Calgary's Hurricane on the Move

Great job, Andy

Great stuff !

Great shots Andy! Some good progress being made.

That is a pretty sight that is. Kudos to all involved and to you Andy for sharing with the rest of us.

Cheers and best wishes,

Jeff

Thanks all.

One thing I don't think I mentioned in this whole thread is all the research that I've been doing with the immense help of some very knowledgeable people as to what the correct paint scheme would be for our aircraft. We will depict this aircraft as close as possible to how it appeared when it served with 133 Squadron RCAF on the west coast of Canada in early to mid 1943. I volunteered to be the one to produce a set of dimensioned drawings for our finish painter and this required a fair amount of study of photos and communications with those in the know. RCAF colours, insignia, letter styles and even the matching of our s/n 5389 with aircraft letter M were all things that could not be taken for granted and required lots of work to verify or at least apply the most educated assumptions in the absence of fact. Anyway, after some 7 months of active discussions I produced a drawing and report outlining the reasoning used for coming up with the scheme shown when, lo and behold, one of our contributors found a picture of our very aircraft in the Library and Archives Canada showing how it appeared at Boundary Bay airfield on March 29, 1943. Here's the pic:



And here's a detail isolating just our aircraft:



I'm happy to say that, in the absence of this photo, we got the details pretty much bang on, with just a few very minor adjustments being needed to my drawing. The style, size and position of the letter M were almost exact and the picture served to verify that the Type A roundel was featured on the upper wing surface at this time, though we had evidence of a B type being applied on the actual skin. This was probably applied later after the aircraft was repaired after a crash.

The lettering style used by the RCAF for the serial numbers is quite unique and we had no info on this other than photos from which the style could be replicated. One picture commonly found on the net shows aircraft L s/n 5398 where the unique style can be clearly seen. I used this pic and others to create the style to be used in our scheme.



Note the B roundel on the wing uppers. The fact that our aircraft is 5389 made this picture very useful in creating the stylized numbers to be used. This, and others, also served to confirm the minimal stenciling, the wording and quantity of which differed from RAF Hurricane counterparts. For example, you can see the stencil "Lift Here" with arrow under the 5398 serial which differed from the standard RAF stencil at this location that said "Trestle Here". Other excellent close-up photos of Canadian Hurricanes show the size, wording, and lettering style for the oil fill instructions and jacking point call-outs. Happily, there were very few stencils that we needed to worry about.

With all that done, I was able to create a 1/48 scale decal sheet depicting the s/n and stencils for one of our members. The sheet is shown here in this somewhat blurry pic:



So, with that said, I can not yet show you the drawing as it's not yet been made public but as soon as the time is right I'll post a profile and details for those interested. In the meantime, If anyone has further interest in this topic and wants to learn more about Canadian Hurricane schemes, don't hesitate to ask.

Excellent Andy, and congratulations on a great job of research an confirmation - it must be very satisfying when it ll comes together this way.

Looks perfect research and job, Andy.
Congrats

With all here. Well done Andy.

Great stuff Andy!

Thanks all. It was very humbling when conversing with the likes of Dr. Jon Leake, Carl Vincent, Jerry Vernon, Norm Malayney, Jim Bates, and Terry Higgins at Aviaeology. These guys are a wealth of info and there's no way we would have got this far without them.

Great job Andy

Yep, good stuff Andy.

For those interested, the January 2017 issue of Aeroplane Monthly magazine has a short article on our restoration. I will try to post a progress report this week.

Look forward to it!

The following is shamelessly copied from our 4Q16 Quarterly Report as I'm too lazy to write the progress report myself. We have subcontracted the bulk of the restoration to Historic Aviation Services, though we overhauled the Merlin 29 ourselves.

Historic Aviation Services' focus for the fourth quarter of the year has continued on the sheet metal areas of the forward fuselage and on the woodwork from the cockpit back to the tail. Additionally they were able to mount the engine into the airframe and begin to install the coolant and hydraulic plumbing lines, making significant progress in this quarter.

