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

[Taigh Ramey]

Any Plans to Go to Reno This Year ??

Yes, we are going to Reno this year. Leaving on Tuesday the 10th and heading home from Stead on Sunday the 15th.

We do still have some flight crew spots open in the Harpoon for museum volunteers/patrons/members.

Now to get you guys in Navy flight suits or at least khakis and the crew in Dungarees

LOL...I like how you think.

In fact, Mrs. K said she'd buy a calendar that had a pic of Ken in a dixie cup.

Ken does have the dungarees and the Dixie cup but we couldn't get him to bring it to OSH. Now that there is a potential calendar shoot in the works for Kenny maybe he will get over his shyness and suit up!

[shrike]

Now that there is a potential calendar shoot in the works for Kenny maybe he will get over his shyness and suit up!

I'm really having a hard time reconciling "Kenny" and "shyness"

[Taigh Ramey]

I'm really having a hard time reconciling "Kenny" and "shyness"

Good point.

I'm having a really hard time reconciling Kenney in a calendar shoot.

[Russ Matthews]

I'm having a really hard time reconciling Kenney in a calendar shoot.

Oh, I don't know about that ...

[Redtracer]

Hey, hey, hey, everyone knows I'm a wallflower but if shaking my moneymaker in a pair of dungarees will help out 062 then I'm in! Oh, and Dan I must say Mrs. K has great taste!

[Dan K]

Hey, hey, hey, everyone knows I'm a wallflower but if shaking my moneymaker in a pair of dungarees will help out 062 then I'm in! Oh, and Dan I must say Mrs. K has great taste!

For Mrs. K, sometimes it's a bit of a gray area between "great taste" and "great sense of humor"!

[cco23i]

Should set up a photoshoot next camp

[Taigh Ramey]

Well since we are talking about Ken and photo shoots here is the 062 crew's version of Where's Waldo:

Where's Kenny?

Last edited by Taigh Ramey on Sun Aug 11, 2013 1:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

[Redtracer]

What a great time! And the food was good too! I ordered the soup of the day, NEWCASTLE!

[Taigh Ramey]

Just in case you missed it:

[ALAN.L]

Brilliant pictures!
If my lotto numbers come up, I will book a place on the Reno trip !

[rwdfresno]

Taigh, it looks like an amazing trip. How exciting. So what was the burn rate on fuel and oil? Have you done much with the engines outside of the carbs?

Ryan

[Taigh Ramey]

On with trying to get the thread caught up:

The Harpoon was well received at OSH but we were sad that the two PV-2 vets we had talked to, who were planning on coming to meet us, were not able to do so. We hoped they would talk about their experiences at the Warbirds in Review session that was set up on Thursday at 10am. Since they couldn't make it Ken and I talked about the project. Sure would have been a lot better to hear from the folks who were actually there but it is getting real hard to find these guys anymore.

Here is a shot of the Harpoon out on the Bomber row in the grass.



We had several nice surprises throughout the week. One was Byron Sunwall who flew Tanker 101 as a copilot for a season or two. Early in the project I had been in touch with Byron and he sent some great photos of the Harpoon when he was working on it. He did an engine change as well.

I didn't know he was planning on coming by so it was great to meet him in person. He was right at home in the right seat and jumped right in







Then they towed us up on the ramp at Warbird Alley which was nice. Lots more people got to see 062 there.

Some of the reenactors donated a float flare to us for the Harpoon. We need about a dozen of these little wood flares for a rack near the radar ops station so it was greatly appreciated for sure.



Here is one of the reenactors at the entry door. I think these guys add a lot to an event like this. Thank you all for coming out!



Another nice surprise was meeting Quincy Seymore who used to work on Tanker 101 a long time ago. He had pretty specific memories of reworking lots of things on the old gal. Good stories. His shirt was perfect as 062 was certainly marking her territory. Hey, some of those spots were there before!



Then we were positioned in front of the grand stands for the Warbirds in Review. This was a tough act to follow as they sang beautifully. Kenny should have been in there with them!



