It's been almost exactly 2 years since I posted anything here but things have been chugging along. My focus on this project is now the cockpit area and so I've been busy cataloguing and restoring what we have and trying to source what we don't. I will try to cover highlights of the last two years of my work here in this post but may stop for air before that, so bear with me please. All photos were taken by me unless noted.
Taken in September 2021, the below pic shows some of the original copper grounding straps being reinstalled in the port side of the cockpit. Because the aircraft is all wood, there is no direct means to ground all metal parts so they all have to be connected together via these copper earthing strips. Yes, the routing looks rough, and that's because these are the original strips removed, cleaned, and nailed back into exaclty the same holes from whence they came. These were apparently slapped in very quickly on the assemby line and no two Mosquitos are exaclty the same in this regard. Clearly this work needs to be done before any other parts go in.
If you look toward the nose, you can see that an extension to the strip has been identified by green masking tape. The strap ws cut here but I know from references that the strip must extend to the floor to pick up other metal parts there as well as the nose blister frame. To fill in the missing pieces, I was able to source new material from Spain (
Inicio).
Though not cockpit work, my structural engineering background was put to use in designing and co-ordinating the fabrication of a wing jig that enables us to work on both sides of the wing simultaneously. In November of 2021, the single piece wing was swung from its original tilted position to upright so that it now stands on the forward spar and leans against new bracing members. Below is the underside of the wing with all 10 of the fuel cells removed
Back in the cockpit, the next major step was to get the floor reinstalled but before doing that, all of the pipe runs had to be cleaned, identified, and reinstalled as these run on the underside of the floor and out into the bomb bay. The below pic (credit R. de Boer) was taken in the first quarter of 2022 and shows me working on the underside of the floor. The large tubes right in front of me are hydraulic lines to control the flaps and undercarriage. Those for the bomb doors would normally be here as well, except that Spartan Air Services removed the doors and their operators. The smaller tubes in the forground are pneumatic lines that control the brakes.
Jumping ahead to June 2022, we can see that the floor is now installed which opened up an array of new work that could be done. In the below pic taken from the Navigator's position, we can see the hydraulic line connections on the floor and some of the under-floor tubing described above peeking through right by the crew hatch. The wooden structure is the "doghouse" that supports the rudder pedals and this is only loosely installed here to check fit. The doghouse was pretty badly beaten up and was restored by another member of our team using as much of the original wood as possible. The two cables are the rudder actuators that will ultimately connect to the pedals. The shaft at the bottom is the torque tube for the aileron control which awaits the control column that will be mounted on the silver coloured bracket. At the very bottom of the pic is the connection to the emergency hydraulic hand pump. The bracket at the extreme left center is the mount for the magnetic compass
Taken at the same time but looking toward the pilot's position, we can see below our NOS (New Old Stock) throttle box trial-fitted as well as the elevator trim control set into place. The aileron control cables can be seen starting from the end of the torque tube heading to port and then doing a 90 around a pulley to run through a stuffing box along with the elevator cables. The box forms a pressure seal at the vertical wall, known as Bulkhead 2 which also supports a 1/4" armoured steel plate.
In October of 2022, I managed to fressen up our scratched original label for the vacuum switch:
In July, we swung a deal with a Facebook follower to obtain an original Mosquito Junction Box B that had clearly been modified to include a switch for a fuel jettison system so we suspect that this box was mounted in one of the 10 Spartan Mosquitos, if not ours. It took a while to co-ordinate the trade as it was coming from across the country and it finally arrived early this year. The box was in pretty bad shape when we got it with cut wires, smashed fuel gauges and surface damage (picture via M. Niewiadomski).
I'm going to stop at this point and resume the narrative tomorrow. Hope you find the above interesting.