A little excitement about my AT-21 project....

[cvairwerks]

A little excitement for me on the project. In chasing down some reference material on today's B-29 antenna and TX/RX question, I ended up being on AAFCollections and stumbled across some listings for Ellington Field. My AT spend much of it's service life there and the rest at Tinker. I've got a book written by a female mechanic at Ellington, with her memories of the airplane, and some maintenance info on it. Looking thru some of the class books on the site, there she was in some of the photos. All you can see is the nose and nacelles and wings from the class shots. It's enough to confirm that 42-48053 was delivered strictly as a gun trainer and not as a bombardier trainer. There's enough of the nose glass visible that you can see the K-2A gun ball for the flexible .30 on the nose. Cool....now I have more data on how she was delivered. I do know that she retained the turret for a while, until the first major inspection undertaken at Ellington. At that time, the two longerons that support the turret ring frame were found to be cracked in that area and the turret was removed and faired over.

 

[Capt. Vick]

I LOVE the AT-21! Pictures please!

 

[cvairwerks]

Capt. Vick: Not many photos worth a flip, other than of big parts these days. Lost all the ones that I had when I got the project and it still had some bigger wood pieces. Photos as they appear on my screen....Rudders, forward end of one nacelle, gear bay of the same nacelle. Nacelle is about 3' wide and 4' tall and about 6' in length for reference, most of the forward fuselage, (there's a couple more feet to the left, including the wing spar mounts, and last photo is the forward (maybe) wing spar junction and aux fuel tank bottom cover. In the spar photo, the green thing on the left is the belly for my L-5B, the silver gearbox is the nose gear right angle drive and the radio boxes are for the AT. To the far right, the white cloth covered cylinder is one of the two fuel fired heaters for the AT. Was moving some stuff around looking for a couple of items is why it's so hap hazard looking.

 

[Capt. Vick]

So the end game here is to...?

 

[cvairwerks]

Rebuild with eventual return to flight.

 

[Capt. Vick]

Excellent! Good luck and God speed on your endeavor!

 

[BobB]

Did your AT-21 come out of Spartan? They had some when my father was in A&E school circa 1950-51. Do you already have the AT-21 structural repair manual?

 

[cvairwerks]

Bob: The history on mine has some blanks. It was delivered to the AAF in Dec 44, if I remember right. It bounced back and forth between Ellington Field and Tinker Field until it was surplused in May of 45. Sometime between then and the late 60's it ended up being parked on the edge of a wheat field in Saginaw, Tx. Sometime prior to the museum getting it in the early 70's, it was heavily vandalized and the engines were torched off of it and along with the cowlings and instruments, disappeared. From then, until I acquired it in the late 80's, it resided in the storage area of the museum. After the passing of a couple of the volunteers that worked to get it, interest in restoring waned to almost nothing. Even if they had decided to carry on, the museum had no protected work location or even a building or cover to place it, or any of the other aircraft on display.

I've got copies of the original factory preliminary SRM that was not published and a copy of the Pilot's handbook. The factory book is in rough shape and while complete for it's printing, it's not what the field would have for working on the aircraft. I do have what should be a full set of drawings, although some are almost unreadable due to low quality work when they were microfilmed. I'm always looking for more documentation and parts for the project. I have a contact that goes to the NASM archives fairly often and I've got some queries on some material there that I want him to check out on one of his trips there. Unfortunately, I haven't had contact with him in a while and he hasn't answered the last couple of emails I've sent him. I may have to wait til I retire and make a multi-week trip there to do it myself.

Over the last several years, I've gotten hard and heavy on acquiring parts for the restoration and am down to some really small and hard to find stuff. There are things I will most likely never find, so substitutes will have to be found, such as cowl flap drive motors, some QD's for the engine bays, landing gear motor and the weird Heim joints used on the push rods for the controls.

 

[BobB]

Bob: The history on mine has some blanks. It was delivered to the AAF in Dec 44, if I remember right. It bounced back and forth between Ellington Field and Tinker Field until it was surplused in May of 45. Sometime between then and the late 60's it ended up being parked on the edge of a wheat field in Saginaw, Tx. Sometime prior to the museum getting it in the early 70's, it was heavily vandalized and the engines were torched off of it and along with the cowlings and instruments, disappeared. From then, until I acquired it in the late 80's, it resided in the storage area of the museum. After the passing of a couple of the volunteers that worked to get it, interest in restoring waned to almost nothing. Even if they had decided to carry on, the museum had no protected work location or even a building or cover to place it, or any of the other aircraft on display.

I've got copies of the original factory preliminary SRM that was not published and a copy of the Pilot's handbook. The factory book is in rough shape and while complete for it's printing, it's not what the field would have for working on the aircraft. I do have what should be a full set of drawings, although some are almost unreadable due to low quality work when they were microfilmed. I'm always looking for more documentation and parts for the project. I have a contact that goes to the NASM archives fairly often and I've got some queries on some material there that I want him to check out on one of his trips there. Unfortunately, I haven't had contact with him in a while and he hasn't answered the last couple of emails I've sent him. I may have to wait til I retire and make a multi-week trip there to do it myself.

Over the last several years, I've gotten hard and heavy on acquiring parts for the restoration and am down to some really small and hard to find stuff. There are things I will most likely never find, so substitutes will have to be found, such as cowl flap drive motors, some QD's for the engine bays, landing gear motor and the weird Heim joints used on the push rods for the controls.

I have an SRM but don't know what edition. I moved and don't know where everything is boxed up. Been meaning to scan it but other things come up.

 

[cvairwerks]

Mine was company published, has a grey cover and I think it even says Preliminary on the cover. It isn't numbered like a normal T.O. is, either. A published one would have a publication number on it, like AN 01-115KA-x, where the x denotes what manual it is. For a Pilot's Manual, it would be a 1, an Erection and Maintenance Manual, would be a 2, and the SRM would be a -3.

I'll dig mine out in the morning and compare pages to mine, but I suspect yours is a company one as well.

 

[BobB]

Mine was company published, has a grey cover and I think it even says Preliminary on the cover. It isn't numbered like a normal T.O. is, either. A published one would have a publication number on it, like AN 01-115KA-x, where the x denotes what manual it is. For a Pilot's Manual, it would be a 1, an Erection and Maintenance Manual, would be a 2, and the SRM would be a -3.

I'll dig mine out in the morning and compare pages to mine, but I suspect yours is a company one as well.

Found mine; dated February 1, 1944.

 

[cvairwerks]

Bob: Managed to find mine in the office mess. Same date, so we both have the factory versions. I do know where I can order a copy of the AAF publication and I'll most likely do so later this week.