Warbird Information Exchange

We were pleased to have the Ian Allan Aviation Tour group from the UK stop by for a visit Saturday morning. Joe Maynard, our resident Nimrod pilot, was present to answer questions and tell some good stories about A26 operations back in the day. Looks like we have some new friends from "across the Pond" and we look forward to the next group. Meanwhile the team worked on Ichabod Crane to make sure it is ready when our engine comes back from overhaul and the avionics guys installed our new 406 ELT antenna along with the wiring up to the cockpit. Kay will be fully compliant with ADS-B and have the latest avionics when finished. More later.... JR

Mark, that appears to be Pusan AB. The pic below from the 17th Bomb Group site at
http://www.bombgroup17.com/korean_stories
shows the same terrain markings as in the background of your first photo...

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Bob

......shows the same terrain markings as in the background of your first photo...

Nice little piece of detective work there. I'd say that's pretty conclusive.

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Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

Thanks Bob, great work indeed. JR keep up the great work as well. Very enjoyable thread to follow.

M

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[Thread title is ridiculous btw]

Went back thru your posts to see your plans for the engine rebuilds and couldn't find if a pre-oiler was in the mix, maybe I didn't go back far enough. Are you also having a spin on oil filter incorporated? I recently came into possession of a 20 yr. old booklet from the editors of" TBO Advisor" on extending engine life. It referred to putting rare earth magnets to the outside of the oil filter to trap ferrous particles too small to be trapped by the filter element. But I checked Aircraft Spruce about oil filters and some manufacturers already incorporate magnets into their filters, don't know if it would apply to yours if it has an external filter. Aircraft Spruce does show a magnetic "sleeve" that fits over any filter that is of course reuseable. The booklet advises the use of the filter Magnets on any rebuilt engine as there will be a lot of metal being made in the break in time. Best to keep it from circulating thru the engine like lapping compound. It also talked oil additives and the only one at that time that was FAA approved was Lenckite AVBlend and how it really made a difference in engine longevity, but they were talking flat 4's and 6's.. I'm done rambling now. The booklet is "101+ ways to extend the life of your engine" , printed in 1994. Now I'm done.

Bob, Mark, Randy... thanks for the comments. Pusan AB, aka K-9, is mentioned in many stories about Korea. The website that Bob gave the link to about B-26 ops in Korea is outstanding. I got to reading some of those stories and couldn't stop. There is an incredible similarity with the VN ops over the HCM Trail in Laos. Of course, Colonel Tony Curto who flew B-26's in Korea was instrumental in developing tactics for VN so it is not surprising that they were as effective as they were. BTW, if you look back several pages to the picture of Joe Maynard deplaning at NKP with the first delivery of A-26's to NKP, that is Col Curto greeting him. If you can't find it easily, check out our facebook page as we recently posted the same picture there. http://www.facebook.com/a26specialkay. You do not have to be a facebook member to view our page. I was out to the hangar this evening and saw that Buba is back from the Alliance Airshow. Buba wears the colors of the Korean War. It sure would look good for Buba and Kay to fly a formation over some sporting event. In other news, FiFi and Diamond Lil are back nose to nose in the VFM Hangar at Meacham Field. FiFi will be there for winter maintenance until January. This would be a great time to come see the B-29 and B-24 as well as K. From the Republic, JR

Hi Phil, yep, we plan to install a pre-oiler on the engines. Have already engineered the system. Just have to gather up the parts. We are still considering how to do the filter. A DC-6 type filter might be the way to go on top of the regular filter on the engine. The jury is still out on that one. JR is consulting with Anderson's shop to see what our options are so as not to void their warranty. So you raised good questions. Thanks!! Good to hear from you. The Other JR

Forgot to mention that we received our wiring harness, mag and other parts of the number one engine ignition system from Precision Engines today. So JR thinks we can continue getting number one ready now to make noise. There is one question being worked on the prop hub shims, but hopefully that will be answered by the prop shop expert soon. We have one last instrument for the panel and that would be the Fuel Flow Indicator. We thought we had it all done, but sent it to Century in Wichita to be repaired. That leaves one oil shutoff valve in San Antonio that should come back tomorrow hopefully so we can get it installed this weekend. This coming Saturday should be a most excellent day to come visit and see our progress. Part of the team will be working on the DC-3, but most will be supporting K. Weather should be perfect. No excuses now!!! The Other JR

