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News from February 2013

Posted on: February 25th, 2013 by nimbus

Yesterday was a rather special day.On 24th Feb 1963 a fresh faced Peter Turner made his first solo flight, not only was this achieved in a Kirby Cadet MKIII it just so happened that it was XA310. So, 50 years on Pete repeated the flight and although, as in 1963, it was a bitterly cold day yesterday he didn’t seem that bothered in doing the three soloes he would have done at the time!

Posted on: February 6th, 2013 by nimbus

After being somewhat stalled, progress on the Sedbergh is once again gathering pace. Many hands definitely make light work and the fuselage exterior is now sanded with the rear section coated in thinned adhesive ready to take the first of the fabric.

 

Geoff, Vicky and I took it in turns to be buried in the cockpit stripping paint, we tried sanding initially but it took the best part of a day to remove a couple of paint layers from one cockpit wall and we need to get back to bare wood. We then progressed on to an Al Stacey supplied paint stripper which is properly nasty stuff but has speeded up the process to about 6″ square cleared every 30 mins !

Unfortunately progress to the front fuselage was hampered as we discovered damage to the wheel box, nose and internal cockpit wall ( caused by squashing the QRF between the pilot and the cockpit). All this damage is being repaired and we are going to have the cockpit sides covered with a layer of glass fibre to hopefully prevent future damage.

I did take a quick snap of one of the wings ( minus aileron ) as it came out of the spray booth to show some idea of things to come !

 

 

 

 

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