PV-2D Harpoon 84062 (Tanker 101) comes back to life

PJ · **Posted:** Thu Apr 07, 2011 6:05 pm

When we did "Hot Stuff's" first engine rebuild/replacement, we celebrated the completion and first test run with bottles of Harpoon, then everyone on the team signed each others bottles. A fine memento of some very hard work. Harpoon Hard Cider is fine stuff, too!

PJ
PV-2 Harpoon "Hot Stuff"
www.amhf.org

gary1954 · **Posted:** Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:46 am

Bingofuel wrote:

Wow, Hi all, New guy here and just blown away by this thread. It got me thinking of visiting Dempsey Field in Rantoul, Kansas back in 1975. I was a student at Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa and a buddy and I drove up there one weekend as we heard of the a/c there. There were (4) PV-2s on the field then, all fire bombers and N6657D was one of them. I took some lousey photos using slide film with a Kodak Instamatic camera of everything there including the PV-2s. Back then it looked pretty sorry with big hand sprayed on N number in orange on her side. Just the tops of the cowl rings were red and the rudders but not he fins were red. I had the slides copied to paper prints but they didn't come out too well.
There were also at least (5) A/B-26 Invaders there all fire bombers and a North American O-47, plus sprayer single seat AT-6s. Does anyone know what happened to any of the other PV-2s? One was N6853C and another was N7086C and I don't know the fourth. I think only N6657D was a D model. The others all had the earlier nose. The time of the year was winter and all I remember was how cold I was so we didn't hang around all day. We poped over to a nearby airport which I can't remember the name of and there was B-17G tanker #42 N3509G being worked on outside in 10F wheather. I guess ya have to work on them off season but it didn't look like fun to me. The B-17 was on jack stands and they were doing retract tests and the wind was blowing 30 miles an hour and the plane was rocking all over the place. I took lots of pics of the 17 and they came out better but its all Instamatic stuff.
Great to hear she is still around and someone saved at least one of them. Love those old warbirds. Keep up the great work. MB

Okay, this is cool. It is amazing that they would be doing gear retract tests in approximately 30mph wind. kinda crazy IMO, but I haven't had an aircraft on jacks since like 1976. Now where are these pictures you took, we would really, really, like to see them.....really. Right Guys? :axe:

Taigh Ramey · **Posted:** Fri Apr 08, 2011 11:57 pm

PJ,

Thanks for the heads up on the Harpoon Beer and the hard cider. We will have to do an in depth analysis to verify your findings!

Gary,

I concur. I would like to see the photos too.

Well today was a good day for Harpoon parts acquisition. I picked up a bunch of the major components of the APS-3 radar set. They are in great shape and look like might just be able to work too. Here they are:

The transmitter. New and still on its shipping board.

The Magnetron both sides

Power unit

Receiver

Control head

Antenna

One of the two indicators

It was a good day!

cco23i · **Posted:** Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:22 am

GREAT STUFF, man I miss the yellow screens!

Scott

Chappie · **Joined:** Wed Dec 19, 2007 9:40 am **Posts:** 987

Wow, that really a neat find. Is the system operable or will it be made operable?

Chappie

Taigh Ramey · **Posted:** Sun Apr 10, 2011 4:17 pm

The plan is to make the radar, and all of the equipment in the Harpoon operational. Although the interior gear is not high on the priority list now because of more important projects but it is still necessary to start rounding up the parts as soon as possible because some of it is real hard to find.

We have enough of the radar now to be able to hook it up and see if it will work. Radar collectors I have talked to say that this set is pretty basic, electronically speaking, and shouldn't be too hard to make operational. Story goes with a lot these old radios the capacitors are the biggest problem. Many of them, especially the paper capacitors, don't do what they are supposed to do. There are two schools of thought on fixing these. One is to simply replace them with new ones. The other process is to isolate the capacitor from the circuit and to bring them up to operating voltage very slowly over time. It seem that this technique, which certainly takes longer that the R&R method, has been pretty successful in restoring the original equipment which is a good thing. I am not sure if the capacitors will be an issue in this radar or not. I am hoping to find a volunteer with more electronic knowledge that I (not hard to do really) to take on the project. Some of the local HAM club guys have expressed an interest so hopefully someone qualified will step up.

The cool thing about running this radar is that the frequency that it used in WWII is the very same frequency that is allotted for airborne weather radar today. As a result we will not need any special permits to fire up our 'weather radar'. I can't wait to see just what the USS Iowa, over in the mothball fleet, looks like on our APS-3 weather radar!

K5DH · **Posted:** Sun Apr 10, 2011 5:48 pm

Taigh:

That's a great find on the radar equipment!

I restore tube-type radio gear (amateur, CB, shortwave, and some military). If you intend to operate the equipment, I recommend that you replace all of the paper, electrolytic, and "black beauty" caps with modern parts. The mica caps should be okay. Some purists will whine about the use of non-original parts, but since they're all inside the chassis and out of sight, I don't see anything wrong with it. Electrolytic caps can sometimes be re-formed by bringing up the voltage slowly over a period of several days, but paper and "black beauty" caps cannot. Once they're bad, they're bad.

corsair166b · **Posted:** Sun Apr 10, 2011 9:47 pm

Taigh.....

I am a huge battleship fan, really wanna know your results when you use the radar on the USS Iowa....I am avidly following the battle for its new homeport in either the LA or San Fran area....hope they settle that battle soon.

