Bought a Fairchild 24

[Dave Hadfield]

Hi Andy. Yes, that was a fortuitous join-up. My back-seater got it on cell-phone video, but the quality of course it poor. Here's a still from it -- captures about 1/10,000th of how cool it was.



And yes, that's the Stampe that used to be owned by Doug Murray.

Dave

[Iclo]

Hello Dave,

Thanks lots for the update.
Just a question : how is difficult to maintain the Mercury engine of the Lysander ? The Sabena Old Timer association who own one looks to have rough time with it : two or three engine failures the last one 15 years finished in a crash landing and the plane is in restoration since that.

Is it possible to have a reliable engine or it's a permanent challenge to keep the plane airworthy ?

(The Lysander is one of my favourite plane and is definitely in top of the list of planes I would like to have a flight)

Regards

Loïc

[Dave Hadfield]

Loic,

We've had good luck this season with the Mercury. The thing always started very dependably, using only the on-board battery, and oil consumption dropped to less than a quart an hour. It ran smooth, and required no mainenance other than the regular interval items, like air compressor oil, and rocker arm oil.

Ours was overhauled by Retrotrack, I believe. No one would ever say they were cheap, but their work seems to have been first-rate.

The "rich-cut" phenomenon, and carb ice, was non-existent.

Just like the brakes!

Next year we will equip the aeroplane with some form of tailwheel steering. That would make it far easier to operate. (Some days I only got it out to the runway, and back, through cunning and trickery!

Other factors -- it's painfully hot in the pilot's seat. Quite brutal on a warm summer day. And if you go more than 5 days without running it, you have to pre-oil the 3 big-end sections of the engine (supercharger, crankshaft, and gearcase). That's a very messy, PITA job, and I was usually by myself for it.

But I had it for 3 months of occasional use, and the maintenance cost during that period was exactly zero. Just fuel and oil and rags.

Our engineers are going over it now. Perhaps they will find something that negates what I've just said -- hope not.

Dave

[Iclo]

Hi Dave

Thanks a lot for the feedback

Regards

[Dave Hadfield]

Loic, It looks like the engineers have discovered some engine problems. We ended up with a low-compression cylinder. There seems to have been excessive wear in that one. One issue is that when you prime, for engine start, the liquid fuel tends to wash away the oil film in the cylinder being primed, depending where the nozzle is, which puts metal-on-metal for the first 30 seconds or so. However it's not that big a deal, and there was no metal in the general oil system.

Have your Lysander aquaintances cast any pistons? We may want to have some cast, perhaps .010" over.



Dave

[Dave Hadfield]

Tremendous weekend at Gatineau! VWoC put on a military airshow (Snowbirds, F-18 Demo), plus flew 4 fighters and the Yellow Birds. The Lancaster was there. We did a number of Sponsor-ride flights in formation with it -- where else in the entire world can you ride in a Lancaster and look out and see a P-51 and P-40 on the wing? -- or vice-versa.

The main event was a flypast of the Lancaster-plus-4-fighters over the capitol, over Parliament. This was part of the commemoration of the 75th of the Battle of Britain.

I had a back-seater, Nial McGlaughlin, who took these. This was during re-join after take-off. The Mustang in on my right -- I was #4, leader of the second element.



Then, we held and held and held, so we took up a loose, route formation, and had this in sight for about half an hour.





And on the other side of the formation was this...

[Dave Hadfield]

A couple of more...





The parallax makes the formation look a bit distorted. And maybe I was in a bit tight.

[Dave Hadfield]

I had a wonderful day at CFB Borden (near Barrie, ON) which was the first flying station of the Royal Flying Corps Canada, in 1917. Lately it's become a tri-service training base with no RCAF flying requirement, and the old runways have been lifted. Grass has been sewn, and the whole area is now one perfect, unmarked, wide-open flying field. It's a time-warp -- it looks now like it did in 1918, and some of those hangars are still there.

