Nice photo’s Tim! (as usual)

Press Day looked to be well attended with people wandering around from various publications and organisations. Hopefully a sign of things to come as there has been a LOT of hard work done at Coventry on things other than the Shackleton by a lot of people. It’s cool to watch the place evolve.

Crew for the run on the Press Day was:

Dave Woods and Ricky Marriott in Pilot and Co-pilot positions, myself as Engineer, and John Cubberley overseeing us. We also were also thrilled to have aboard Don Johnson as a guest. Don was an Auster pilot in the Malaysian jungle and had no end of stories to tell.

WR963 once again behaved herself with minimal problems. We had an intercom issue which caused a bit of feedback until it was traced, and a weeping fuel priming line.

Regarding the oil priming – we thought about turning the engines on the starter, but it takes four minutes to oil prime for each engine – the pump is running all the time while the guys are pulling the prop through. It would kill the starter motors pretty quickly if we used them, as you are only supposed to use them for 20 seconds at a time. Once you get to that point you need to let them cool for 30 seconds before you can use them again.

I know I’m a little late by way of updates but I’m hoping to bring some good news in the next few days, which is why I’m holding off.

Kind regards

Rich

Tim,

It was good to meet you. Thanks for the picture, and glad you enjoyed the run!

Finally – proof in picture that I occasionally do something while I’m down at Coventry other than drink my bodyweight in tea!

Kind Regards,

Rich

The quarter windows were made new and replaced, we have the fixed and sliding side windows to do next. We have brand new ones of these. I think the windscreens may get done also, as one of them is delaminating. We have a full set of flat glazing panels for the cockpit.

I’m not sure if we have new escape hatches without checking the spares list. They actually look worse than they are as theres a sun visor underneath which reflects a lot.

The two worst UV damaged are the panels above the windscreens, but again, I’m not sure we have those. No idea what we’re going to do about the astrodome or the gunners position at the front though, I think a good polish would go a long way on those. I hate to think how much they would cost to remake…

Ben, the mag drop was on the inlet side this time. The exhaust side that you and Don sorted a while back was fine. There was no sign of a drop on this last run so we suspect it was fouled plugs, as you guessed. We’re having them out on Saturday, cleaning them, and checking the connections onto the harness while we’re in there.

Regards

Rich

Peter,

Thanks for the link to the clip I had heard 963 was called “Parsley” in 8 Sqn service, but the name everyone seems to know her by and the one she carried until September last year was “Ermintrude”.

Regards,

Rich

DCW, post as many as you like!

Ben, smiles all round from all our crew and a lot of happy faces all around Airbase. We all know you’d be there if you could.

Rich