It seems that 062 in the Warbirds in Review was well attended and the hour seemed to go quickly









Ricky standing guard. Okay, maybe sitting guard



Thursday evening, as mentioned earlier, we flew a photo flight with the FM-2 and the Zero. Here is another cool shot from that flight from Greg Morehead



Then the best surprise of all at OSH was when we were packing up to head out for Topeka on Friday afternoon. Don Anderson walked up and introduced himself. Don was a Navigator/Gunner on PV-1's and PV-2's. Needless to say Don crawled inside and sat right down at his old desk and he felt right at home. Just to see the look on his face when he opened up the navigators tool kit was worth it all by itself.



Don came with his Grandson who listened to some great stories along with us. What a treat and thank you Don for coming out and thank you for your service, Sir!

This is why we are doing this and we were a bit down that we had not met any Harpoon vets at OSH so Don's visit was the highlight for us. I think he had a good time too.





And Don signed our bomb.





Shortly thereafter we headed out for Topeka

[Chappie]

Taigh,

Love Greg's shot that shows 062 pulling vortices off the props! Ya'll must put a bit of pull on the yoke in that turn!


Chappie

[Taigh Ramey]

Taigh,

Love Greg's shot that shows 062 pulling vortices off the props! Ya'll must put a bit of pull on the yoke in that turn!


Chappie

Not much of a pull at all. I have never seen an aircraft that puts out prop tip vortices like this one does most of the time both in California and around the country on our trip. On the ground, takeoff, climb cruise, all over. I wonder if it is the geared nose case with the short props and the higher than usual pitch that does it so frequently.

Ryan,

She burned on average 165 GPH of fuel. Right on what we planned. The oil was up a bunch and we will need to fix that before any long trips in the future. Time for our engine and accessory funding campaign to begin in earnest.

All we have done with the engines is the usual maintenance and monitoring. Plugs, valves, gaskets etc. Frequent oil analysis since it was in the dust bowl until just before we left on the trip. Besides the oil consumption being up they are running great and are some of the smoothest running big radials I have had the privilege to fly with. Not bad really for Ford original engines with less than 70 hours since they were built new.

The last oil analysis was the best yet as they keep getting better with every sample. We did put dual element Airwolf filters on them up in the dust bowl before our first flight to take care of what we have and to catch anything that might come out in the way of carbon or other crud from sitting for so long. We are changing the filters quite often to be sure that they aren't loading up and bypassing. There is an issue with the filters especially when you install them on an engine for the first time that they catch a lot of fine particulate that the screens and Cuno's doesn't care so much about. This fine matter will jam up the new paper filters quickly so you need to be sure to change them every 10 hours or so as needed. You can cut them open and see if the pleats are straight or starting to get wavy. Any waviness and they are telling you that they are loading up and need to be changed more frequently. I had a customers DC-3 (C-47B) that had the Fram filters crushed inside because of this even though it had 45 hours on them since the last oil change. we pulled the filters on 062 in Topeka and they were just starting to go a bit wavy and they only had 11 hours since the oil change. The Airwolf filters are wonderful and sure help to clean out the engines and then keep them clean but you have to watch them closely to be sure to get them over the hump so to speak. Fresh overhauled engines are not a worry. It is the older engines that need careful monitoring after the filter install.

I am sure we could get along okay with just a top overhaul on our fine running Fords but from the start it has always been the plan to have Ray Anderson work his magic on them from crank to rocker cover and prop shaft to starter studs, as soon as we could afford to do so. We just have more motivation now to get it going especially since we just finished off a number of the other big projects on 062. The Engines were, and always will be, the biggest expense for us at over 120K for both sides plus accys barring any major problems. At least it isn't hard to find the parts for the B series engines but I hope we can keep as many of these original Ford parts together as best as we can. They are pretty much a matched pair at only 25 serial numbers apart.

These engines have been great to us so we want to take good care of them too.

Here is Ricky doing the filter change in the rain on Saturday at Topeka