Warbird Information Exchange

Wow!! I read every update.....great story!

And yes....I'd be less that honest if I didn't admit that I too intitially wondered if the young lady in the picture wasn't the pole dance instructor.

PM any seal numbers you need.
I have a shelf full of Shack bits, seals, hoses and misc parts. Not a lot but have some prop stuff in as well. Gary Austin had a bunch more that we passed on. Don't know where that ended up.

_________________
Rich Palmer

Remember an Injured Youth
benstear.org
#64- Stay Strong and Keep the Faith

BOOM BOOM, ROUND ROUND, PROPELLER GO

Don't Be A Dilbert!

Rich,

Many thanks, I'll try and get the numbers for the intershaft bearing and seal and get them to you asap. They are classed as engine parts, so they don't come in the prop kits, but are part of the contra rotating prop set up. Yet another strange decision made between Rolls Royce at Hucknall, and De Havilland propellers.

Kind regards

Rich W

Update time.

You'll notice we made it into this issue of Flypast in the news section, and we were pleasantly surprised to see the "Q Call" article on the Shackleton.

4th June

Work has slowed a little on WR963, but never does it stop. The next big work day is after the next engine run when all the engines need their filters, plugs, cam clearances and many other things checking. There will be lots of photos of oily Griffon bits for those that like that sort of thing!

As to those of you wondering when the next engine run is, we intend to run on Saturday 9th July. There is a significance to this date, as it is 20 years to the day since WR963 and WL790 arrived at Coventry, and 20 years since her last flight.*

You may remember me talking about the air system a couple of weeks back, and the installation of the pneumatics crate. We had a leak on the bottom pair of bottles, but it was soon rectified. We won't know just how well the compressors are doing on the engines are doing until our next run, but the bottles and system are doing well having held what little pressure we had in the system for a fortnight.

The interior has been cleaned and partly repainted and I will post pictures of that in the next couple of weeks. I couldn't get any at the moment as I really don't want to get in the way of Vic and Rich Marriott, the members of our team that are doing the task. There's no room to really get past the hoover, and all the bottles of cleaning products for floors and chairs, but I can say that 963 is looking very much healthier inside.

Our prop is currently at the workshop of one of our team being built up off site. We are in desperate need of an intershaft bearing, it is classed as an engine part not a prop part and as such the kits we have don't contain it. We also have none on our spare units, they have all been used in the past - probably on WL790.

We are desperately looking for:

Intershaft Bearing Part no: GN24866
Outer race Part No: GN 25170
Washer for roller bearing nut Part No: GN 21096

One thing that has been spoiling 963 for a while was the smashed nav light lens on the starboard wing. Vic Marriott took the smashed remains of the old one, and set to manufacturing another. Vic being the perfectionist he is, by the time we arrived this Saturday it was fitted, with the seconite sealing and repainted too! He still wasn't satisfied, research having revealed a telltale piece that you can see from the cockpit, so he made and fitted that too. I envy people's skills sometimes but it does look the part:



There is no stopping him! He is scouring our spares holding for cockpit windows and any other glazing he can find, and has started muttering about replacing the clouded windscreen eyebrow pieces.

We've had some other cleaning work going on, and some more niggling maintenance tasks. The priming line we replaced was checked again and while we were in the undercarraige bays the landing gear hydraulic rams were cleaned and greased.



We also found that the external locks were seized (the red struts in the photo) so we set to and persuaded them out. We managed to revive the spring action on three of them, but one of them was too bad to repair. Thankfully we had a spare, so we gave it some lubrication and fitted it.

For those that wonder about other locks.. the Shackleton control locks are all internal. There is one mounted in the tail (elevators), one in the trailing spar (ailerons), and a big red handle over the throttles on the pilot's side (rudders). They are all connected, meaning the rudder cannot be released until elevators and ailerons have been unlocked.

This is the elevator one on the end of the little red tag:



And here's how it normally appears, when I go down there to take it out:



Not my favourite job, but a regular place I end up; as you can guarantee an unsupervised visitor will try to use force to move the rudder lock so they can play with the throttles. This bends things.

I got asked a couple of weeks ago about the bomb bay - we haven't had the front open again yet, but I took these shots of the bay as they're better than the ones I posted before.

Looking aft:



Looking forward:



In these shots, the flat portion is the centre section. The middle carrier position is rated at 12,000lbs, a legacy from the Lancaster. The small row of bolts you can see before the 'egg crate' style construction starts again is the transport joint. The unsightly brown tubes either side are remnants of the heater system - this being one of the few areas of 963 that has succumbed to being outdoors.

After a cup of tea or two, a few of us boarded and attempted to see if we can get 963's radio behaving. She had many parts robbed, changed and chopped around in the past and it never really worked properly since. Unfortunately the best we managed to get out of her was that we could hear the tower but no-one can hear us!

It's a shame it doesn't work, as there's much on the old Shackleton that still does. The Orange Harvest for example still lets you see what radar is looking at you and where from.. so while 963's hearing's gone, her eyesight is still pretty good even with the radar scanner long since removed.

WR963 will be open to all during the upcoming Jaguar Enthusiasts Club day on the 12th June, but the update next weekend will be from another member as I'm away (again.)

