A place where restoration project-type threads can go to avoid falling off the main page in the WIX hangar. Feel free to start threads on Restoration projects and/or warbird maintenance here. Named in memoriam for Gary Austin, a good friend of the site and known as RetroAviation here. He will be sorely missed.
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Looking good Gary!

Thu Mar 29, 2007 8:05 am

At some point down the road are they going to change the pitot heads to the earlier style?

Re: Looking good Gary!

Thu Mar 29, 2007 8:30 am

peter wrote:At some point down the road are they going to change the pitot heads to the earlier style?


It's funny you ask that. My maintenance officer and I were recently discussing how long it would be before someone inquired about the pitot tubes. :lol:

Well, the tubes that are on there now were "acquired" by a good friend of the Squadron's, and were originally made for a more recent aircraft. They are not exactly what the originals were, but are closer than what we had on there before and will have to do for now. Remember, the "A" model pitot tubes did not stick out quite as far as the later model B-24's.

Gary

Thu Mar 29, 2007 8:34 am

Peter-Four-Oh wrote:OMIGOSH... I glanced at that first photo real quick and the bubble wrap looked like shattered glass...



I noticed it as well and thought it was a shattered panel at first. But after closer inspection you could tell it was bubble wrap. I knew it couldn't have been a shattered plexiglass panel anyway because I didn't see Gary in the picture, lying on the hanger floor crying and sucking his thumb in the fetal position out of sheer frustration! :lol: (just kidding Gary :wink: ...keep up the good work).

John

Thu Mar 29, 2007 8:52 am

jpeters wrote:I noticed it as well and thought it was a shattered panel at first. But after closer inspection you could tell it was bubble wrap. I knew it couldn't have been a shattered plexiglass panel anyway because I didn't see Gary in the picture, lying on the hanger floor crying and sucking his thumb in the fetal position out of sheer frustration! :lol: (just kidding Gary :wink: ...keep up the good work).

John


No John, you're probably right. That would've surely been at least a small portion of my reaction. :lol:

Gary

why do they do that

Thu Mar 29, 2007 9:14 am

I see it all the time around aircraft people tapping the metal skin tapping the propellors. We even had someone grab onto and snap off one of our replica guns...

Thu Mar 29, 2007 9:14 am

I have a feeling Gary would have found a way to make one of those M2's fire had someone done something that horrible to the plane at this stage.

Keep up the good work Gary. Make sure to tell Andy that he did a great job on masking those windows. That's a lot of odd shapes to have to mask off.

Thu Mar 29, 2007 9:21 am

... building some of the lexan floors for the PX compartments. I wanted them out of lexan in order to save time on future inspections so that we can simply see beneath the floors and won't have to remove them to look at the underlying structure.



I hope you will have some rubber matting to put over the Lexan while using the compartment, so as not to have to buff out the scratches everytime you want to look through it.

Looking really great, Gary. I can't wait to see it on the road.

KK

Thu Mar 29, 2007 9:25 am

Looking great!! Gary, you've done a magnificentjob on her. Keep up the good work!

297

Thu Mar 29, 2007 9:30 am

Hey Gary, nice to see Brad out and about. Tell him not to go up on the hill.... hate to see him get "scratched" by a big 'ole rattler back home, after all of his time flying overseas in hostile areas. Brad, good to see ya back... how long are you in town? Gary, Bill G got my squadron app yesterday. Will be out soon for about 4-5 days. Alan

Thu Mar 29, 2007 9:30 am

At the NMUSAF, in the WWII Gallery I heard a thumping noise. I thought maybe some one from building maintance or restoration was working in the hangar. I started looking around and found a guy in his 30's pounding closed fist on the hull of the Catalina in our collection. I yelled at him and said"If you pound on that one more time, I am going to pound on you!" One of the higher ups was behind me and just laughed at my comment. At this time the bars were not up around it yet. He said "That is why we have bars up here."

Thu Mar 29, 2007 9:44 am

Did the guy tell you why he was pounding on the hull? I can't seem to figure any reason for wanting to do that....

Thu Mar 29, 2007 11:31 am

He said that he wanted to see how thick the metal was.

Thu Mar 29, 2007 1:04 pm

retroaviation wrote:Yesterday, while Andy was attaching the nose section, Brad Pilgrim slaved away at masking off the new nose glass....
Hey, somebody tell Brad there’s a Stearman pilots manual here with his name on it. I’m not sure if he got my PM.

Nose Glass

Thu Mar 29, 2007 1:24 pm

Big ops to Gary - the Bomb Aimers window is the big triangle window in front not the itty bitty window underneath (there are some B-24D that had a .50 mounted here)

http://iies.www.ecn.purdue.edu/IIES/PLA ... type1.html

Bomb Site stabilizer unit was mounted on a bracket that projected the sight away from the floor and centered it roughly 1/3 from bottom frame

This actually (from what I understand) was supposed to optically flat Glass (not plexiglass).

What is missing is the windshield wiper that was mounted on the panel

???

Thu Mar 29, 2007 1:33 pm

Hey Gary,
Ask Brad if your hanger's cleaner that John Dimmer's :wink: :wink:
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