorted as we’ll dig all the old stuff out and put new in.
More worrying was the fuel leak. When we shut down we found the priming overflow on the starboard side was still chucking raw fuel out – but with the pump off. Initial thoughts were that I had overprimed during the start, but not so.
The supply line into the fuel priming pump was weeping fuel. We got it off the aircraft today and this is the state of it:
So from now until we can get Pirtek to come visit, 963 will be a bit quieter than she has been for the past month! All being well she’ll be fit and well by this time next week.
The air bottles came back from testing today, with all the NDT, x-ray, ultrasound, and boroscope testing done. Four bottles passed, one bottle failed with the wall thickness down to less than 1.6mm and metal flakes seen on the x-ray! 😮 Luckily for us we only need four, but a good job we sent the spare too.
The props are currently across the other side of the airfield causing much head scratching at CFS. I should have more news on those tomorrow if all goes well – but we have to admit things have slipped a little with getting this sorted out.
And a bit of a gripe… about Flypast magazine’s article on Airbase.
“Shackleton MR2 WR683?” “by the time these words are read it will have its final propeller in place and all four engines should be running.”
Come on guys, does it take much to look at your own forum? :rolleyes:
Camlobe,
Thanks for the compliments. Come over and see her when you want. She’s open every day Airbase has volunteers in, but the SPT team are there every Saturday.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – if it wasn’t for all the attention these old aircraft got when they were in the last years of service they wouldn’t be here now. As one of the guys that kept her going long enough for eejits like me to get my hands on her in preservation I can’t see you ever being a burden.
Kind regards,
Rich
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