Warbird Information Exchange

Mike - yes thats the right plane.

Viking 73 - it is pretty complete - being way up on a pole helped keep the thieves away - well - the brakes are long gone but I have no idea if that was legally removed or otherwise. The cockpit is pretty complete - seat, stick and grip, gunsight and a few instruments. This really is a jewel in the rough - hopefully it will not take a lot of work to clean her up and get it back on display.

Thanks, Tom P.

Well, if the weather holds and the wind is not too bad tomorrow is the day that the F-86 will take flight again!! albeit in a sling under a Chinook. If it happens I'll post some fotos here once I get them processed. Plus some cockpit shots - anything anyone out there want to see in particular on this bird?

Tom P.

Cockpit shots would be good, thanks

The Eagle (or sabre) has landed! flight from Battle Mountain was uneventful and I will work on getting some photos cleaned up to post here asap. Gotta get her in the hangar and out of the weather first.

The cool part was we had to build a special nosewheel downlock - the original was long gone and it held perfectly. Another bonus is the flight helped clean out some of the pigeon poop I guess the next thing is to find someone with a lead on dummy rockets to put in the rocket launcher! Right after cleaning, painting etc etc etc. . . .

Tom P.

Great news Tom! Please do post some pics when you can and thanks for keeping us in the loop.

well, I spent the day cleaning the ol bird. I can say one thing - if you have a plane on a pole, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE plug up the holes and put a plug in the intake and tailpipe. I swear, we cleaned about 100+ pounds of owl and pigeon fecal material out of this poor plane. good grief and thank heaven that we could use the airport firetruck.

Anyway - these shots are from the move from Battle Mountain to Wendover. I tell you - the pilot of the Chinook moved that huge thing around so gracefully and precisely it was like watching a dragonfly move around a pond.

Anyone with a great way to clean canopy plexi? How about removing that grey haze from gaugefaces?

Enjoy - Tom P.

Excellent shots! How bad is the instrument glass?

Thanks once more for the updates Tom.

You're really not making me feel good about the Sabrehog down at Lunken with that

Keep the pictures coming!

Well, here are a couple of shots that show how much work a few stupid birds can accomplish. This is after a fair amount of hosing off with a firetruck.




Tom P

This is the cockpit before I started cleaning it up. I did find the broken off piece of panel on the right side of the cockpit fortunately - I am pretty sure at some point that someone got into the cockpit and smashed many of the instruments. If anyone has an instrument or two they would like to donate that would be awesome!


this is the right side - throttle in front and maybe someone here can help with the second control but I gather that it is a radar target acquisition control of some sort



Tom P

Automatic transmission fluid cleans up the fog on new car lens covers. They are not real glass , some kinda plexi, but worth a try.

Just had to clean up that "dirty" photo!

Dont do that!!!!! Get yourself a Micro-mesh kit! It contains various grits of sandpaper. I would use them all the time on eroded windows and Nav lenses on the airlines. It will take a lot of elbow grease but in the end, you will be happy!!!

_________________
Long Live the N3N-3 "The Last US Military Bi-Plane" 1940-1959
Badmouthing Stearmans on WIX since 2005

wendovertom -
Look up the recent "B25 - lake" thread to find the WIX'er who did some fantastic work on some plexiglas...lots of elbow grease...but worth the effort.
This a/c already looks good & can't wait to follow-up all your future updates (hint, hint).

Great work on the move and cleanup.

Those are glass lense gauges. A damp clean cloth should remove any surface material that is present on the exterior surface of the lenses. Hope the fogging is just paint oxide from the panel. Fogging on the interior surface of the glass lense often indicates that the gauge has had moisture on the inside of the case, not a good thing as corrosion makes precision parts into powder.

Post a list of instruments that you need.

Thanks again for posting the updates.