The winter project

[billcreller]

  So with winter keeping me from the "summer project" here is one of the things I'm doing this winter.

 It's a 1947 Luscombe 2-seat airplane, model 8E, which I converted from a model 8A.  It's been a back-burner project for years, and only gets worked on if I'm not working on other airplanes.  I built the fuselage from the ground up, with all new aluminum skins except one.
  I currently working on a fiberglass after-market engine cowling.  I need that because the original engine was a 65 HP Continental engine (A65-8 )which I didn't use,  and I now have a 115 HP Lycoming 0235C1 in it, which has a supplemental type certificate to do this mod.




The green primer on the tail parts is zinc chromate.

here is the tip of the tail cone of the fuselage.  I did some reinforcing mods back there, the parts with the grey primer...

[billcreller]

 Here is the rear of the engine case, without the cylinders bolted on. This is where the accessories get mounted, like two Bendix magnetos, a vacuum pump for gyro instruments etc...



here is the front side of the instrument panel, with wiring etc....

[billcreller]

And here is the panel with the instruments installed....

[billcreller]

 The area behind the engine..the right magneto is visible..

[Jack_Hester]

The green primer on the tail parts is zinc chromate.

Bill -

That is a mighty fine project.  I'm really impressed with the great work. 

I have used zinc chromate for quite a few years, but on ferrous metals.  I don't think that I've ever used it on aluminum.  Is there any special prep work for doing so, as I plan to spray it on my aluminum chassis', at some point?  Being one of the toughest primers, in my experience.

Jack

[billcreller]

 For aluminum there is stuff called Aluma=prep, which is basically an acid, to etch aluminum.  Also there is primer at auto stores now that works, it's self-etching primer.  Good for small jobs. I use that on a lot of projects.
 Other things in use are Alodine, which is available in clear or a brass color.  That's used on many aircraft aluminum parts.

Bill

[billcreller]

Here is the fuselage , sitting on the landing gear legs


This pic is from some years back, when I started assembling the sections.

Here is the cabin section...



The big hole in the fire wall is for a piece called the "dish pan" , which is a tub affair which allows more room for the accessories, like magnetos, vacuum pump, etc...

[Ritchie200]

Bill,

You know what always amazes me, is how flimsy the motor mounts appear on ALL planes!!!  I'm sure the Extras and Pitts are a little beefier!

Beautiful work!

Jim

[billcreller]

The original Luscombe mount, for the small Continental engines was attached to the fuselage in only three places. It used the engine itself for rigidity.  The Lycoming conversion uses those three and adds two more, so there's five attach points now.
  The aerobatic airplanes use a lot of bracing on their mounts, as well as heavier wall tubing.  I do annual inspections on a few Pitts Specials, plus some other aerobatic types occasionally, like a DeHavilland Chipmunk etc..

  On the Luscombe engine cowling, I had to make a bump for clearance on the alternator, and another to cover the hole in the front where the nose of the starter sticks through.   Just about have those finished, and then it's on to fitting the cooling baffles on the engine, to match the inside shape of the cowl.

  It's all fun !

[billcreller]

  Here is the tail cone without the tail surfaces.  I re-skinned the last section because I couldn't get the angle of incidence correct the way it was positioned.  No big deal, just more rivets to drive ..
   The rope is necessary to hold the tail down, once the engine is installed. Wings, tail, interior etc are what brings the balance to where it belongs when it's all together.

[billcreller]

I have the cowl almost done.  It was more work making the cooling baffles on the engine than it was while doing the cowl.

[billcreller]

So, even the so-called winter project is getting some work on it.
Our shop hangar is really insulated good, and stays cool when it's hot outside.  I added some cowl chafe seals, which keeps the cowl doors from wearing into the main cowl etc from vibration.

