B-26K Counter-Invader Restoration ("Special K")

[A26 Special K]

Amazing you guys were able to locate that gear door. How many ounces of gold will it require for the purchase?

Frank: nearly 2 oz including freight from California. That is a lot of panning!! JR

[NImrodA26]

........They were used in WWII but not used in Korea or VN. We have made them operational anyway.

Did it have something to do with IFF?

[shrike]

Backside of the formation light?

[A26 Special K]

Backside of the formation light?

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! Congratulations! You are now have immunity from being voted off the island by that witchy Duck Drivin Lady!! We have installed all of the blue lens and lights for the formation lights. They were primarily used in WWII when flying at night in formation in level flight and could only be seen from above. Since most of the Korean and VN era flying was single ship and absolutely didn't not want to show any kind of lights, they were rarely turned on and/or deactivated. Sharp eye!!! JR

[A26 Special K]

Here is another excerpt from a 1960's casualty report. It is no longer classified Secret or Confidential so don't be calling the NSA. They won't be interested in old news. Only us history lovers really care and want to honor those vets who did so much with so little back in the VN era such as the Special Ops guys. JR

[A26 Special K]

This shows why we needed a replacement for the left hand outboard main gear door. This long weld was done to try to repair a crack long before K came our way. It held the door together, but the edge curved inward so that when the door was closed, it didn't mesh with the inboard door. We perhaps could have tried to straighten it out but then we would run the risk of causing another crack or worse. Anyway, the deal is done and the new door is on the way from California. Can hardly wait for it to arrive. It will be just like Xmas all over again! This has been a part of our Holy Grail of searches. Feel very lucky to find it. Doing the happy dance now! JR

[A26 Special K]

Jamie has been steadily working on restoring the doghouse area and he has it just about done in terms of installing all of the former military equipment that was back there. Much of it had to do with navigation and recon work. The bomb bay area and the nose could be filled with all sorts of cameras for mapping from high altitude. Several of the camera mounts can still be seen in the bomb bay. So the K models were designed from the git-go to do attack and recon missions. While I can think of some really nice beaches I would like to do low level recon and photo work, maybe we should just stick to the main mission. Hope to have some good news regarding those .50 cals soon. We have some folks working on it. JR

[A26 Special K]

Our instrument panel restorers have one last thing to do to make the panel as authentic as possible. These are our three fuel gauges that we scrounged up recently, but they are not quite right. The photos underneath the left and right gauges show what they should look like... only kinda newer than that. The middle gauge is for the main tanks and the numerals/markings should all be in white just like the rest of the gauges. All of the green will go away. We just sent these off to the Century Instrument shop in Wichita for some plastic surgery. They should come back looking good.....oh, and working!! That's also important. JR

[A26 Special K]

Ray and Miguel are two of our metalsmiths. Ray is currently working on replacing some of the cockpit aft sill where we found some corrosion. He is building up some wooden formers to make the rather compound curves involved in the piece. It will be one of his most complex jobs yet. But we have every confidence that he will get the job done. BTW, Gary, if you want to know what our new T shirts look like, Ray and Miguel are wearing some. If anybody is interested, we do have these in most sizes available for sale. Just PM me and we can make arrangements to get them to you. JR

[A26 Special K]

Well, believe it or not, the cockpit is coming together. Along the right side of the throttle quadrant, we have mounted trays for one radio and the audio control panel to see if we like the fit. You can see a whole lot of the new wiring that the avionics guys have run. The panel is ready to be fitted as soon as the fuel gauges come back from their makeover. JR

[A26 Special K]

The mighty team huddle.... looks like they are preparing for the Super Bowl!! JR, Mac, David B, Ray, Miguel and a couple of others out of the shot are looking at the aileron as it is ready to hang now. We are just waiting on one more section of the gap seal to be made. That gray thingee with the zipper is the longest section so we need the shorter ones. We found that by the way at our friends in San Antonio, Alamo Aircraft, LTD. They must have an amazing warehouse stuffed with all kinds of goodies. These gap seals were NEW OLD STOCK. That means new in the box but manufactured in 1965. They have one for the other aileron on the way to us. They also had a mounting bracket and mounting bolts that are NOS. These are specific to the A-26. Who knew? We are also excited to find an original tail skid for the airplane in California and the company might have a boot assy we have been looking for that goes up in the nose wheel bay. Hope to get confirmation of that in the next day or two. The hunt continues!! Stay tuned! The other JR

[A26 Special K]

And here is the other end of the aileron with trim tab installed. It is ready to go when the gap seals are done. Does it seem funny to anyone else that the Americans (Wright Bros) invented the airplane, the French got to name the parts.... aileron, fuselage, nacelle, empennage, etc, and the Russians took credit for it?? JR

[shrike]

But the Wrights got to pioneer crippling aviation litigation, so they got the last laugh

[A26 Special K]

But the Wrights got to pioneer crippling aviation litigation, so they got the last laugh

Amen, brutha! But you know it pushed people into designing other ways of accomplishing the same thing. For instance, the Wright boys used wing warping to control bank. Glenn Curtiss came up with an aileron to do the same thing as a way to get around their patent although it still led to a lot of legal wrangling. And so on and so forth. Sometimes lawyers are good for something... if they are defending you! JR

[A26 Special K]

Just thought I would throw this in since we showed K's throttle quadrant a few posts earlier on this page. This quadrant is out of BUBA, a B model A-26 that belongs to the Invader Sqdn here in Ft Worth. I am going to fly it also cause you just can't get enough A-26 flying, right? Somebody told me that chicks dig warbirds but they like the 26 best of all cause you can haul a party!! Whoohoooooo. So anyway, sorry I got carried away. What I was trying to show is that all the levers: throttle, props and mixtures have round balls at the tops... and that's where the expression came from about "Balls to the Walls". When wanting to go fast as say when somebody is shooting at you, the pilot would push all these levers up as far as they would go, hence the derivation of the expression. And all this time, you thought it meant something else, didn't you!! Tsk, Tsk. K on the other hand is a product of a little more ergonomic thinking so each kind of lever has a different feel to it. Regardless, the process is the same, but "Everything Forward" just doesn't have the same ring to it! That's the price of progress! We will be working on K tomorrow (Sat) and the Invader guys will also be working on BUBA so come on by the museum hangar at Meacham and get two for the price of one trip!! JR