2 updates in a week; you lucky people , and there’s a possibility of a 3rd so watch this space .

Amother busy day yesterday, Cliff has progressed the Bomb Release Tee Handle to the point where it’s been slaved into position on the Instrument Panel. To all intents and purposes this is the last component to be fitted to the panel other than the sloping panels at it’s base. The handle just needs priming and final painting now..

Graham, is beavering away with the flying control assy, the levers have now been shortened and the reinforcing pates at their end have been riveted on. This should start coming together over the next few weeks.

The Aileron Pully bracket assy is nearing completion; the side plates are finished and the first bridging piece to attach the 2 pully sub-assemblies together has been riveted on, a further, longer bridging piece will be made next weekend and structurally wise this should be complete. some attachment blocks need making and the pulley guards but that’s pretty much it. The only fly in the ointment is the pulleys themselves; at first I though they were AS104s but having looked at photosthey’re too small, AS105s might fit the bill but the inner spindle width is too big as is the bore. Looking at the Vol 3 they are an off the shelf Skefco part, so I’ve contacted them to see if they’re still available or if they can send me the spec to see if I can source something similar. Fingers crossed.

If no-one has guessed the Clinometer quiz by next week I’ll spill the answer, but hopefully a reader will have a guess.

Finally, we have been doing some good swapping business this weekend; this will form the basis of the 3rd update hopefully.

John

Certainly does, very sobering

Much respect to the RNLAF and to the local Dutch authorities, the cost of this undertaking was not to be sniffed at

John

Hi all

Yesterday was a day of progress with a minor setback.

Graham has been beavering away with the Flying control assy under the pilots seat, with the purchase of an appropraite taper reamer we was able to ream the attachment pins retaining the lever arms to the torque tube and to start setting them up in relation to each other. This was going swimmingly until we compared it to the GA that Graham had prepared; it became obvious that the 2 inner bellcranks seemed way too long. Considering we’d had them laser cut from CAD this seemed unlikely, but as it turns that after reference to an original bellcrank half each lever was indeed over 2″ longer than it should have been, who’d have thought. Oh well better to be too long than too short, so it’ll be out with the hacksaw, dreadnaught file and drill to adjust them to the correct length. Annoying but not insurmountable.

On the other hand, Cliff has nealy finished fettling the Bomb Release Tee Handle and this should be installed on the Instrument Panel soon; no pics at present but plenty will be taken in situ.

I’ve made a start on fabricating the Aileron pulleys that sit under the 1st Pilots seat, I’ve attached a photo showing the original items and one showing the blanks that I’ll be working on. There are 2 LH and 2 RH with only 3 having been recovered but they are mirrored so are ok to reproduce. Thankfully one was not as badly damaged so we could use it as a pattern. To complete the assy, I need to make 2 bridging pieces to attach the LH and RH pulleys together and one reinforcing bracket, I was able to recover one and straighten it out sufficiently that it can be re-used  .

This week, we’re having a visit from a former Stirling Flight Engineer who was badly burnt when his aircraft crashed on landing, hopefully the dreaded lurgy won’t intervene and it will all go off ok.

Lastly, we bought a piece of tooling that will be used on the jig and fuselage installation, it has aviation use history and I’ll post some pics on here and will have a test to see who can spot the aviation connection first

as always, take care

John