NEWSFLASH from Idaho... our number two engine has gone into the assembly phase. Won't be long now before it will get a test run in the cell of four or five hours. It has our carb and overhauled ignition system plus most all of the other accessories so won't be too far from being ready to mount when it comes back. All it takes is money to get it out of hock. Now would be a great time to make a donation thru our sister organization, the A-26 Legacy Foundation, in order for us to take advantage of the matching funds campaign. For every dollar you donate, tax deductible, it will be matched. Please consider using this website to donate with a credit card or PayPal: http://www.a-26legacy.org
We appreciate your support! Thank you. JR

Hi JR & crew, awesome job on Kay, quite a while ago you were talking about engine mounts & flex mounts in particular. Am asking if you found a part number or even a source, I believe they are similar to what the Sanders bros use on the 2800 install into the Fury, please keep the updates coming, they are an awesome read, best regards, Pete Bradley

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Give me a Centaurus over a Merlin any day

G'day Pete,
Yes we have new Dyna focal mounts. Sorry the part number escapes me right now but we sent six (still in the box) to be incorporated in the engine build. Still working on the No 2 QEC and cowling build up. Some of the guys worked today incorporating our new 406Mhz ELT system. We had one fall into our laps, so here we are running wires again!

The real JR

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The real JR

As JR mentioned, new wires were strung from the aft ELT location to the cockpit so that the GPS position could be integrated with the emergency transmitter. Larry and Alex put in a lot of time Saturday on running new wires and Larry worked all day today on more of the same. It lacks a couple of power wires or so to be finished. Fortunately, most of the wiring bundles go down the left side of the fuselage under the armor plate which is relatively easy to get off as compared to trying to run new wires thru the fuselage. Guess we got lucky on that design. The downside is that all of the DC power goes thru one bus. "Hope there is never a major fault on the bus", the man said!! Besides worming the new wires thru the bundles and then tying them off, it is just very time consuming. Kudos to the guys who are working this part of the project. They've got a lot of patience and sheer determination to get this thing done. With the new 406 ELT, we have just about as modern a set of avionics as one would expect in any well equipped airplane. Now if I could just convince the avionics guys that we need an FMS, flight director and autopilot.... Oh, don't croak guys, I am just kidding. It would be an awful waste not to hand fly this beauty all of the time since that time is going to be oh so precious and rare. The Other JR

This was the scene two weeks ago in the Nimrod "Hostility Suite", as they call it. There were lots of stories told of the A-26's over the Trail by these Nimrod pilots/Navs, not to mention the side stories! Absolutley facinating stuff. All these years later I'm still in awe of how these guys seemed to take flying into combat and getting shot at as if they were going down to the 7-11 and picking up a loaf of bread and a quart of milk. Amazing.

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Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm

Hi Randy, thanks for the picture. I was over to the Hostility Suite but didn't even think about taking a shot. Was too busy meeting the guys and yakkin. Glad you got some. Say, I meant to ask you about your meeting up with some of the Big Eagle guys and some of the stories that came from that???? Are there any you can tell here?? For those who don't know, maybe you can explain what Big Eagle was all about too?? Regards, JR

As a gun plumber and ground crew, we heard lots of stories about things that happened before, during or after the missions. Some I saw happen first hand, other things I heard about from others on the ground crew who were on-duty at the time. Some of the things I had heard about were verified by the flight crews that were at the reunion. One example was a flight that took off one evening and experienced an engine problem, to the extent I believe the pilot had to eventually shut it down. when the problem occured, he "cleaned" the wings of all ordnance, including the MER's (flare racks) on the outboard stations. I had "heard: that the detachment commander was not happy about it and threatened disciplinary action, because our flare racks at the time were in short supply. That was verified at the reunion by a nav who was on that particular mission. According to him, nothing came of the disciplinary action due to Joe Kittinger stepping in in their defense.
Project Big Eagle was a 6 month TDY deployment of 8 aircraft to NKP in 1966. From what we were told and what I read, this was to be a stop gap measure until enough AC-47 gunships could be delivered at the end of the year, at which time the A-26's would be replaced. However, the A-26's were a lot more effective than was initially thought, and they continued operation until September, 1969. It came as no surprise to me, as I saw some of the most dedicated pilots and ground crew members I had ever seen during my time in the Air Force. While I was only there for the first 6 months of the project, that dedication obviously continued right on through until the last mission was flown. I'm very fortunate and proud to have been a small part of that operation.

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Randy Ryman
Project Big Eagle
NKP Thailand 1966
http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florandy.htm