Cold but on the frontline !
November and December was cold but busy.
Laurent started to paint the parts of the front undercarriage he already lovely restored. To preserve and protect the parts he restored, Laurent put not less that 3 layers of primer and 3 layers of paint. Fortunately all the paint reference are included in the maintenance manuals we have. Although it was time consuming to find exactly the same colour, he succeed in doing it. He also restored the identification plates applied on the different parts. As mentioned last month, he build a support to test retraction of the undercarriage, see a demonstration in video.
Vincent painted the wings of the Flying flea, he is working on. The compressor is not yet in place but using a mobile unit, he can achieve good results (although he hate the yellow colour).
On the B-25 front fuselage, both Yves started to work in the bombardier compartment. Any remains of glass mastic used to fix the Plexiglas are removed and we also repaired small scratches. We discovered very few corrosion zones. Most of the damaged parts can be easily repaired by manufacturing new ones. Once the cleanup will be done, Thierry will do a checkup for corrosion and we will share our findings to be sure nothing is forgotten. He already repaired a small bump. We also searched to understand how the floor was fixed. We discovered two different models were used but the good news is these parts can be made from scratch and we do not need to buy expensive specific parts.
Eric is finishing to remove carefully to the damaged parts on the central section. It took him a lot of time avoiding to further damage these parts. Some nuts were very resistant and needed hours to be removed.
We had the visit of the third Yves and the RSAB organized a meeting in Gembloux. More than 30 visitors had the occasion to share with us their experiences and their broad knowledge.
Robert fabricated a box to store the blades of the focke achgelis of Didier.
We received from Marc Vanderelst a splendid picture of the B-25 Mitchell of the 180 squadron. The father of Marc flow with this unit.
Thierry is working on a workshop security checklist.
Winter is almost there, so we plan to buy sweat-shirt and overall to protect ourself against the rigors of the Belgian weather. If you are interested.
They will be on sale with BAPA from January at 37 Euro for BAPA members and 50 Euro for non members. If you are interested please contact us
The back is decorated with the pinup once painted on our B-25. If you are interested please contact us.
The safety poster is updated at the workshop as a reminder of good practices and put a copy of these posters at http://www.bapa.be/safety
On the archiving from, we are currently putting in service a backup of digital documents already scanned.
Thanks again to all those we support us. Our finance status is healthy for the end of this year but we need to increase our capabilities in 2014.
Many happy landings
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