3Q17 Report:
As opportunities present themselves we continue to acquire parts and resources to assist in the restoration. In June we were contacted by a couple in Nova Scotia who spotted at a garage sale what they thought was a Mosquito nose blister. Through some misunderstandings they acquired it for us and in turn one of our members purchased and donated it to the society. It is not the right style for our aircraft, but it is great trade material.
Newly acquired Mosquito nose blister. Many Canadian built Mosquitoes were posted in the Maritimes during the war in Operational Training Units.
The component shop of Sunwest Aviation in Calgary was good enough to disassemble and inspect two spare tail wheels for us as we were looking for a potential serviceable unit to trade to the Mosquito Bomber group in Windsor, ON.
Making international news in August was the incredible discovery of 22,300 drawings and plans for the Mosquito in an Airbus plant in England that was slated for demolition. The Peoples Mosquito organization, with whom we have had an affiliation for some years, gained worldwide attention with this find. They have begun the process of indexing and cataloguing the find, which contains many one of a kind technical drawings for repairs and modifications, many of which were considered but never developed. It also includes repair schemes for the prototype Mosquito.
One of the drawings from The Peoples Mosquito group showing the modifications required to convert a B.35 model Mosquito into a PR.35.
The organization contacted us when they discovered the drawings, developed in 1950 by Marshall's Flying Club of Cambridge, to convert the B.35 Mosquito model into the PR.35 model at the request of the Royal Air Force. Our airplane was the very first to undergo these modifications, thus becoming the prototype PR.35. The chief engineer for The People's Mosquito group took time from his indexing work to copy two sheets and send them to us, making us the first organization to benefit from this historic find.
Progress on RS700:
We will start from the tail of the aircraft and move forward. We have started to build work stands around the aft left side of the fuselage to facilitate access to the top side area. Externally there are two skins that require removal, one small and one large. From past experience we are confident they are very poorly bonded to the internal structure.
It is my opinion we have lost about 70 to 75 % of the adhesion and worse still was where the birch contacts the balsa. This has been consistent throughout the aircraft at this point. As well, the inner skin is suffering from the hundreds of staple holes which were used to clamp the skins together in some earlier crude restoration attempt. At this point I am hoping we can lay a new skin over the old structure as we had previously done in other areas.
On the inside rear of the fuselage, Don Y. has been cleaning and removing components so we can determine the level of damage around the tail wheel attach points. The area between the two aft bulkheads has a different issue than the rest of the fuselage. The area, which had large amounts of dirt and oil, was simply varnished over at some time and now has the texture of 60 grit sandpaper.
Down the left side of the fuselage all the balsa that was damaged has been replaced. There remains a small section on the right side which will be completed within a week. Andy and Cam have about one days' work left to finish the balsa on the right side so they can move on to other areas.
Andy and Cam applying T88 epoxy glue to the new strips of balsa wood on the port side of the fuselage. [Andy EDIT: In the area surrounded by red vinyl tape (used to protect areas from epoxy) you can see epoxy glue being applied by yours truly to the exposed INNER SKIN. Below that can be seen strips of NEW BALSA, about 9/16" thick. Once the new balsa is set, it will need to be planed and sanded smooth to the contour of the aircraft.]
Michael, Don and Davey have moved aft to bulkhead 3 were work has commenced on the structure which contains the lower wing attach points. It seems a normal thing for aircraft; all but one bolt has been removed from the left side. There is a large amount of rust and we will look closely at the bolts with the thought of installing new hardware in those positions since they are crucial to securing the wing.
In the same area, the lower forward skin on the bulkhead has been removed with very little trouble thanks to poor bonding. The skin has been cleaned, the ribs are cleaned and the area is masked off for painting. It did not have paint originally but in the interest of protecting the area we have decided to cover it over. As well, it will be caulked on the aft side with epoxy to reinforce the back side without removal.
The Spartan modified lower half of bulkhead 3 with the front face removed. To the right are the mounting brackets that seem to defy logic in how they were installed. As per the text below, we pioneered a new technique to clean them.
The removal of the skin has given us a couple of benefits, one being the removal of the steel nails that were rusting and exposure to the inner structure. This area is not original to the aircraft at build, but was redesigned and modified by Spartan Air Services as an add-on for the Wild camera mounts, making it unique to our aircraft. We are still trying to figure out how it was put together as the attach brackets overlap. We have theories, but not a conclusive answer.
A new method for paint removal on those attach points has yielded success; Wayne had suggested using an airbrush eraser. The process is slow but we achieved the results we need using a media of baking soda, both cheap and user friendly as opposed to the more conventional aluminum oxide. [Andy EDIT: Baking soda blown through an airbrush removes paint!]
The canopy frame installation work has stopped as we require the external skins to be fitted before the rest of the material can be installed. We continue to go over the cockpit area looking for loose corners and bad joints before paint is applied. Various small gussets and spacers are being removed cleared and reinstalled there again because of the poor bonding issues. Andy has all the original ferrules installed with a small number of missing to go.
Gary and Dick concentrate on the canopy frame area while Davey continues to work on the crew entry hatch area.
The structural repair work in the cockpit area is slowly coming to completion with small areas being glued following close inspection. The last remaining large job is to complete the tunnel from the main crew entry door to the floor boards. Gary has the components done and he flips between that and the canopy frame work depending on whom else is working where.
Paul and Jack are currently cleaning and painting various metal parts with Davey putting them back on templates.
Two areas that are holding us up are the tap and dies, as well as gaskets. The tap and dies have been ordered from a tool manufacturer in eastern Canada with scheduled delivery early in October. We have to go down the road of British Association, British Standard fine and British standard Whitworth so one set of each is on its way. Remembering that the British method of safety is to hit the end of a bolt with a hammer (calibrated size) rather than use a split pin with the result that all the bolts are galled on removal and require the threads to be cleaned before reuse.
On the gasket side, a local company has volunteered to make gaskets for us but we need to supply them with templates which we have yet to make. The gaskets are required for where metal parts are mounted inside the wood fuselage.
With the summer season complete we will get back to physically spreading out a little with a few more projects on the go. The side panels will likely be brought over before the snow flies so we can start on the components attached to the sides. We have been busy fixing some of the tooling as well, such as the bead blaster to get up to speed with cleaning things like the wing attach components.
The crew are now taking some satisfaction in the discernible progress in many areas; we can now see a lot of the little things that have been accomplished. The cockpit is approaching the point where we will start painting, much to the chagrin of most involved as we are the only ones that appreciate the long hours that have gone into repairing, cleaning, and preparing the beautiful wood surfaces, only to have to cover it all with paint.
After hundreds of hours invested in paint stripping, cleaning, and restoring the wood of the cockpit area, there is some reluctance to paint this area and hide all of the good work and beautiful wood.