Hi all,

A little update from me regarding WR963. I’ve had to wait for e-mail updates from the rest of our crew as I’ve not been able to attend as regularly as I like.

We have no less than four new volunteers due to show up next week, which is great and will boost our manpower levels. It makes the heavy work just that little bit easier when there’s many people hands on. All in all, good times for 963.

So what’s been going on?

The weather has turned, and it looks unlikely we’re going to get more paint on until spring – we can’t afford to spoil things by getting moisture trapped in there. The fuselage is more or less sealed from water, as are the top surfaces of all the wings and tail. We’ve got through some 12 rolls of the sealing tapes, which is about 300 yards, and we still have various little bits like the camera bays still to do!

Various niggles are constantly being looked at – but you have to have a sharp eye to spot them! We’ve removed the damaged rudder trim tab on the port side to replace it with a new one from store. We’ve also had some seats re-upholstered, so visitors can once again sit in the pilot or co-pilots seat pretending to fly it without getting a numb **** from the rivets.

The next long job to keep us occupied will be an epic drill-and-tap-athon on all the underwing access hatches, to see if we can get rid of the last bit of stiffness from the ailerons, and unseize the trims. It’s got to be done before the new paint goes on there, so doing it while we’re at a halt seems logical.

A little bad news… while we have managed to stop the evil water creeping into the fuselage and wing structure, it found a new place to hide. Not a good place either, it being inside the Port No 1 fuel tank. I found the first lot, being quite disturbed when with all the other tanks showed good blue coloured fuel from the drains, this one produced vast quantities of colourless odourless (and tasteless..) liquid.

Close to 6 litres of water have been drained from it, and it had made its way into the line and priming pump. It looks as if its been caught just in time, and investigations are ongoing as to how its getting in. The tank cap recesses have been taped up for the moment as they’re the prime suspect.

For every bit of bad news there is some good… in our case its the impressive progress made by our engineers fitting the new oil priming system. They just have No 4 engine left to do, all the others are in fitted and ready to be tested. Once we can confirm there’s good oil flow to the cams, everything will be buttoned up and it will be getting about time to wake WR963 from her slumber again.

The engine guys are pulling out all the stops to make this happen sooner rather than later. We all agree she’s been quiet for far too long. Who knows… we might just even be able to surprise a few people if 963 co-operates.

Regards,

Ric