Warbird Information Exchange

Spanner,
Thanks for directions; hope to see you soon. The pic of the #3 firewall got me kind of schitzy. In Oct. I spent two and a half hours putting the nut on the capture bolt on the upper inboard eng mt. bolt, on the 'bird. Who in blankey blank decided on fine thread bolts for AV??arrrrgh. A full inch of threads at about one 50th of a turn at a time. I leaned on the main wheel strut and came out with one side of my face black like an NFL tackle. Got lots of laughs. I'd do it again. I love working on warbirds. FYI, Cliff and Bill say that,lacking a spider monkey on staff, Doug can reach it. thanks I guess.

K5DH, You have some good points, pro and con on the top turret. Being 6'2" I know how awkward it is to move through the turret frame. The "short gunner" steps have gotten my knees a couple of times.
Don't ya just love the war movies...." Joe's been hit! Give him first aid!" Then the footage of a crew member running down the 'aisle' in a 17. Yeah right. I've about learned how to do a controlled fall around the ball turret when moving aft.
I can't even imagine trying to hurry through a 17 interior in full flight gear with a chute.

It's rainy and cold and I'm thankful for downtime to hang with my friends on this site. Have a safe holiday and blue skies.
Doug Ratchford, Canso42

Scott,
I just asked the Cockpit Troll and he says, "The reason I started painting the interior is because I found corrossion and all of those areas were stripped to bare metal, treated and painted."
If it still looked good Col. Robins just did the clean, scuff and paint.

Doug, You mean you let a perfectly good COLD, RAINY Saturday go by without coming down and working on the B17???

A small group of Vols got a lot done. Two of us had a "classic" let's search the whole ding-donged hangar (for something we NEVER DID find) day and came up with several items other teams had been looking for.
Maybe they will find our missing spools of new control cables.
It has been decided that we need ALL NEW control cables. HOORAY!!!!

No pictures this time... maybe next!

SPANNER

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Support Your Local Warbirds! KBO!
The only reasons the airplanes matter is what the veterans did with them... and why.

Turret or no turret.

It's a no brainer. if you've got the parts to take her all the way back to how she came out of the factory, do it. Far more important for those experiencing the B17 for the first time, what it might have been like to have to work in that environment. It wasn't a passenger plane. Comfort was secondary.

Easy for me to say cause it's not my money or fuel bills, but a kid going through that 17 for the first time might just get the idea of what those crews had to deal with way back when.

One thing I forgot to announce to ALL interested parties is... We have a set of molds for the Top Turret Plexiglass panels.

Anybody need some Private Message me and we will get you hooked-up.

Work Break time!

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Support Your Local Warbirds! KBO!
The only reasons the airplanes matter is what the veterans did with them... and why.

[quote="Dan Johnson II"]Turret or no turret.

It's a no brainer. if you've got the parts to take her all the way back to how she came out of the factory, do it. Far more important for those experiencing the B17 for the first time, what it might have been like to have to work in that environment. It wasn't a passenger plane. Comfort was secondary.

Easy for me to say cause it's not my money or fuel bills, but a kid going through that 17 for the first time might just get the idea of what those crews had to deal with way back when.[/quote]

Good points Dan, especially the last one. I took a couple of little kids through the 'Bird at Randolph a few weekends ago who were seeing WWII era stuff for the first time. I believe they got your point too.

Doug

FEEL OUR PAIN
On the downside...
When the Navy took out the top turret mechanism they hacked the bottom mount out of the floor and they took out the Bull-ring on the top.
If everything were just a "bolt-in" it would indeed a NO BRAINER.
In fact, the Cockpit Troll would probably have it back in while we weren't looking!

EVERYTHING is re-doable, but we are under some time and budget constraints.
An influx of volunteers and capital could turn that around.

Send Money... Send People...
"Call Batman, Call the Marines!" <- What movie is that quote from?
The winner gets a Jack Cook Pony!

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Support Your Local Warbirds! KBO!
The only reasons the airplanes matter is what the veterans did with them... and why.

Found this picture and I HAD to post it!
Walking towards the camera is "Wild Bill" Siros from the A-26 group out of Waco! If I had my druthers, I'd druther they let us keep Bill ALL the time because he has done more good on more thankless jobs. And LADIES...
If you square dance Bill IS Available! "Da Ladies Man" is what he oughta be called!

Photo by Kevin Hong

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Support Your Local Warbirds! KBO!
The only reasons the airplanes matter is what the veterans did with them... and why.

Wild Bill has been around forever. I first met him when he would come out occasionally to help with the CF A-26 " My Mary Lou ". He helped on Raiders first real restoration at Hobby. He also used to come around a little when we got B-25 Hoosier Honey down here. Bill seems to have found a pretty regular home with Joe Nemmer and Spirit of Waco.

We have met the enemy and it AIN'T Lone Star Flight Museum!!!

The folks at LSFM are going to let us crawl through their (Douglas built, just like TR) B17G this Saturday and discover how the heck the bellcrank for the rudder mechanism is mounted to the rear bulkhead.

Our Boeing manual doesn't show spacers or shims and whoever took it apart isn't around anymore. And didn't leave detailed notes and labelled bags o' parts

Wish us luck!

And besides that three mystery LSFMers showed up on Tuesday night worknight and prepped some bolt holes for GASP dare I say it?
Re-installation of some wing closing panels.

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Support Your Local Warbirds! KBO!
The only reasons the airplanes matter is what the veterans did with them... and why.

Munster, Go Home! (after which Herman says "Car 54, where are you?" )

After seeing that last pony someone got, just send me the bottle of glue...

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All right, Mister Dorfmann, start pullin'!
Pilot: "Flap switch works hard in down position."
Mechanic: "Flap switch checked OK. Pilot needs more P.T." - Flight report, TB-17G 42-102875 (Hobbs AAF)

Sorry, T'bird is a Vega built machine.

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If God had wanted man to fly behind a flat motor, Pratt Whitney would've built one.

Spanner ~ has restoration started now on the tail section ? All the images I've seen always show the nose ! ( yes I know it's kinda dark in that corner of the hanger )

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Blue Skies .....

Peter

Consolidated by US state ~ see if there's a heavy bomber tour stop coming to an airport near you ...... http://www.bomberflight.info

Warbirdapps on facebook ~ every day a new image from my personal journey thru the world of warbirds ..... https://www.facebook.com/Warbirdapps

Interesting conjecture, as the Navy made a point of having the ability to remount turrets in the airplanes through the service life of the PB-1Ws because they were considered capable of deployment to combat areas. Looking at Navy correspsondence in the early 1950s, there were concerns because the removed turrets were supposed to be stockpiled in storage and no one was quite sure where they were. I would suspect that the turret mounting mechansim was removed from N7227C by its first civil owner but that also would be conjecture.

As for the tail, Bomberflight... The verticle and horizontal stabilizers were BOTH removed entirely and internal corrossion repaired. That is why you may notice the zinc chromate "racing stripes" on all the seams where rivets were replaced.

As for the Vega built T-bird ARRRRRRR... Either way, we need to see if there are spacers on the aforementioned bellcrank mounting bracket.
So we are going to see what it be showing, so to speak!

As for the Turret removal... Perhaps I was hasty in blaming the Navy...
I KNOW!!! Let's blame the French!
The main point is, it was NOT a sanitary removal.

Oh merde, I've gotta go to work.

SPANNER

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Support Your Local Warbirds! KBO!
The only reasons the airplanes matter is what the veterans did with them... and why.

and you are the one running for unit leader I wish you guys all the best and look forward to seeing you in the air again!