CMS board members Jack and Andy were in Nanton on December 9th to assist two staff from Historic Aviation Services in locating Hurricane parts that both we and they continue to identify as being mixed in with our Mosquito parts. This meant hauling crates from the storage trailer on the north end of town to the Bomber Command Museum in -25C weather. As personnel from both organizations get more and more familiar with the details of our projects, we are able to identify unlabelled parts as belonging to each aircraft. This trip produced some significant results.



On the following Friday, December 16th, we travelled to Wetaskiwin to conduct our quarterly inspection of the project.

Airframe: Historic Aviation Services

Fuselage

· Fabricated port and starboard lower longeron keel stringers and install same in place on lower fuselage.
· Using intermediate belly panel received from England as reference – fabricate missing
- complete forward belly panel from scratch. Recover with Poly-Fiber fabric using the STITS process up to silver.
· Strip fabric from intermediate belly panel (England) clean, repair as required and
recover with Poly Fiber fabric using STITS process up to silver.


· Fabricate port aft trailing edge central section closure panel (missing) using starboard panel as mirror image.
- Repair starboard panel as required. Primed and painted inside of both panels with silver butyrate.
· Fabricate, prime, paint with silver butyrate and install attach angles and braces for port and starboard panels (as above). Install port and starboard aft trailing edge centre section closure panels in place.
· Cover aft radiator belly panel with plywood skin and recover entire panel with Poly Fiber fabric using STITS process up to silver.
· Fabricate attach brackets for aft radiator belly panel (missing) and install on lower fuselage.
· Temporarily install aft radiator belly panel, forward and intermediate belly panels and finish fit to lower fuselage.
(All woodwork described above given two coats of "Poly Fiber" epoxy varnish, and
sprayed with two coats of silver butyrate as required during build up process).

Engine and Firewall Forward

· Clean, and repair engine mounting hardware.
· Make up new port and starboard camshaft cover gaskets, install same on engine.
· Disassemble and troubleshoot seized engine super-charger and carburetor controls.
· Clean, repair as required and reassemble engine control differential and spider gear bell crank assembly and reinstall on engine.
· Prepare engine for installation in airframe.


· Begin fabrication of firewall coolant header tank brackets (originals missing).
-Installed engine in aircraft and secured same in motor mounts. Torque and lock motor mount bolts.
-Finish fabrication and install firewall coolant header tank brackets.
-Clean, repair, test, prime, paint coolant header tank. Install same on firewall.
-Install carburetor air intake scoop.
-Sort, clean, prime and paint glycol coolant tubes. Install same in fuselage. Coolant system now complete other than two missing sections between engine water pump and front spar. System installed with deteriorated, original "Avimo" rubber couplings. These are to be replaced when new, fresh examples are available.
-Clean, prime, paint and install fuselage fuel tank armor plate in top cowl forward bulkhead.



-Sort, clean and repair engine oil system lines, filters, valves, junction blocks, unions etc., as required.
-Begin trial installation of engine oil system components in fuselage and centre section.
-Finish and final fit metal center section belly panels aft of rad.
-Sort, clean and repair aircraft fuel system lines, filters, valves, junction blocks, unions
etc., as required.
-Begin trial installation of aircraft fuel system components in fuselage and center section.
-Repaired, primed and painted starboard gear wall panel (forward of fuel cell) and trial fit same to center section.
-Clean, repair, test, prime and paint coolant thermostat. Install same in fuselage,
connect to glycol coolant tubes.


-Sort, clean and repair secondary hydraulic and hydraulic relief system lines, filters, valves etc. as required.
-Cleaned, repaired and installed engine crankcase ventilation and oil separator system.
-Began sorting, cleaning and repair of pneumatic system components.

Meantime, I am still sorting through various references on the RAF equivalent colours used by the Canadian factory. At some point I will publish the drawing I've been preparing for the finish scheme.

Very nice

More pics:

Refabricated floor section behind the radiator mentioned in the report.



Underside of fuselage just before the tail wheel with initial dope on fabric.



Coolant header tank ready to be connected to the Merlin.




Great shot showing the different construction methods on the Hurricane.



Tubular aluminum truss structure supporting wooden outer ribs (doped silver). Labour intensive!