Hi everyone

Opening this month’s newsletter with a picture of “home”. This is the business end of the premises at Ardmore, so if you come to visit you’ll know what we look like.

On to work and things aviation:

Lots of progress being made. Some visual and some, frustratingly, less so.

Tony Banta’s P-40E

As his left wing and control surfaces are finished, all we currently have on hand is his right wing. This job is being split into two teams with Rob McNair and Chris Evans building the front of the wing back to Spar 2 and Callum Smith and Barry McAlley building the section from Spar 3 to 5. The “front half team” have the skins in the jig, gun port doubler and castings fitted, leading edge ribs and stringer installed and number 1 Spar in place and being aligned.

The “back half guys” have lots of structure built. Too hard to describe, but if you look at the photos you can see it all.  Obviously not riveted together – this won’t happen until it’s in the main wing jig and sitting on top of the leading edge section.

Tony’s fuselage and all the other structural stuff arrives next week so we’ll be able to have a lot more to report on in the next newsletter.

Jerry Yagen’s P-40E is also progressing rapidly. As most of the components for Jerry’s left wing had been rebuilt prior to us receiving them, we have one team (Huib Volker and Richard Wattereus) building this wing. The leading edge up to Spar 2 is completed, out of the leading edge jig and in the main wing jig. This jig has now been fitted with a laser alignment tool which is working real nice. All of the ribs between Spar 2 and 3 are riveted in place as are the underside skins and stringer from 2 to 3. By the end of the month the topside skins and stringer up to 3 will be riveted in place.

In the meantime Matt (Man) Miller has been busy rebuilding components for Jerry’s other wing and by the time Tony’s leading edge comes out of the jig, ready for the main jig, Jerry’s components for his right wing will be ready to go in.

Andy Hosking is buried in Jerry’s fuse fitting it out. Control cables, pulleys, phenolic blocks and O₂ bottle mount are all in place and he’s now working on the trim. Up front trim gear, throttle quadrant, gear horn mount, rudder pedals, parking brake and cowl flap control handle are all in place, as is the forward left-hand junction box. Structurally the two-seat conversion including rollbar is finished and the interior has been painted with “interior green”.

Ray Hanna’s Lavochkin La-9

Lots of visual stuff here. Graham Gilliver and Colin Denholm have been busy and components are being completed at a rapid rate. Photo 9 is the rudder pedals and tail wheel leg and 10 is the stick. Yes, when we got it the stick was chromed (hard to imagine out of Russia), so we chromed it again. Ray doesn’t like it - maybe we’ll have to paint it.

Other components being finished are the oil tank and we have received the new front and rear (behind the pilot) bullet-proof glass. The old ones were a sort of plastic, but we have duplicated them in laminated toughened glass. Derek Smith has serviced the fuel tanks and all were in very good shape with the exception of the centre main tank. This looked like it had had water lying in it and the lower rear section was quite badly corroded. The outside rubber coating has been peeled back and a new tank section completed. This is now ready to weld back in. The pick up is being duplicated by milling from a solid block of alloy. The filler necks were steel and were beyond redemption so new ones have been made. We have sourced the 3.0mm felt (from India) upon which the tanks were mounted and once the centre tank is finished these can be refitted.

Derek and Graham have been busy structurally also and the tailplanes are finished, remounted with wing tips and fairings fitted. They have also replaced the stainless flash panels on the side of the fuselage. The old ones were soft stainless and they had not enjoyed the riveting process and were visually “distressing to the eye”. These have been replaced with hard stainless which looks great. Not exactly Russian-looking, but great. I guess this is the “in between Russian and Western finish” we talked about last time. The windscreen frame is in the process of being refitted and the skins on either side replaced as they did not survive being removed to clean up some corrosion on the lower part of the  windscreen frame.

All of the seals for the undercarriage legs have been made and these will be going back together shortly. Colin has the brakes serviced and re-lined and now we just need some tyres. Anyone got a pair of 650 x 200 main wheel tyres in the corner of their hangar?

Spitfire – The MK14’s due back in (at last) on Wednesday next week. That’s going to make things cosy and up the ambience!

Plus – another set of P-40 wings, in component form are sitting on the floor. More on that later.

On a non-workshop-related front, CONGRATULATIONS to Dick Thurman for Reserve Grand Champion, WWII Warbird (with his Pioneer Avspecs rebuilt P-40K!) and Grand Champion Post WWII TF51 at Sun ‘n’ Fun 2001.

Thanks Dick for the effort put into presenting the aircraft so beautifully – we really appreciate getting the exposure for our work.

Note: Both photos copyright – not for publication.

We’ve just started keeping a Visitor’s Book in the shop. If you come to visit make sure you “sign in”.

Recent Visitors’ Register

In the last couple of months the following are some of the folks we’ve had drop by:

Ray Hanna, OFMC                                  John Lamont

Simon Brown (USA)                               Russ Ward

Paul Page (USA)                                     Graham Orphan, Classic Wings Downunder

Sam Richardson, Yak 11 USA                  Steve Peterson, NZ CJ6 & Yak 11

Dan Whitney (author “Vees for Victory”)

And what are Warren and Garth doing? Asking each other if we’re having fun yet. Having a bit of fun at Classic Fighters Airshow at Omaka at Easter helped the year out also.

All photos copyright, not for publication.

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