Hello WIXers,
(Will WIX eat this post before it publishes? It'll be the third time in a row, if so--keep your fingers crossed!)
The holiday season is upon us at the Hot Stuff ramp, just as it is for everyone else. The AMHFers are scrambling, and their schedules are pulling them this way and that. But still work progresses out on the ramp. That old airplane isn't going to maintain itself, after all.
But even with the workload, there's still gotta be time for the festive occassions, and this past Saturday saw the gang at the Piercy house--that's Machine Shop Gaylon and wife Sandy, who have appeared in these pages frequently. They put on a heck of a nice shindig at their lovely home, and stuffed us all like turkeys with food and drink and conviviality. Thanks again for your hospitality, Gaylon and Sandy!
Out at the ramp earlier, the work was all around correcting the remaining discrepancies from the 30-hour. That is all wrapped up now, and Hot Stuff is buttoned up and good to go.
Among the items that were checked off was the tailwheel indication circuit, which has been an ongoing saga for Electrical Guru Roy and President Rich for some weeks now. The new sending unit (selsyn) is installed, that item being on hand thanks to our generous friends at Intercontinental Avionic of Tyler Hill, PA; and beyond that, a good deal of New is likewise to be found in the harnesses, terminals, and j-boxes intervening between it and the indicator. A good, solid, reliable indication is what we're getting now.
Pictured is Rich, elbow-deep in the tailwheel well, with pilot Scotty kibitzing.
Most of the rest of the crew were busy all day with the flap system. Regular inspection and servicing chores, for the most part, but also investigation of some "sloppiness" in the flap control that surfaced recently.
Pictured above are the left flaps, nearly fully deployed. Eyes and ears on the whole business and all its components--flaps, hydraulics, tracks, carriages, cables, and pulleys--through several cycles of the things, hunting for noises, binding, fraying, wear, leaks, and you name it.
Once they'd been exercised, the hydraulic system was drained, line filter changed, and refilled. There we see PJ and Hot Rod Steve in the forward bomb bay, draining the system. In the compartment over their heads is the main rack of actuator valves--flaps, bomb bay, and gear--and the line filter.
And there's PJ shortly afterward, in the accumulator compartment, getting the filter casing off. Like many other things, there's just no real good way of getting to this item. If only elbows bent the other direction.
In the gun nose, just forward of her, was Scotty, working on the flap control rigging.
Like the other pedestal controls, the flap handle is attached via cables to a torque tube. Its output arm is attached via a pushrod to the control arm on the flap actuator valve. That pushrod is what Scotty is working on--troubleshooting finally narrowed it down to that point in the system. It wasn't what we expected; we were already working ourselves up to a bout of valve overhaul, looking up o-ring part numbers and whatnot, when Scotty got that rod out of there.
There it is, a threaded rod with two fork clevises on the end of it. One of those forks was wallowed out, and was floppy where it should be firm, and on top of that had worked itself out of place, causing the rod to lengthen. It was not a long job for Long Tall Glen and Scotty to correct all this, and make it good and solid again, adjusted to the book length of 7 and 25/32 in. Now we're good to go in the flap control department, because the valve itself is fine after all.
Just because I took the picture and might as well use it, there we have the other end of the flap control system, the actuator ram. It lives in the carry-through box that lies athwart the cabin floor just forward of the door. It hydraulically rams back and forth, carrying with it the cat's cradle of cables that do the grunt work of moving the flaps up and down the tracks.
For the rest of it, we also pulled, inspected, cleaned, and replaced the two fuel strainers, one in each nacelle. We see PJ, there, messing with the access panels of No. 1. I think she's buttoning up, here.
That's about it for this time, WIXers. Upcoming, PJ and intend to start getting down some of the restoration parts we've accumulated, and start working on installations. Flying season is about over, barring a staging hop to the hangar location, which is only a rumor at this point (but yes please, Santa!). Otherwise, we're likely to be right here, freezing, and on to the winter maintenance cycle.
Till next time,
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