Kind Regards,

Rich






* We aren't counting the 8 seconds or so Dave Hencken (ex 8Sqn CO, and long time Shackleton pilot) managed to sneak in a couple of years ago

9 July 1991
Avro Shackleton WR963 landed for the last time at Coventry Airport, after being sold by the MOD at an auction at Sotheby's on 3rd July. Bought by the Shackleton Preservation Trust she has a total of 15483.45 flying hours over some 6800 flights spanning a 37 year career.

9 July 2011

To an assembled crowd of guests, the Lord Mayor of Coventry, and any members of the public lucky enough to be visiting today at AIRBASE, we celebrated 20 years to the day since she arrived.

Invited guests included the family of the late Gp Capt Dave Hencken, who was the last man to take her out on a runway. Also in attendance were members of the current 8 Squadron who had served on Shackletons. It was also great to meet people that had been in the Shackleton Preservation Trust looking after the aircraft in the past 14 years, and put faces to names. I think we may have persuaded some of them to come back from retirement.

First order of the day was a naming ceremony. WR963 now carries names under her cockpit windows. On the Port side, "Gp Capt Dave Hencken" which was unveiled by the Hencken family and 8 Squadron, and the Starboard side "Sqn Ldr John Cubberley", unveiled by the Lord Mayor and Clive Dickin, AIRBASE's director.

At 3.15 we got everybody who wanted to be onboard the aircraft for the engine run in, and the first engine began to turn. Everybody seemed to be enjoying it... apart from several of us.

The engines took too long to come on the throttle for such a warm day, and No 1 engine refused to start after three attempts. Faced with shutting down to find the fault, or letting people enjoy the running engines, the taps were opened and No 3 and No 4 engine got some exercise. We had that many people wanting to experience a live Shackleton, that after warming the engines up the crew had to throttle back and let some people out so more could get in! The engine run finished after 45 mins to the sound of polite applause from those that were present.

WR963 is going to get some attention to her engines over the coming weeks, as her servicing is due... so while there were a few scowls at No 1 engine, it didn't pick the worst time to misbehave.

Our initial thoughts were the booster coil had stopped working but that was found to be buzzing away nicely. However, we got nothing from the priming pump on that side. The fuse had blown and the pump had quit, possibly due to water ingress. Not difficult to change, but it means we need to chase another water leak. We changed it for another from the store and had the failed unit stripped. Water had got in and partially seized the gears inside.

13 August

Its always difficult to keep momentum at this point in the year as people are off on holiday. For a couple of weeks the numbers of our crew were diminished, but now we're back to strength.

What's been going on?

We started with a few niggles. We've always had a few bits that were needing replacement but the trick was finding the parts. So we've been raiding the store. To give you an insight into how much of a pain it is to find some of our stuff... in one pile alone we came across fuselage frames, a couple of brand new bomb aimers windows, some Griffon cylinder banks - and that was just in the boxes we could get to. Then there's the six complete Griffon engines, 20 mainwheels and god knows what else. We should be good for a few years...

We now have a complete radio antennae set up, with a brand new tensioner on the starboard fin, to match the port side. It had been safety wired in place after the last one failed, and had annoyed us a long time. Standing inside the aircraft now you can hear it resonate loudly in the wind. It scares the hell out of unsuspecting visitors

A major part of the search has been for glazing panels. we now have nearly a full set of cockpit glass, the latest part being a brand new pilots escape hatch.



Fitting a new hatch is fairly easy, but the great thing is by consulting the schedule of parts, we found brand new seals to fit with it to keep the water out. I took a few shots while Vic was fitting this.





We've been continuing with replacing as many access hatches as we can, though the vast majority need drilling out and tapping. Where we don't have the panel or it is badly damaged, we're having new ones made.



We are prioritising which ones we do, the most recent ones are to get access to the trim cables and sprockets. We're still working at freeing them off, the rudder is starting to behave but still needs attention.





20 years outdoors has caused a little corrosion inside but we're pretty happy that we keep going fairly deep into the aircraft yet she seems to have held up well.

The engine guys have been going at the engines, with filters, hydraulics, cams coolant, and a multitude of other tasks getting attention. The news is good with No 3 still behaving, the wear hasn't got any worse. We'll still keep a close eye on it, but it looks like it will make it to the end of the year. I'll report back on No 1 and 4 as they are done.

And last but not least... our old tug..



Finally this old beastie earned its keep, shoving WR963 forward a few yards so we could put steel plate under her mainwheels to stop sinkage and help protect the tyres. There was a bet going on whether it would, and it seems it found some guts from somewhere! It's been getting some attention too to smarten it up and give it a long overdue service.

Regards,

Rich

Hi all,
I know I post sporadically, but I also know there's a few people on here following the fate of our Shackleton, WR963 at Coventry (sister ship of WL790 at Pima). We're still working towards flying her, and now we need a little help.

We've started a Kickstarter project - basically a crowdfunding attempt - to help raise funding for NDT and structural inspections, and the Trustees have come up with some great rewards for backers of the project.

Smaller rewards include taking the co-pilots seat during a run-up of the engines, and engraved Griffon pistons. The biggest and best reward is the offer of taking the co-pilots seat during a taxy run of the aircraft this summer.... as far as we're aware there's nowhere else in the world the public can get their hands on the throttles of an Avro 4-engined heavy, and nowhere you will get chance to taxy the aircraft from one of the best seats in the beast!

Here's the link -


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/18 ... -to-flight


Kind regards,

Rich