16/11/2019 Update(let)

Not the most productive day, as work had to stop due to lack of bodies to lift the new panel in! Much of the work today was drilling out the remains of the rivets, preparing the new panel to go on, and getting everything ready for lifting the panel into position tomorrow really.

All the holes cleared and ready to go. She does look rather naked!

Panel prepared, and lined up ready to simply lift into position (!) tomorrow…

Wish us luck!

14/11/2019 Update

I think it’s fair to say I earned my Jaffa Cakes today, not that I actually had chance to devour any. This morning my trusty compressor and I were called upon to assist the Harrier repaint team, as the fairies had been and stolen the air out of one of their outrigger tyres. So, after sorting that (and giving all their other tyres a boost too) and admiring the new paint job nearing completion on the jet, I carted the gear back across to 788, and set out my stall for continuing the de-riveting of the port nacelle. Then just before I started, it was handily enough lunch time! So after a feed battle commenced… First though, I got the goosed rear access panel off. Here it is, handing the baton over to its replacement, still fitted to the new skin

Then it was on with the drilling.

It’s a lot of rivets to remove by yourself! I am very proud to be able to say I did the lot with only one drill bit; none were sacrificed to the tool Gods! After some judicious swearing and careful levering, the lower nacelle was removed. For probably the first time since she was assembled, 788 looks like this:

It’s a big ‘ole!

I then rubbed back the corrosion on the jointing flanges and the ribs, before priming them up

So next visit, the new shiny skin can begin to make itself feel at home!

Cheers Malcolm; the lass isn’t a bad sidekick/apprentice/pain in the backside, though she does have this tendency to try and take sneaky naps under the jet!

11/11/2019 Update

…As I’m sure you can appreciate, given the fact that it was Remembrance Sunday yesterday, not very much engineering happened. It was one of those days that was more about the people than the aircraft, and rightly so. Given the museum’s French connections, this took an unexpected turn later in the day for us on the Meteor team too; more on that later. But first, seeing as it was sunny, and the Meteor 8 has moved round to outside our side of the hangar, I decided to open her canopy to give her cockpit a few hours’ airing out.

I thought seeing as this was a day for reflection, this shot seemed very appropriate. The number of crew killed flying these first generation jets, the Meteor, Vampire, Venom etc, as the RAF took its first steps into the Brave New World of jet operations are quite staggering.

A part of why we do what we do is for those chaps, who were then flying at the cutting edge of British aviation. It tends to be overlooked these days, just what a dicey business operating the early jets could be…

Anyway, in the morning before the ceremonials started I broke out the new stash of rollers I bought this week, and got the outer skin of the starboard inner undercarriage door and 2 of the airbrake access hatches in silver topcoat

Scott, Simon and myself then made our way to the memorial garden to join some of our visitors for the Silence at 11am. After this, not a great deal of work happened really, I was busy sorting some stuff for our move to the workshop for the next 2 weeks as we have had a work embargo put on us as Kia have hired half the hangar for a corporate event and don’t want us noisy dirty oiks in there, so we’ll cart stuff over to the workshop to work on. At least there’s heaters in there!

After lunch, we were again largely busy with visitors etc, though we also got on with the laborious process of checking out the captive nuts in the forward fuselage sides. A number of the screws attaching these to 788 had had to be drilled out, and while the remains of the screws could be coaxed out of some with some deft application of mole grips, this didn’t work for them all. So we played noughts and crosses on the jet, marking out the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly…

Then the afternoon service and commemorations were carried out at YAM, which we were proud to attend. After this, I was asked to show some French visitors around the NF project. A lot of people forget that the NF was exported widely, including to the French air force. One of the French pilots inextricably linked with York is Yves Mahé, who as a wartime Hurricane night fighter pilot flew against German bombers attacking York during the Baedecker raids during 1942. This link tells you his story, and it is quite a story;

http://yorkcivictrust.co.uk/heritage/civic-trust-plaques/yves-mahe-1919-1962/

While I had of course heard of him, I was not aware that after his wartime service he rejoined the French air force, and was in 1962 killed flying a Meteor NF. The visitors I was asked to show around 788 were his son, and 5 grandsons, who were all keen to learn more about the type Yves died in. All had a sit in the cockpit, and went away knowing a lot more about the machine that sadly claimed their relative’s life. That is one of the reasons why we do what we do to return 788 to her former glory…

As things started to quieten down, we made a start on replacing the duff captive nuts on the starboard side and turning those crosses into noughts…

before calling it a day. I’ll leave you with this picture…

Just to forewarn you all, there won’t be a great deal in the way of news from us over the next 3 weekends. This coming Sunday is obviously our remembrance day, so there won’t be loud hammering and riveting happening! The 2 weekends after there is a corporate event in the hangar so again, no engineering.

We will try and take items elsewhere on site to work on them and keep our momentum up; none of us want November to be a total loss of a month!

We may be moving 788’s storage and work bench facilities soon, an exciting prospect indeed as this means we won’t lose work days to hangar events etc. Fingers crossed…