Ta for that.

Have seen that thanks. This crops every few years or so and the unrealistic price for it seems to go up exponentially , and it then seems to get withdrawn before the auction finishes.

Realistically, there’s not going to be many people interested in what is in effect a tatty old bit of metal although it would be of great use to us in proving the tracing that we made of that very panel some 25 years or so ago.

It’s probaby worth £500 tops but that’s it  , but good luck to the seller if he acheives the figure he’s after

cheers

John

First thing to report is that our FN5 nose turret has returned from loan at the RAF Wyton Heritage Centre (formerly Pathfinder Museum) after some 14 years. Many thanks to the staff at Wyton for taking such good care of it throughout this period. The turret still needs some work on it to finish it; namely new rear doors making and electrically wiring it up. If anyone has some good photo details of the turret door interiors and lock mechanism (probably Wellington as this the closest to ours) it would be much appreciated if we could see them.

It was just Cliff and myself today, so whilst we’re waiting on the jig and bomb frames we’ve started making a number of stringer doubler spares which we’ll use to join the various sections of stringers together to make longer lengths. After making 32 of these we thought that was enough to be going on with for the time being, so we’ve had a stab at making the first one out of an initial batch of 24 lengths. These are relatively straightforward to make and assemble once the doublers have been made. This first one is by far the longest single component we’ve made being some 16 feet in length! 

The next few weeks will be spent making more of these and we’re helped through having a pneumatic pop riveter which certainly eases the the pressure on your hands.

more next week, take care

John

Hi Alan

Seeing that you have computer issues, did you get my email re the bomb crutch?

cheers

John

Morning all

Not much photographic evidence of progress today, but there was some nonetheless. Graham has pilot drilled the cast angle brackets that were worked on the other week, these have now been primed ready for use although once drilled the part under the bolt head will need to be spot faced to provide a level surface.

Yesterday also saw the welcome return of Kev, our resident expert in all things wood related; he spent a good few hours in the sun making an accurate bend radius in the MDF bomb frame formers. We’re slowly getting to the point where these will be in our eager, sweaty hands, and I for one can’t wait. Having been with the Project for nearly 25 years there have been plenty of false dawns leading up to this and in my estimation this is a real statement of intent and people will start to see a Stirling rising (slowly) from the ashes.

The jig design is now with the manufacturer and once some tweakks have been made to aid construction, this should start soon as well. The good news is that this won’t hold us up in making the frames as each one will have to be made in isolation anyway so a short wait will only help us in that we’ll be able generate a pool of spares ready to be fitted.

PS James, you should have a set of photos showing bomb crutch details in your Inbox 🙂

take

Care

John

Hi James

No problem, I think the wing and fuselage crutches follow the same pattern on the top so will take some photos next weekend for you

John

Hi all

A somewhat frustrating if not downright irritating day today. Following on from our recent break in I replaced our longstanding padlock with a combination lock from a well known retailer. When I pitched up today I found Cliff waiting outside asking if I’d changed the combination; well I hadn’t and neither of us could get in as the blasted thing had locked up on us.

Thankfully Cliff had his tools on him so we were able to break the lock from its mounting so that we could access the workshop and the angle grinder. Really annoyed that I had to go back to same retailer and get yet another lock although not the same sort this time . Having sorted this which wasted an hour and a half of our time, we took stock of where we are.

Cliff is waiting for some channels to be fabricated for his step and I have run out of pending jobs whilst we wait for our bomb frames to be laser cut and deliverd (not much longer now hopefully). My gaze fell upon my Chipmunk WP927 which has been sat unloved whilst her much bigger sister is getting all the attention. I’ve been slowly replacing the belly skins as these were badly gouged and punctured, so with Cliffs assistance, we progressed trimming and drilling the centre skin. This isn’t an easy job as the cockpit is currently inverted and it’s a tight squeeze in there. Needless to say by close of play the first side has been drilled and initially trimmed.

Hopefully next week will restore things to normal without any major diversions and Stirling service will resume

John

Ta