[Ritchie200]

Hey Bill,

Went to an airshow a while back  that featured the Blue Angels, Mike Goulian, Skip Stewart, and Patty Wagstaff.  Goulian is amazing.  He was doing things in a plane I've never seen before, like multiple flips on the axis of the wing.  It was the new Extra and to do those maneuvers, you would think the plane would be unflyable without a computer.   Patty was perfect - and she is what...60 or 62 now? (I've always thought she was very pretty, but wow, she looks great these days!)  But Stewart was unreal.  There is a golf course next to the airfield with 8-10ft hills separating the fairways.  Stewart was BEHIND these hills.  I mean he disappeared behind some of these hills!!!!  Ill bet he had zoysia on his gear!  He was absolutely incredible.  Then Patty and Stewart did a program together - amazing.

There were the usual array of static military craft (50+).  A highlight for me was that Lancair had a display there with the pressurized 750 shp turboprop.  Wow.  Wow.  Wow. Wow!  This thing is just amazing.  It looks VERY slippery and the avionics are amazing - of course this one was all dressed up! Cruises at 325 knots at 24,000 ft and climbs at 7000 fpm (solo), range of 1216 nmi.  And most amazing, it stalls at 64 knots!!!!  How do they do that!  A Lancair and a BD5.  If I could build those two before I die, I would be complete.  Of course I would probably die in the BD5 so I better build the Lancair first!

Keep posting pics!

Jim

[PRR]

I took a ride in a B-17 this weekend. 

Quite a nice ride when nobody is shooting at you.

Didn't have time to repair all the vacuum-tube radio gear. (It's mostly missing; the real radios fit in a 6"x6"x6" space high in the cockpit.)

[Ritchie200]

Was it Aluminum Overcast?  She was at the show too giving rides.  There were also Huey and Cobra rides.

I have to tell you my helicopter story...  Years ago we went to Kauai on vacation and did the helicopter ride along the Na Pali coast and around the island.  It was a Bell 500 Easter egg and we were the only ones on it.  The pilot was an ex-Army pilot that was General Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf's personal heli pilot in the first Gulf War.  After we took off and he went through all the emergency procedures, he asked if anyone had any questions.  Me, being me, said, "Hows your autorotation skills?"  He turned and looked at me and total deadpan said, "You wanna see?"  "No!"  "Aww come on let me show you!"  "No!"  "We can do it over the ocean so if I don't catch it in time, it will be a softer landing?" "No!"  After begging for a while, he finally started cracking up.  But every bump after that, he would yell into the headset intercom, "I have to autorotate to save her - HANG ON!!!!"  He was really a cool guy and he even took us to a voluntary restricted fly zone where they were filming "some dinosaur movie" (the first Jurassic Park).  This was exactly 3 days before Hurricane Iniki destroyed that island.

Jim

[PRR]

Sentimental Journey. Same story (born too late to fight, crop-dust and fire-bomb {no cattle-car!}, then rescued and rebuilt). Also one Studebaker engine (Study second-sourced for Wright).

B-17s have not killed anybody since the early 1970s. (Three crashes, six souls, in fire-bombing.) Couple of in-flight fires where everybody got out.

[Ritchie200]

That must have been really cool!  How noisy was it?  There is no finish on the interior, just open framing, correct?  I know they have a great safety record, but the oil catch pans under the engines never inspired much confidence for me!  A guy I used to fly with always talked about the old Ford Tri-motors with the raised seam corrugated covering, "damn flying metal barn!".  He said his ears rang for days after flying in one of those "luxury" planes! 


It still amazes me that we went from the Wright brothers to the moon in 65 years.  Not many major breakthroughs since then - that we know of...


Jim

[sluckey]

It still amazes me that we went from the Wright brothers to the moon in 65 years.

According to some "Ancient Alien" theorists, we were ripe for the next step. 

[PRR]

The G model (most survivors) has turbochargers. If connected (not needed for tourist missions), they really cut the racket. A HellCat is much louder. If they put padding and inner skin in the cabin, it would be like a DC-3 or a Constellation. Both were fine rides. As expected, in flight there are a lot os small-boat motions, but slower than in a Cessna (more mass) and smaller than a glider (more mass per area).

