December 2011 -end of year review

As the second full year of the restoration project comes to an end I've been asked to do an end of year update, I should have done one before but lack of time has taken it's toll coupled with my having a new computer that for some reason won't allow me to run the programme and has meant me getting the old one out of the loft to write an update- remember, don't ever throw away the old until you know the new works okay!

The last report was posted in July and things have moved on quite well again since then. During the first half of the year most of the painting work was on the right hand side and since then the left hand side has received similar TLC so that the 3 coloured stripes are painted to aft of the wing trailing edge. Gaz also did some painting inside the cargo hold

A new team member (Graham) joined us and has turned out to be a dab hand with the mechanics and together with Gregg fitted a new replica hinge fitted to the MLG door

David Walton offered us a cherry picker which hadn't run for ages so an additional task was to get that up and running. The good news was that with the attention of Gaz and Andy it wasn't long before we had the engine running (albeit a bit tempermentally) although to date we haven't tested the lifting arm which will need a thorough check before we lift Gregg up in it ( he loves heights- NOT)! It's a bit tatty inside to say the least so that's another little diversionaly project to clean that up.

David Walton has also given us the go ahead to purchase 50 litres of blue paint for all the external lettering, this arrived in December so another job planned for the new year.

The aircraft has had a good grease up to see her through the winter, so it's onwards and upwards (to paint the tail!) in 2012

Here are a few pics of the work we have carried out, several of them are before and after pics which if you roll your cursor over the image the 'after' will appear

roll over the images to see the 'after' effect   the left side rear fuselage	cargo hold panels
outer left prop newly painted hatch	completed left inner prop (image does not roll over) the cherry picker more or less as we received it
and the front view of the aircraft in November after the surrounding pan had been cleared of rubbish - all looking a bit smarter than a year ago

So that's about it for 2011, thank you to everybody who has sup[ported the project in anyway, most of all the restoration team who have put in so many hours of hard work and to all the visitors to the website and forum - in 2 years we have received almost 9000 hits!

so as the sun sets on another year of restoration work..........

Thank you and a happy new year, please continue to support us in 2012