Update, 24/04/2011
Hush Lagerboy, there’s nothing wrong with Hobgoblin! :diablo:
Sunday was a lovely warm day at Elvington. Our tasks for the day were to check tyre pressures and make sure the maxaret tracks and tyres were clean of oil, and to replace a hatch in the rear of the jet with a brand new, unused example.
The wheels and tyres were dealt with by John (in between apple pies!)
It was necessary to do these as the aircraft is being moved out onto the airfield, as are the Nimrod and the Herald, next week to make space for a museum event the week after. Only a couple of the mainwheel tyres were slightly low on pressure, pleasingly.
Meanwhile Rich and I busied ourselves with the hatch. It’s the hatch between the rear compartment and the former ECM bay right in the back of the jet, and 50 years of people clambering through it haven’t been kind. We had in stock a NOS hatch, but apparently someone in the past had made half an attempt to fit it and declared it didn’t fit. We took the old hatch off and went for a nosey to see what the state of play was in the tail. We found nothing nasty in there corrosion-wise, however we did find another fine bit of service graffiti:
It reads:
Q. What is the difference between a Victor, RAF Marham and a load of crap?
A. The spelling!
Someone not a fan of life on 55 then…!!
The plan was to remove the fasteners from the new panel and fit them to the original. I didn’t like this plan, and decided to have a go at fitting the new one to see why someone in the past had declared it wouldn’t fit.
And, well…
It fits!
It would seem someone closely associated with another certain V-bomber had zapped the old panel at some point too…
Not sure if I’ll be in attendance next weekend, depends on how the MG gets on in MOT this week. But there will be an update from someone.
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