The TriMotor was the bad old days. Nose engines were just awful. But you need a certain size of plane to turn a profit. And the one-engine-out rule means you need a lot of reserve power. In Trimotor days they didn't have engines big enough to take-off with just two (because if one failed, the other was not enough). The key was the Wright Cyclone with over 600HP. The T-32, 247, or DC3 could lose an engine and still fly almost anywhere. No more nose-shake, no oil streaming back from the nose through the cabin.

[billcreller]

The gooney bird (DC3-C47) had both Pratts ( R1830 ) and Wrights (R1820 )on them.  Easy to tell which ones they had,  the ones with Wrights had bigger puddles of oil under them. 

The most noise I experienced was in a Grumman Albatross.  (And here I thought a Beech 18 was noisy)
 

[Ritchie200]

What about a Cub.... 

Jim

[billcreller]

A noisy Cub is tame compared to old airplanes with round engines !

[PRR]

> tame compared to old airplanes with round engines !

Traffic here is leerjets, Cessnas for the Scenic Tour, and a Waco Jacobs biplane ride.

We always know when the Jacobs is going over.

[PRR]

Hah! While casting around for a picture of the Jacobs, I found this:

Incredible 8 Cylinder Jacobs Aircraft Engine Coffee Table
"It took our metal guys over a year to complete the polishing work"

A year of polishing but they couldn't count the cylinders right?

(If you never thought about it.... a 4-stroke radial always has an odd number of cylinders per bank. There exist 8-banger radials but they are 2-stroke Diesels with external scavenge blower.)

[billcreller]

Yeah, I guess they were automotive minded when counting cylinders 
 
I rebuilt & sold two Jacobs engines. Both were R755-9s, 245 HP.
Beautiful engines internally, with polished aluminum connecting rods, roller rocker arms, and roller cam followers, like most radials, etc.

A friend has a 1935 Waco cabin biplane, with a R755-A2, which is the 275 HP version.

There were some diesel powered airplanes in WW-2 Germany.  There was the JU-89 bomber, which had diesels, and was doing high altitude bomb runs over London, at close to 50,000 feet.  They were using nitros-oxcide.  They stopped it when a couple high altitude photo-recon Spitfires got up there & shot a few holes in them.

[PRR]

> some diesel powered airplanes in WW-2 Germany.

If you want to stay up more than about 3 hours, the weight of the fuel exceeds the weight of the engine. Then you want to think if another engine, even of more weight, will save enough fuel to reduce total fuel+engine weight.

I think many or most air-ships ran Diesels. I'm sure of the Beardsmore Diesels in the English airship program. (They get a lot of space in engine books because they look good, but were troubled.)

Then there is the Packard Diesel.

As you know most Diesels are like spark-engines with separate intake and exhaust valves and manifolds. Spark engines usually inhale fuel/air mix which must be kept away from exhaust. One carburetor for several cylinders. Air-filter. And on the other end, a muffler.

The Packard had one valve per cylinder. Intake and exhaust in the same place. No manifold. Why not? The Diesel intakes plain air, which it can get anywhere. Exhaust is violent and throws the smoke out far enough the next intake is not contaminated. No air-filter, no muffler.... on the ground we need air-filters but not when we leave the ground. Mufflers are often dispensed with in aircraft.

It ran well but IIRC was never designed into anything.

The killer flaw seems to be that high-altitude was becoming popular (or essential) and there's no good way to blow an engine of this construction. (Also the guy who championed it was killed.)

The Packard Diesel held the nonstop no-refueling endurance record (84.5 hours) for 55 years. Was beaten by Rutan's Voyager's 216 hours. Note that Voyager was super-special while the Packard was in a 5-passenger Bellanca CH-300.

[billcreller]

The Packard diesel was at the Air Force Museum near Dayton when I was there a few times in the 90s. 
I remember the curly tubing on the front of it.  Interesting design for sure.  Since I know zero about diesels, I don't really understand  much about them.

