With the lights in the hangar shutoff and door locked at 12:45am, it was another 17 hour day getting our list of things left to do knocked down to less and less. Yesterday, John Breitenbach, Joe Matz, Tom Brennan & myself installed our new landing gear compensator in the left wheel well and after adjusting it, went back to adjusting one more time both landing gear and began more retract and extension test on the landing gear. This time, everything went as it should and all tolerances met. This now left us with just the landing gear switches to be tested, and installed. However in order to test and install the landing gear switches, we had to install he batteries and start testing the rest of the electrical system. A big moment! We installed our Concorde RG-35AXC batteries and the adapter we purchased that is field approved and FAA certified and used by quite a few flying DC-3s & C-47s. These give greater longevity and cranking power. Once installed and our restored battery trays greased, we raised the batteries into the ship and one by one started testing different components. On our list of things to test, we were successful in all areas, and were able to have landing lights, nav lights, red beacons, door warning lights, oil & fuel pressure lights, fire area testing lights, feathering pumps and starters successfully come to life and work. We obviously have much more to test, and other systems to begin working on before other test can be performed but this was a large step in the electrical system. We then began installing the wiring for both landing gear switches but ran out of steam before we could finish hooking them up and testing them. While all of this was going on, Jerry E. Sass was busy working on both Carburetor Air Scoops fabricating replacement channels and bringing these two important pieces back to life. Mark Lindley continued his work replacing Dzus fastner springs and started applying the chafing guards on the mounts for the engine accessory panels. Mark also finished trouble shooting the Ford GPW and had it running well. It’s recently had both the starter & alternator overhauled as well as a brand new battery installed as well as a new start switch. We still have one cylinder not firing properly and will be doing a compression check on it next week to narrow down the route of the problem. The Dodge WC-55 continues its restoration work as well with Don Millar & Troy Warinner removing all recently installed wood and hardware and starting the painting process of those components individually. Don also began troubleshooting engine problems as well to address a few leaks that were discovered. Jim Aaron has began his new project and I think he’s just as excited and determined to produce yet another great fabrication. We’ve recently received our drawings from Air Corps Aviation on the “Bucket Seats” for C-47 / C-53 aircraft and will be fabricating from scratch a set of 3 seats to be added to the interior to round out our “configuration” examples of what exactly our C-53 did in WWII. More will be coming on this in the future.
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