Beermat, It would be an achievement to have a ground runner . Will she be taxiable ?

Steve

Yep, she will!

And finally – http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/3313044/Hulton-Archive

In this one, you can see the ‘formers’ overlaying the zig-zag structure, onto which the fabric was applied.

I’ll share some photos when I can get to them. Thanks for the encouraging words, chaps!

Here you go – this lot are from flight, on their website but used here with trepidation, as they are definitely their copyright.. mods, is this OK?

Hi Keith

I guess so, if you signed for it – but I’ll talk to Paul – it’s his baby! I’ve just taken it upon myself to post about the wings here.

Paul was a bit jumpy about Key Pub generally, after unauthorised use of a photo in the past – but I think it’s thawed nicely now. As I say, I’ll ask. I personally don’t see why not – he is happy for me to post here, after all – I checked 😉

Pogno – yep, just like the fuselage, the original wing structure owed a great deal to the previous generation of Hawker designs. It sometimes seems almost bloody-minded to do things the way Camm did – tubes with squared ends bolted or riveted together by plates – requiring up to 160 components per joint – and there are hundreds of these.. Tolerances on every fastening hole are less than 0.0005″.

The early wing is an extension of this – tubes are joined by forged ‘plug ends’, also bolted with a 0.0005″ tolerance. Complex angles-off in three dimensions are necesary in the arrangements of the diagonal tubes to deal with the taper, front spar/rear spar chord diference, wing thinning and thickness-to-chord ratio change root to tip. A close look at the pictures above will reveal even more complexity in the two inboard-most diagonals – CURVED tubes conforming to a diagonal section through the aerofoil – the longitudinal profile of which is constantly changing root to tip…. and no, the drawings for these don’t still exist (although I would be VERY relieved to be proved wrong)

So you can see why the easiest way (or rather, the easiest way to avoid errors) is to take moulds – especially of the ‘plug-end’ forgings (visible in the right-hand ‘flight’ photograph) that give the initial angles at which the tubes meet. We have those from the front spar, but specifically not the rear. Hence my appeal 🙂 I guess I’m getting more specific as I go along – I didn’t want to post at this level of detail initially.

Edit Keith, PR’s on his hols until Feb, so I guess we’ll have to hang fire on your pics until then. Are they anywhere else you can link to, in the meantime? I’d love to see them!

Incidentaly many years ago while working on Hurricane outer wings the drawings we were using were marked ‘Hurricane and Henley’ so I assume Henleys were also fabric or metal winged.

Richard

This got me intrigued – and now I am just confused. I understood the same as you about there being certain commonality between the Henley and Hurricane wings, both fabric and metal. Some of our fabric-wing plans say ‘Hurricane and Henley’ too.

However, a contemporary Flight Magazine has an article describing the Henley’s wing as multi-spar – a different internal design again. It even has a diagram. Now this puts the cat among the pigeons for me, as this means that the Hurricane and Henley wings were NOT similar at all (EVER, as multi-spar means multiple fuselage attachment points – affecting the whole structure). Or do they really just mean spanwise members between the spars, and it’s the same wing on the Hurricane after all?

Can anybody help?