Historic flight News

Significant progress last week, with Vicky, Adam, Nick J, Andy T, Gav and Webby providing the workforce. The wing is almost ready for fabric, it is slow going as we are strengthening the trailing edge ( to prevent the well known Slingsby warping!). There are 4 glueing operations involved with 24hrs drying required between each, it takes a couple of hours just to remove the staples that have been holding the glued surfaces together. The repairs to the holes in the leading edge have been finished, and the remainder of the wing has been sanded, sanded again and more sanding just to make sure!!

This photo shows Andy trimming the supports for the new ply trailing edge, another tricky ( oops – bad pun!) and time consuming job.

And of couse the endless sanding. Lucky to catch Nick in this one, if he wasn’t on tea break then it was the 15min hand cleaning time prior to tea break!

With plenty of manpower we were able to get the fuselage outside and start stripping the fabric and removing everything from the cockpit area.

John and myself were at Biscester on Friday. We moved some of the aircraft Dave has and will be working on around and assisted in rigged a Ventus 2c, very nice aircraft, in order to make space in the workshop for a Sedbergh wing. You don’t appreciate just how large they are when it’s rigged, or since Vicky and Oli stripped the wing last week, just how little the individual wooden components are that construct it.

Once the heavy “manly” work was complete – we moved on to making some see-through patches for the manufacturers date labels are on each of the wings, tail, rudder etc. Sewing the section of see through plastic to a piece of Ceconite fabric was only made less “girlie” by having to drill holes into the plastic! We made two, which we then fixed to the rudder and tailplane.

After lunch Dave handed us a stanley knife and pointed at the three cracks in the leading edge. After a detailed explaination of the repair process, handed John a power tool (always a risk) and left us two it. It felt wrong to start with, slicing at the leading edge, but we cut out the cracked sections of the 3 ply, 1/16th of an inch wood and shaped some timber to put behind in order to fix the new sections to.

Oli Bourton and myself spent a few days at Bicester. We have now re-covered the rudder and the tailplane, although the conversation of the week was as follows: Me-‘Dave, I think I’ve cocked up!’ Dave-‘What have you done now?!?’ I must admit I never thought I’d ever have to iron an aircraft….

One of the wings has now been stripped ready for sanding, and we only found 3 holes in the leading edge!

Bicester curry nights on Thursdays are good 🙂 Meet in the bar around 7, depart 7.15-7.30 ish. Anyone planning on staying over the bunkroom is available.

Vicky and Jono have been at the workshop this week, so far they have finished stripping the elevator, rudder and tail. They have been sanded, the tail and rudder have been coated in adhesive and are ready for covering. The elevator is ready for the trailing edge to be straightened out!

Apparantly Jonn couldn’t be shown working as he had to take the photo’s !!

WB922 was taken to Bicester on 28 Feb 11 and with a few gaps available in Dave’s workshop a few components were removed ready to start work.

The elevator and tailpane seperated, the ailerons removed from the wings and the rudder removed from the tail. Horrible split pins and some of the hinge pins needed pursuading. Adam and Phil were a little hesitant to force things and do any damage to the structure and fabric. Dave soon showed us how you don’t need to be kind to the fabric your about to strip off the aircraft – this was done by putting a screwdriver through said fabric to provide access to some bolts!

More soon!