Yellow Wings, an initiative of VWoC, deployed there for a week with a Harvard and Finch, to take Air Cadets flying. I joined them for a day in the Lysander.

First was getting the machine ready to fly -- and it seems to me after a summer of operating it that the thing was designed to be supported by a crew of at least 4 RAF crewman. I rapidly figured out that I'm only one! So, I kept having to draft my various friends. Here we are getting ready at the hangar at Edenvale. My Ford F-150 was pressed into use as a tow-vehicle -- worked ok with a low hitch, but I didn't dare push with it.



Pulling through the prop while still in the shade.



We dream or wide open fields like that, nothing to avoid, nothing to run into, no worries about crosswinds. But in actual fact, it was wierd. Without any cones, or chalk lines, or markings of any kinds, there is no peripheral reference as you flare. It was odd. I tended to thump down, not where I intended. It took some getting used to.

[Dave Hadfield]

Once there, we were surrounded by Cadets, and I gave a short lecture on the aeroplane.



Followed by a walk-around lesson.





After which we hauled Cadets all afternoon.

[Dave Hadfield]

[Dave Hadfield]

The Yellow Wings Team, and me.





Wonderful day, and wonderful to be able to connect young people with their history and aviation heritage, in a historic aeroplane on THE historic RCAF site.

Here is a photo of the place just after it was constructed, in 1917. The many small round holes are from where they pulled the pine stumps to make the airfield.



And here, under the Lysander's wing, you can see several of those hangars still erect.



And the ramp we operated from?



Dave

[DH82EH]

That is really cool Dave.
I'd love to fly the Tiger in and out of Borden some time.
With a bit of advance notice I'd be glad to show it off to some Cadets as well.
Nothing quite as much fun, as a keenly interested audience of bright young minds!

Speaking of Cadets. I recently reconnected with a cousin, who got her glider pilot and then her private license through Cadets.
I had a chance to take her flying in CF-MAD.



Needless to say she loved it!
I told her to come and fly with me as much as she can. I want her to learn how to fly my Tiger.
I know I would have loved such an opportunity as a young pilot. With a young mind she'll pick it up in no time!
Even on our first flight she did great!
Hopefully we'll get out again this season. The forecast for the upcoming week looks great!

Cheers

Andy

[C VEICH]

After which we hauled Cadets all afternoon.

Hopefully at least a few of them understood and appreciated just how rare of an opportunity they were being given! I have said it before but I will say it again, I always look forward to your updates Dave and appreciate your willingness to take the time and effort to share your travels here on WIX.

[Dave Hadfield]

Thanks! It's a pleasant form of Logbook, for me, with photos. And occasionally useful.

Looks like a keen pilot, Andy! I hope she has fun -- she's bound to learn a lot!

I'm not sure what we're doing next year for YW, but I'll keep you informed. I do know that we've upped the experience requirements, and now we're asking for all our pilots to have a Commercial license. Not a bad project for winter/spring.

Dave

[Dave Hadfield]

I'm way behind on posting photos. I intended to upload them in a logical, temporal sequence, and capture last year's flying, but today we had a great day with airplanes, so I'm going to jump ahead.

Normally in January I don't fly the Fairchild at all. It's too cold for the un-baffled cylinders of the Warner R-550, and my hangar in Alliston is sealed up by a ridge of ice across the door. But this year Robin and I have swapped hangars so that we can paint her RV6a in a heated space, and so the Fairchild is at Edenvale, with plowed runways and an overhead door.

My Dad was looking for an adventure, and today the forecast was for sunny and temp about 0C, so he opened up the hangar on the farm and flew up to Edenvale in his new (to him) C-170B.



After clearing snow and ice, and endless pre-heating, we got under way. The plan was a formation trip for some air-to-air photos.



Which worked out very well. Re-join was easy -- the 170 is faster than the F-24. (Not grander, of course, but a bit quicker...)