[billcreller]

Since the weather is getting cooler ( read cold ) I will likely get back on the winter project a bit,  between keeping all the cars & trucks running. I have a few Annual inspections on airplanes to do yet this fall also.....

I'm gonna start on the interior of the Luscombe project. I re-upholstered the seats a few months ago.  The seats are Cessna 150 types, which replaced the original bench type.  I got a field approval from the FAA for the seat mod, a few years ago.

 Field approval are not being allowed much these days.  Too many young people in the FAA maybe, who run scared, or don't know much...

[billcreller]

The winter project will  be on the to-do list pretty soon.  Just got back from Hawaii yesterday ( Xmas eve ) after the son's graduation ceremony at the U of Hawaii.  Riding in airliners really sucks by the way....
Honolulu and Waikiki need to be renamed "bumper to bumper".  Traffic there is something else.....

One thing is nice though...beautiful girls everywhere !  ( I'm old, but not dead yet    )

I need to mount the tail surfaces to get the cables adjusted, so it all goes together easier.   Then it's the head liner, door panels etc, and finally the windshield.  The brakes are mechanical, operated by cables, on heel-brake pedals, and I have to make new cables for those yet.  Really good or touchy brakes are bad on a Luscombe.  Most Luscombes have been up on the nose or over on their back, and it's not hard to spot some skin wrinkles when ya know where to look !
It's all fun I tell ya !!

[Ritchie200]

I believe I remember making a request for Hawaiian girl pictures?    Congrats on your son!  That is fantastic.  Yeah, EARLY morning is the only way to travel around Honolulu.  Did you get on the Missouri and Arizona Memorial?


Keep posting pics of the Luscombe!


Jim


"I'm from the FAA and I'm here to help" - another government oxymoron'ish statement! (heavy on the "moron")

[jojokeo]

Wow, this is really cool. I have one question that comes to mind, Does Bill use a lamp limiter during first start up?    sorry, I couldn't help it.

This reminds me of an old g/friend's dad that use to fly cargo for the Flying Tigers. He and a neighbor built and worked on planes in their garages. He was also very into air racing. I think Red Bull has a racing series still? I wanted to be a pilot and then an aeronautical engineer when I was younger - but it was only a dream. It was very difficult to get in to, competition fierce, I'd have to leave home and needed a lot of money, I didn't want to go into the Airforce, etc. So then as if I needed another hobby I got really into making & flying RC gliders & power planes instead... Waa wah...

Bill I appreciate the knowledge, time, dedication, and effort it takes to do what you're doing! 

[billcreller]

I've rebuilt quite a few wrecks over the years. Used to be able to pick up a repairable wreck for a decent price, but in later years the hobby guys got into the act and paid big bucks for wrecks.  Most found out that their time on a rebuild was worth about 25 cents an hour !

[billcreller]

The winter project has been neglected this past winter.  Been fixing family cars etc, and since it's finally getting above freezing a bit here, I have other things cooking.
 One other item is getting my boat ready to move.  Today I replaced one tire and aired up the others, & lubed the wheel bearings, on the trailer.  I need to sell this boat, because I'm gettin' too old to keep it up.!!  It's a 26 ft wood boat, which is a lot of work to keep in shape.  I have it stored in a hangar at the local airport.   It's time for another family to enjoy it, like we did, when the kids were young.

It's a 1963 Owens Contessa, that I modified with a mahogany hard-top. Powered by a 327 Chevy Flagship marine conversion.

[supro66]

I had a HOLE IN THE WATER
1974  36 foot Trojan tri cab every week end had to do some work on it
If I was using nuts and bolts on deck I always throw one in the water in the beginning
The God Poseidon required the sacrifice because you will lose one 

[billcreller]

     I know that feeling !  Mine was not too bad for maintenance mechanically, but wood & varnish have to be kept up.

[jojokeo]

I had a HOLE IN THE WATER

BOAT = break out another thousand
Here was my 30' little cruiser/racer I'd sail off the Southern Calif coast. Here she is rounding Catalina Island then moored up in Avalon.

