Short Stirling & RAF Bomber Command Forum

He certainly did

The rollers themselves are a fairly simple affair but a lot of work has gone into making the special bolts to attach them. Without the assistance of Chris, we'd have been held up considerably whilst they joined the long list of stuff to make.....

Here's the latest batch of rough parts back from the casters. Sundry items for the seat adjustment mechanisms, pilots harness supports and flying control supports under the seats.

JL

Our Chairman has been busy slaving over his CNC milling machine and turned the rough castings for the seat adjustment mechanism into something a lot prettier. It doesn't look much but there's a lot of work gone into them

As a note for the future, it's hoped that the Project will be at the Newark Aircraft Museum on the weekend of 16/17 june 2012 for the annual Cockpitfest. This is a great event for enthusiasts and family members alike as you can get access to the cockpits of many weird and wonderful types (Spitfire anyone!) and yours truly should be there so it would be good to put some faces to names on the Forum. If all goes to plan you might even be able to sit in one of the Stirling seats

JL

Some more progress on the seat adjustment mechanism, they look straightforward but a lot of work has gone into them. Each one consists of 9 parts, 6 of which have had to be made from scratch (times 4).

With any luck we might have one complete seat support mounted on the seat rails by the end of the weekend; no promises mind....

JL

Fantastic stuff John! It's hard to appreciate just how much hard work has gone into the flight deck so far.

Dave

thanks Dave

these are just one small part of a complex assy to achieve a simple result, ie to allow the seat to move in the fore and aft plain. the height adjuster is another matter yet.

JL

A quick thanks to John for changing the title of the thread. As time has passed, it has become less of a history of the Project and is now more of a work in progress update and more accurately reflects our aims and ambition.

Please keep reading for updates

More soon

JL

Well I promised you an update

Today we temporarily installed the first of the pilots seat support assemblies to the seat rails. They're a bit of a 3D jigsaw, requiring 3 of us to set the rollers up so that they don't jam on the rails and hit the stops at the same time. all in all it was pretty successful as the support rolls back and fore with no restriction. A slight problem though is that the seat locking mechanism doesn't quite line up across the 2 rails so we'll need to remake a couple of parts to allow for adjustment. The next seat will be a while yet as we need to cast some more bits up and get them machined before we can progress.

JL

We're finally seeing some of the myriad castings seen in the previous post; coming together. The P2 seat chassis now slides back and fore without any problems and the attached photos show the addition of the seat adjuster mechanism which locks the seat in the desired position.

The adjuster works in exactly the same way as a car seat adjuster but being a Shorts' design is considerably more complex.

Onwards and upwards

JL

A bit more progress to report. The P2 seat bearer and adjuster is now fully assembled and works as advertised. It's also primed ready for top coat (Cockpit green). I won't report on the construction of the P1 seat as you've seen it all before , suffice to say that you'll get a picture when the seat bearer is located in position. Still a lot of machining to do though before we get to that stage.