A belated update following our attendance at the Newark Air Museums Cockpitfest. Lots of interested parties asking lots of interesting questions and as always it's good to chat with your peers and Joe Public alike. I like a good natter
We received a special award in memory of Lancaster ME846 the crew of which trained on Stirlings before they converted on to Lancs.
Here's the links to photos of the weekend and as you can see there's a fairly eclectic mix of aircraft and associated displays. We're in the Hangar 2 display gallery
Great stuff, John ............... looks like there was a great display by all. Just looking at the intrusion panels, the first one looks like a Lanc but can't make out the others?
Were there any request to sit in the pilots' seat?
Cheers,
John
K for Kitty Crew - Winthorpe, 1661 HCU's - stirlingaircraftsoc.raf38group.org/
630 Squadron - East Kirkby
" There is nothing glorious about war with the exception of those who served us so valiantly"
no requests to sit in the seats (not that they're installed anyway at the mo'), but we were behind a rope to distance ourselves from Joe Public, you may have seen from the Gallery that we were right next to a Saab Viggen and a Supermarine Swift so the public are kept away because of all the sharp edges.
If you're talking about image 15 then the panels were Lancaster, Halifax and IIRC Mosquito. They were just over the way from us
Progress has been slow of late due to building work at our workshop. However, we've been working on the 1st Pilot's seat which has now been de-corroded, repaired and primed. The seat raising/lowering mechanism is being worked on albeit slowly due to lack of access to milling machines and lathes. The seat is now ready for painting as can be seen below
We have a new member of the Project on board who's a bit of a whizz with CAD. He's currently working on the Cockpit Coupe (Canopy) which is a very complex area to work out. Below are some pictures of his early endeavours
Attachments
Stirling coupe 1.JPG (27.82 KiB) Viewed 5160 times
As usual it is impressive.
I don't remember if we already spoke about it but do you have all the the measures of the Stirling aircraft?
Thanks for all the photos.
Regards.
Not really my area of expertise but I believe that a lot of the 'established' data given for the Stirling is incorrect, consequently we're having to revisit all of the dimensions and modelling the fuselage in CAD to baseline the profile of the section we'll be building. Some of the Shorts Standard drawings that we have don't match the dimensions we have for items in service (too long, too short)
Although I've been a bit quiet in updating this thread for a while, there's ben much going on in the background. Our workshop has been in a state of turmoil as our Landlord is carrying out extensive renovation work to the building in which we're located so our floorspace has been much reduced and we've had to take additional security measures in view of the changes to building access.
However, on the actual build front, I've been fabricating the support structure for the throttle box which runs fore and aft between frames 4 and 5. These are a complex shape being a 'C' section with a returning flange which are then rivetted back-to-back; they also have to clear the elevator torque tube between teh control columns which means that the structure does not have a standard cross section. The photos below show hopefully show some of the layout of this structure. There's also a number of brackets and gussets which attach this to the floor beams. We've got to make some tooling to install some flanged lightening holes in this assembly and then it can all be nailed together. Elsewhere, the members have been fabricating the seat support structure items and following a trip to the RAF Museum we've got some original drawings which show the modified seat hinged supports.
great stuff there, John .............. the many hours of blood, sweat & dedication are really paying dividends. keep up the great work!
John
K for Kitty Crew - Winthorpe, 1661 HCU's - stirlingaircraftsoc.raf38group.org/
630 Squadron - East Kirkby
" There is nothing glorious about war with the exception of those who served us so valiantly"
