Well now that the PBY fuselage is now resting in the 'pond' at my house, and after assuring that it was okay with Mark Pilkington (the new owner), I thought I'd let y'all see what was involved in getting it here.
First of all, the airport operations people and the folks at the Southmost Aviation FBO in Brownsville were wonderful to deal with. They were quite helpful when I would get myself in a bind. I wish all of the folks I had to deal with while I was there were as friendly.
When I got there, I found that the former owners of the aircraft had towed the fuselage waaaaay out into the weeds. The airport operations folks weren't very happy about that, and were less happy when the folks that put it there wouldn't tow it out of that spot for me. However, with some begging, I managed to talk the operations folks into mowing the overgrowth down enough for (after more begging) the FBO to tow the airplane over to a concrete pad in front of a hangar. It took the tug and the airport operations car chained together to get the airplane out of the hole that it had sunk itself into...particularly due to the slick, freshly cut grass. It was kind of funny to watch.......
After that, I took a good look over the airplane and got it ready for the truck the next morning. I have certainly seen airplanes in better condition, but with some long hours and hard work, Mark and his bunch will surely be able to make this a wonderful static display for people to see. I felt especially proud to be helping Mark save this airplane, as I had a front row view in watching the scrappers dismantle one of the two C-47's that were on the other side of the field. It was a bittersweet moment for me. Here I was helping to save an old airplane, yet I was watching another one getting ready to turn into beer cans.
Anyway, the preparation continued on the PBY. One thing I found interesting was that as "unseaworthy" as the fuselage currently is in, it held a good bit of water in it's hull. I had to drill holes in the belly to drain it all so that it would weigh less and not slosh around when we lifted it. An interesting note is that someone from the former ownership told me that they had "covered all of the holes in the airplane so that it wouldn't get wet inside." Yeah, right. As you look through the rest of the photos here, does it look like all of the holes were covered up to you?
The actual lifting of the airplane turned out to be a non-event. Everything went smoothly, with no surprises.......
Once the airplane was on the truck, we simply folded the main landing gear up into it's wells.......
And here it is ready for it's trip to "Austin Acres."
Due to some issues with the State of Texas and the hauling permits, it took a couple of days for the airplane to arrive. But all went well with this part of it too, and the airplane got to my place on Saturday afternoon......
Our first order of business was to extend the landing gear. This was another humorous act, as it took nothing more than a couple of fat boys with two by fours, and a little prying
.........
After insuring the gear was indeed locked in the down position, we just hooked up the crane, lifted the airplane up, and drove the truck out from under it. The only tricky part was that we had to rotate the airplane 90 degrees and boom the crane out in order to let the airplane come to rest in my pond. Of course the chances of my pond actually filling up with water are the same as this airplane actually floating in it!
...........
And here it is in it's new home for a while.......
The next thing for me to do is to go get the wings. I will update y'all with that when I get it done.
Gary