Well, I reckon it's about time I give y'all the update from this past weekend's work. I really have no excuse for being so tardy with this update, other than I just haven't taken the time to do it, until now.
The first thing that should be mentioned is that I've just been pretty much useless to the project lately. I can't seem to find much motivation and just cannot get back into the swing of things. Thank goodness for volunteers like Scott and Ellen Hochstein. They have repeatedly come down to Midland, from Tulsa, for numerous weekends of work, at a huge expense to themselves. They never complain about job assignments given to them (at least not to me
) and work from "can 'til can't" the entire time they're here. Scott was in a rather grumpy mood this past weekend, due to a comment I made, not realizing that I'd said it with any acidity. However, he still kept on working and made major headway with our project by finishing the installation of the passenger's seats in the forward bomb bay. I appreciate him for not allowing anything stupid that came out of my mouth to get in the way of the importance of getting this airplane finished.
I don't think that anyone that's been part of this project likes the fact that we have to put additional seating in the airplane that wasn't originally there to begin with, but we also understand that we must do it this way in order to get the airplane finished and out on tour. The installation of these seats was no easy task. This poor old airplane has had so many modifications done to it over the years, that one is forced to fabricate new structure in order to install anything new. Scott wasn't a big fan of this particular job assignment, but did a great job in getting it accomplished in a very short amount of time.........
While the seats were being installed, I was back to working on my waistgunner's door. I purchased some aluminum angle that was thicker than the metal used in my first attempts at the inner frame work that kept cracking when trying to shrink it to make the sharp corners. However, before I started using this stuff, I tried a sample piece and "over bent" it intentionally to check for any problems. It worked well.......
So, the next step was the same as working with the other pieces. Lay it down and make the index marks........
Then, start shrinking.......
One thing I don't think I pointed out in the previous update about making angles such as these is how I determine where to shrink next. If you look at this picture, you will see where the angle is starting not match the angle of the window cut out. My finger is pointing to the area that will be shrunk next. The shrinking will start just ahead of where the distance starts to increase between the angle and the window cut out. Make sense?
.........
Not quite there.........
Okay. That's more like it...........
So the next step I took was to polish out the shrinker marks.......
Once I was done with the polishing part, I went ahead and marked where the angle sat on the skin. This would make it easier for me to match up the next angle, without having to deal with the other angle being in the way........
After that, I just bent up the second angle and then marked where it overlapped the first piece, and trimmed it to fit.........
Now that the first two angles were made, I needed to locate the holes which will later be used to attach it to the outer skin. I started with using some existing holes in the skin, followed by adding additional ones.......
One thing I ran across is that the contour of the door made it to where the new angles didn't lay down real nicely on one end.........
So, even though you really can't tell much difference in this picture, I took the angle over to the shrinker and shrunk the vertical portion of it to somewhat match the contour of the outer skin..........
Now, you may have noticed that the angles I'm using are not the 2" high, like the other ones I made in the first attempt at this. That is not a problem, as I'll just simply attach some 2" strips of aluminum to these first angles, and then fabricate a second set of angles on top to complete the structure I need. The addition of these 2" strips was pretty straight forward, with the exception of dealing with that slight contour in the center of the door. That was no problem to counter, however, since I just cut the long strips into shorter strips and it all eventually meshed up........
The next step in this process was to make the second set of angles that will go inside the aluminum strips. Once riveted together, these will complete the fabrication of the window frame.........
Now, Ol' 927 has a way of telling you that you're starting to get over-confident and wants to make sure you know that you're not taking control of what's going on without a fight. As you can see in this picture, I was obviously not thinking clearly and shrunk the angle waaay ahead of where it should've been, which meant that it wasn't going to fit........
I tried to fix it with usting the stretcher to "undo" the errant shrinking, but..............
So, no big deal. I'll just add another piece to this second set of angles (didn't have enough material to make another complete piece)........
And once all of the pieces were cut and trimmed to length, this is what we now have..........
I still need to locate the holes for the upper set of angles and then rivet them all together, but that should go rather quickly. I won't be doing much else to the airplane for the next week or so, since I have a formation clinic I'm participating in this weekend and will be heading for Reno next week for the Pylon Racing Seminar (rookie school). Thankfully, Daniel Collier has returned for a couple of weeks, so he'll definitely keep the ball rolling in my absence.
Gary
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), from the SanDiego Air& Space Museum. I'm going to just have to use this one as a pattern to make my own. But first, I needed to cut the hole for it in the fuselage plug that Consolidated put in the airplane to cover up the original waist gunner's position during it's first reconfiguration.......
