On the static aircraft, Tim has the freshly painted fuselage skins. These have been painted a mixture of silver and interior green depending on their location on the airframe, with the green panels forming the cockpit walls and the silver panels representing the bare aluminium of the interior skin aft of the cockpit. Several of the aft panels have now been pinned into position by David and we are planning to start riveting these into place next week.
On the tail section, Lawrence has been working hard to position the various sub assemblies into the jig, having to machine spacers and fabricate brackets that allow everything to sit correctly before the final assembly takes place.
Paul has reached a milestone on the engine mount restoration with the repairs to the cradle completed and the whole assembly now stripped back down and sent for primer. The pictures taken show the amount of components that go into making up just this one part of the engine mount, with each one requiring some sort of repair and restoration before being deemed ready for paint. Once the components are primed, the assembly can be both rivetted and bolted together before receiving a final paint coat of interior green. Paul is now turning his attention back to replicating various cockpit components for the static.
Over in the wing shed, the leading edge D-box section is almost complete and Chris has also been fabricating the myriad of brackets required to support the trailing edge ribs. Regular readers may remember Murphy’s very accurate machining of spacer bushes last week and this week he has fitted these in place on the forward edge of the main spar web as seen in the photograph.
