Ok, so here's the scoop that I got from Jean with Pink Lady at the the air show. Jean was one of the volunteers who was manning the perimeter around Pink Lady talking to the crowd, luckily his English was great! I introduced myself and then sat back and listened to him talk. One thing that he said that I had never realized before was that they have never tried to restore her back to original B-17G configuration after they got her from the IGN. The IGN installed storage cabinets in the waist compartment, a cargo floor in the bomb bay along with cargo tie down points on the sides and removed the inboard bomb rack structure. This surprised me because I thought that it would weaken the structure too much. When I asked about it Jean just shrugged his shoulders and said that it has flown that way for decades and has never had a problem. Obviously they don't fly at the weights or stresses the airplane was designed to during combat, just goes to prove how tough the B-17 is.
Pink Lady still has her radar altimeter antenna's on each wing, part of the Pathfinder equipment added. There is also what appears to be a sideways looking camera port on the fuselage just forward of the ball turret under the LH wing. There is no shortage of radio's on the plane either. In the cockpit they added a cabinet on the RH side which caused them to move the hydraulic reservoir to the bomb bay. The pilot's electrical panel was modified and moved to the copilot's side. There is also some sort of additional control panel added to the left of the radio operators seat in the radio compartment. On the outside you can see a lot of antenna mounts that I've never seen on B-17's before.
Jean told me that the airplane is going to be kept airworthy however as has been reported elseware, the cost of insurance and the ageing crew seem to be the two biggest reasons for not flying the plane. The insurance companies put the B-17 in the same class as an Airbus A320. Most of the crew members and mechanics are in thier late 60's or 70's. He said that the only reason that they flew in 2008 was because fim maker George Lucas gave them a lot of money for using the airplane in the making of "Red Tails", which paid for thier insurance and maintenance. The spar AD has been complied with, he said that they de-mated the wings and "replaced" the spar terminals. I was not able to find out if they had new ones made or had some replacements in stock. He said that they have a lot of spares because when the USAAF sold the plane to the IGN they threw in all the spares they could since they didn't need them anymore. They had to change a turbo a few years ago and found that they had about 20 in stock!
Another obstacle that they have is that French regulations prevent them from flying passengers for donations so they are totally reliant on sponsors and donors. I have to say that there was a large crowd around the plane all day on Saturday so there is definately an interest in it. I did my part by buying some souveniers from them.
Anyway check out the pictures.
http://s568.photobucket.com/albums/ss129/bgorin/La%20Ferte%20Alais/The%20Pink%20Lady/?albumview=slideshow
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