[supro66]

You got one engine
I had Two- 400 Cu Chrysler engines
1/2 a mile per Gal 


I had a friend out for a ride he had a good idea
once you get up to speed shut down one engine
and save gas


Landluber

[jojokeo]

You got one engine
I had Two- 400 Cu Chrysler engines
1/2 a mile per Gal 

Yep, I've known more power boaters than sailors in my lifetime on the water. And it's always better them than me and that was the beauty of it. For the most part my sails were my engine (aside from the small Volvo Penta diesel). All I could do was hull speed anyway being a displacement hull. In the ocean most of the time that's all that's needed & wanted when any swell or and/or the wind is happening (which is majority of the time). As you know, for most it's about "when are we getting there?" For others it's "about the journey". I think the same general philosophy could be said describing guitar playing styles and techniques.

[billcreller]

Yes, it's "about the journey"  My boat is not very fast,  it's a "cruiser" 

Did I mention that I love mahogany ?  I replaced everything in this pic except the cabin door.
Hard top & windshield frame is from a 36 ft wood Trojan, with much new wood...


 

[Ritchie200]

Wow, Bill that is gorgeous! If I lived closer, I might be interested!


Jim

[jojokeo]

Beautiful, mine was all teak. That stuff is so hard and lasting I'm surprised nobody's ever used it in guitar making even if it's just a bridge piece or something?

[sluckey]

Teak wood contains silica which makes it hard on saw blades and planer knives. It also has a lot of oil which presents problems for gluing.

[supro66]

Last year I did some scale model boat building
All the wood 99.98% came from my trees ASH,MAPLE
Made in USA 

[jojokeo]

Those are great, I have a few things like that around the house since we have the nautical theme going. Do you sell these or just make them for you house/shop?

[supro66]

I tried at a flee market but it was raining
I have to go down to Maryland at a boat show


look at this site for their prices


http://www.bluejacketinc.com/

[billcreller]

Cool models     I have never dealt with Teak.  I hear it's fun to keep varnish on it !  Boat supply catalogs have pages of stuff for Teak, which kinda tells me something !

It needs the oil & filter changed yet too...

As soon as the weather gets a bit warmer, I'm going to haul it outside and run it up with a garden hose for cooling, and put some avgas in it.

[supro66]

My last boat project
Got this old 1964 - 18 foot Starcraft the insides were in bad shape got some green leatherette
Spent some time cleaning it up
never got it in the water to old and knees and back hurt can't launch it with the wife
I got to sell it this year
The extra green leatherette I made Guitar amps with Fender 5e3 and Supro 6420

[billcreller]

The amp looks cool in that color ! 
Selling the boat is what I need to do also..
I bought some boat gas today, to get the engine running for a minute or two.  It stars quick with some starter fluid, for a few seconds, so I know it runs.  Vacuumed all the bilges etc, & check everything out.  Changed oil & filter & cleaned the plugs...Now to leave it alone until the end of may, & get back to work on the El Camino.  I never run out of projects it seems...

[billcreller]

Putting my boat in the water isn't a good idea right now.  Looks like there is not much boating activity ( read almost none ), and selling a boat here right now isn't gonna happen.
  The marina where I usually keep it has only three boats in the slips, out of over 35 slips...
Some of the family think I should get it in the water.   Lets see...insurance is about 200 bucks, need two batteries, about 200 bucks,  need a survey before insurance, the guy might do it for 180 bucks, license 130 bucks...  looks like a grand would do it, with gas in the tank  !!

And I've been trying to get an amp working since January.  It's one just like 6 others I've built.  Maybe it's too simple to figure out..

[supro66]

Still working on the boat I wanted to sell this year I never had it in the water bad knees and back the wife and I can not launch the boat
now the motor starts and then will not start no spark. the next day it will start


Now I know why I sold my 1975 36 foot Trojan
1/2 MILES PER GAL
2- 400 cu in Chryslers
 
B  O  A  T--Brake Out Another Thousand


I am back into HAM RADIO again

say this again and again


BOATS ARE NOT FUN