You get that radio stuff set up, you'll be able to talk with ghosts of the past! Very cool stuff! Might even be a little spooky!

Mark

the330thbg · **Joined:** Wed Nov 14, 2007 3:06 pm **Posts:** 2713

beautiful brand new part!

Where on earth did you find that? :drinkers:

Taigh Ramey · **Posted:** Wed Apr 13, 2011 8:17 pm

The radar came from a radar collector. I went to pick it up at his shop/warehouse which was full of cool old radio and test equipment. He has a few WWII sets like a complete APS-4 radar set on a stand. The APS-4 was commonly seen on the right wing of the TBM-3E. It was a droppable radar mounted on a bomb pylon. We have two in our museum's collection and we hope to get one of them up and running sometime...TOO.....MANY....PROJECTS....NOT....ENOUGH...TIME... Which is why we need some good electrical volunteers to get some of these cool old electronics up and running.

Friday and Saturday are Harpoon Days at our little museum. We hope to finish the engine squawks and then test run the engines. If there is time we hope to fly to check the leaks and to stretch her legs.

The local chapter of the 99's is coming out Saturday afternoon to check things out. If anyone wants to come out and help please do so.

Here is a photo of some of the rare gear that we now have. The APS-3 search radar that was shown above and on the right is the APX-2 IFF set. IFF is Identification Friend or Foe which was one of the first transponders. The IFF was could also be interrogated by the radar to see if the approaching aircraft was friendly. Ships also had IFF sets. If the reply from the interrogation came back with the correct code of the day then they were friendly. If they had the wrong code then watch out!

Cool...radios...

Dan K · **Posted:** Thu Apr 14, 2011 6:11 am

Taigh Ramey wrote:

The radar came from a radar collector. I went to pick it up at his shop/warehouse which was full of cool old radio and test equipment. He has a few WWII sets like a complete APS-4 radar set on a stand. The APS-4 was commonly seen on the right wing of the TBM-3E. It was a droppable radar mounted on a bomb pylon. We have two in our museum's collection and we hope to get one of them up and running sometime...TOO.....MANY....PROJECTS....NOT....ENOUGH...TIME... Which is why we need some good electrical volunteers to get some of these cool old electronics up and running...

Here is a photo of some of the rare gear that we now have. The APS-3 search radar that was shown above and on the right is the APX-2 IFF set. IFF is Identification Friend or Foe which was one of the first transponders. The IFF was could also be interrogated by the radar to see if the approaching aircraft was friendly. Ships also had IFF sets. If the reply from the interrogation came back with the correct code of the day then they were friendly. If they had the wrong code then watch out!

Cool...radios...

I'm drooling, Taigh, as both the APS-3 and APX sets were also found in the TBY. Awesome find, and I hope the 'Poon's trip to the upper midwest is still on for July.

Taigh Ramey · **Posted:** Thu Apr 14, 2011 1:25 pm

We have an interesting book of layout drawings for the TBU-1 in the museum collections. Here are a few shots from that large format book:

Dan K · **Posted:** Thu Apr 14, 2011 2:15 pm

Taigh Ramey wrote:

We have an interesting book of layout drawings for the TBU-1 in the museum collections. Here are a few shots from that large format book:

I didn't mean to hijack this thread, but man oh man...Sea Wolf porrnn!

I bought the full set of TBY-2 engineering drawings on microfilm from NARA, but that was all done by Consolidated-Vultee. I'm sure I haven't seen these Chance Vought drawings before...a goldmine. (I have a 15-year-old daughter... blonde... 5'10"... perhaps a trade?)

Seriously, I'd pay for scans or even photocopies of that TBU book.

the330thbg · **Joined:** Wed Nov 14, 2007 3:06 pm **Posts:** 2713

What a find indeed!

Love those drawings. True works of art!

cco23i · **Posted:** Fri Apr 15, 2011 12:07 am

Taigh Ramey wrote:

The radar came from a radar collector. I went to pick it up at his shop/warehouse which was full of cool old radio and test equipment. He has a few WWII sets like a complete APS-4 radar set on a stand. The APS-4 was commonly seen on the right wing of the TBM-3E. It was a droppable radar mounted on a bomb pylon. We have two in our museum's collection and we hope to get one of them up and running sometime...TOO.....MANY....PROJECTS....NOT....ENOUGH...TIME... Which is why we need some good electrical volunteers to get some of these cool old electronics up and running.

Friday and Saturday are Harpoon Days at our little museum. We hope to finish the engine squawks and then test run the engines. If there is time we hope to fly to check the leaks and to stretch her legs.

The local chapter of the 99's is coming out Saturday afternoon to check things out. If anyone wants to come out and help please do so.

Here is a photo of some of the rare gear that we now have. The APS-3 search radar that was shown above and on the right is the APX-2 IFF set. IFF is Identification Friend or Foe which was one of the first transponders. The IFF was could also be interrogated by the radar to see if the approaching aircraft was friendly. Ships also had IFF sets. If the reply from the interrogation came back with the correct code of the day then they were friendly. If they had the wrong code then watch out!

Cool...radios...

O.K Taigh, does this mean this may be in the road for bomber camp? Or is it out of the "childrens" way?

Scott

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PV-2D Harpoon 84062 (Tanker 101) comes back to life

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