The Stirling Aircraft Project Update

[Stirling Project]

great stuff there, John .............. the many hours of blood, sweat & dedication are really paying dividends. keep up the great work!
John

Thanks John

Once the structure is in I can mount the throttle box properly. However, there is still a afair amount of work to do on that as due a build up of tolerances when it was rebuilt, the box is now 1/4" too wide. We need to make new closing panels as the top one is cast and contains the engine start buttons as well as the detentes for the throttles. All in all there's many hours work to keep me off the streets over the winter.

John

[Stirling Project]

A busy weekend!

we've progressed the throttle box mount so that it's now drilled to final size and just awaits the provision of some flanged lightening holes, which we've still got to make the tooling for.

More to the point though, we've been steadily building up a kit of parts for the seat mounts, each seat requires 4 off of mounting castings, special bolts, special nuts, bushes and bellcrank assemblies (the latter of which have to be machined to size). No-one can accuse the Shorts' designers of over-complicating things LOL.

I've attached the pics of the P1 seat which has been partially drilled and slaved into position, it was gratifying to find that it all moves smoothly in the up and down plane and once this has been done just needs the addition of the adjustment lever. Not there yet but getting close.

John L

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[Stirling Project]

Sorry that there hasn't been an update in a while but we have been busy

Our workshop is in a minor state of chaos due to the ongoing building work, but we've been busy drawing and making up parts. To the outsider, aircraft restoration can be a series of lulls with no apparent progress then frantic activity, this is due in no small part with having to carry out in depth research to find out how the widget is attached and having to make the parts themselves. several months worth of background work can be finished off in a weekend with the assembly of a few small parts.

Anyway back to things, as related before, the P1 seat is slaved into position and we're making a kit of parts for the seat raising mechanism. Whilst I've been waiting for some parts to be made, I've stripped down our throttle box to rectify some small anomalies that crept in during it's original restoration. Some more information has come to light which has allowed us to make some missing parts and also to rectify the additional 1/4" width issue. We slaved it all into position on the new throttle box support structure last night, for the first time the box sits in the correct orientation to the rest of the flightdeck structure.

John L

[Dave_Richardson]

It's looking great John

Cheers

Dave

[K4KittyCrew]

John, I'm amazed at the amount of work that went into / has gone into the pilots' seat. Very complex metal work indeed. Great work, mate.
Cheers
John

[Bruno]

Hi,

That's really a very impressive work.
I expect to see it in real a day.
Regards.

Bruno

[Stirling Project]

Thanks John

There's an advert for one of our department stores over here that states 'Never knowingly undersold', in the case of the Stirling you could interpret this as 'Never knowingly under-engineered!'

One job that has to be done on the throttle box is the top closing panel; this is not only cast (!) but has to have a hinge moulded into it, plus mountings for starter buttons, throttle lever cam supports and a structure to attach some springs to. Oh! and part of its curved too!!!

All we have to go is some small extracts of drawings and photos so this should be an interesting exercise. Watch this space........

Bruno, Hope you can make it over to see it some day

John L (going greyer by the day thinking about making this)

[Stirling Project]

Still plodding away

The throttle box is now squared up to the floor and is at it's correct 7" width. The box itself will be slightly different to that originally restored as it will have an additional plate to close the propeller pitch levers, I've taken the decision to do this as we had the original Shorts drawings for these items and (I think) it makes for a neater installation. We've located the correct position for the throttle rear stops too, so it's all gradually coming together.

John L

[Stirling Project]

Some more progress to report. The following pics show some new end caps to the control wheel casting and an original refurbished undercarriage lever. We're gradually nibbling away at the seats and throttle box so hopefully there'll be some more news to post soon

John L

[Stirling Project]

A bit more done to the throttle box; I've made the front closing panel for the mixture levers which have been slaved into position. A little bit of fettling is required to provide adequate clearance to the levers but we're getting there. Things have temporarily slowed up on the rest of the flight deck as we've had to move our racks around in the workshop but hopefully we'll be cracking on again from this weekend onwards.

John L