South African Ju52 / Casa 352L airworthy again after many many years.
Very, very intersting story to read. Just a small sample:
http://www.saamuseum.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=66&Itemid=85
Quote:
The South African Historic Flight Junkers Ju 52/3m ZS-AFA had not flown since 2000. The reason for the aircraft becoming a ‘hangar queen’ was that the tire life and reliability was becoming unpredictable and problematic. The aircraft was never grounded officially; rather it was withdrawn from service due to the lack of availability of replacement tires. New tires were however available at an unacceptably high price. The SA Historic Flight management were obviously not prepared to order tires at R10 G’s per tire with a minimum production run of 100 units. This was clearly way beyond the available financial resources and thus there was little option but to withdraw this priceless classic aircraft from any further flying indefinitely.
Captain Tony van Eeden, Chief Pilot of the SA Historic Flight and at the time a Senior Captain on SAA’s B747 fleet learnt of a Junkers Ju 52 museum specimen at the Imperial War Museum at Duxford near Cambridge in the UK. The Duxford aircraft is actually a Amiot AAC-1 Toucan licenced built in France. It once served with the Portuguese Air Force as 6316. This aircraft was fitted with the later undercarriage that used more readily available and robust tyres commonly found on Douglas DC-3 aircraft, the size being 17.00-16 12 ply. The Duxford specimen was painted in an authentic World War II colour scheme that was not appropriate for the type of undercarriage that was fitted. ZS-AFA was fitted with the earlier type undercarriage that if fitted to the Duxford example, would make it technically authentic. Tony masterminded a swap of undercarriages. This swap was carried out by Tony with the aid of his flight deck crew whilst on a layover in the UK on a scheduled flight with the aid of SA Historic Flight technicians. The “new” undercarriage was brought back to South Africa, X-rayed and refurbished to the highest modern day technical standards.
The “old” undercarriage used biscuit wheels that were braked by a single pneumatic cylinder on each wheel whereas the new wheels required bladder type brake actuators that required a greater volume of compressed air to function. This posed a problem in that the reserve pressure cylinders were assumed to be too limited in capacity for normal operations. This however proved to be an incorrect assumption as the new wheels and brakes proved to be more efficient requiring fewer brake applications for normal operations than the old gear. The process of undercarriage change to ZS-AFA took ages. Eventually, the SA Air Force gave the SA Historic Flight notice to vacate the hangar that housed them at the Swartkop Air Force Base as the Air Force required the hangar for their own use. Fortunately, the SA Historic Flight was to be taken under the wing of South African Airways again. The eviction from Swartkop was the catalyst that expedited the certification of the new gear.
As ZS-AFA had been standing for several years, much work was needed to get her serviceable again. Eventually on Wednesday 30 November 2005, the work was completed by the very able SA Historic Flight technicians aided by SAA personnel. Prior to this, Brian Stableford and myself, both retired SAA B747 Captains and veterans of the SA Historic Flight were given Technical and Emergency Procedures refresher courses with appropriate examinations conducted by Flight Engineer Instructor Willie Caarstens. The South African Civil Aviation Authority gave approval for a flight to position the Ju 52 to Johannesburg International Airport from Swartkop. A condition for the flight to land at JIA was that a circuit and landing be carried out at Swartkop prior to the positioning flight to verify the integrity of the new undercarriage, wheels and braking system.
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