The Fighter Collection

Category: corsair

The week after Legends

Hangar Talk

I can only liken the feeling in the week following Flying Legends to climbing the steepest and highest mountain; (months in the planning and weeks in the execution) only to throw yourself off at the top once you reach the summit, such is the anti-climax post FL. This years FL brought us some extra challenges that we took on the chin and combined with the tenacity of our principals, volunteers, engineers, pilots and with the assistance of our partners at IWM Duxford developed innovative ways of bringing people closer to the action whilst simultaneolusy moving them further away!! ( Irish logic I know) Much has been written about the revised CAA regulations and whether you agree with them or not, they are here to stay, at least within the medium term and finding ways to minimise there impact is key to delivering and safeguarding the Flying Legends brand. It is also unfair to point the finger of blame entirely at the door of the Civil Aviation Authority; it is important to recognise the support of a number of individuals within the authority, who working within the confines of regulation and due process, have helped us to complete the UK civil certification of Curtiss Hawk P-36C (G-CIXJ) that arrived with us last ‘Legends’ from prolific Curtiss Hawk builder, Matt Nightingale’s, California Aerofab Inc, California USA. It has taken a sustained and combined effort between multiple agencies, individuals and organisations to complete the certification process in time for Flying Legends 2016; at a time when vintage and historic aviation is being scrutinised at microscopic levels it was refreshing to receive pragmatic and practical levels of support and assistance from the General Aviation Unit and its Design and Airworthiness Surveyors. We are also indebted to our fellow aviation ‘geeks’ at ACRO Aeronautical Services for once again reviewing the multitude of design and modification queries we generated as we completed the aircraft survey and type design review ahead of the (E4) design report being submitted to the CAA.

Anyway, here we are a week after a successful FL 2016 and we are about to launch the Corsair and Bearcat to Farnborough for the weekend and are already stuck into the annual inspection on the P-40C and Spifire MkXIV. The landing gear hydraulic issue we ran into on the P-40F and the reason for it not flying at FL is almost resolved; new seals have been manufactured by SKF Economos for the landing gear control valve and we have tested the first batch this week. We now need to manufacture a new batch of spring retaining clips for the poppet valves before completing final landing gear functional checks. This month all seems to be related to seals as we are now progressing into the manufacture of new leather cup seals for the Gloster Gladiators Hobson carburettor accelerator pump; the pump has sprung an internal leak caused by the leather seals by-passing during operation allowing fuel to enter the upper linkage chamber. Over the coming weeks we shall be removing the rear fuselage fuel tank on the P-40C to carry out an inspection on the rudder control cable pulleys; removing the propeller from the P-36C to fine tune the static balance; fitting new wing fuel cells to the Spitfire XIV (assuming the contractor actually finishes them; 7 months and counting!), installing new seals in the Wildcat brake pedal foot motors (told you it was all about seals this month) and finally having a well earned break away from computers, mobile phones and aeroplanes…

July 16, 2016
The Fighter Collection in May 2016 -The Corsair

Our Corsair at the Duxford May Airshow this weekend, first in a series of slideshows of Fighter Collection aircraft at the show.

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The Corsair is planned to be displaying at Flying Legends 2016 – there is still time to book your tickets online HERE

May 30, 2016
Corsair, Harvard and Hawk action

Today was action packed with several Harvard flights, along with practice displays from Alan Wade in the Corsair and Brian Smith in the Hawk 75.

May 22, 2016
Flight of the Corsair

[x_text]Patrice caught some views on the way back from Avignon yesterday.
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September 29, 2015
Another Sunny Day in July

‘Hot off the press’ – CAA Surveyor has issued the full Permit to Fly for G-CIIO which now makes it officially the one and only certified P-40C in Europe…..

Grateful thanks to Mike and Neil (and all at GA Unit), not forgetting Dave and John at ACRO Aeronautical Services for making this possible.

Oh and we flew a few aircraft with the Corsair up a couple of times – Keith Skilling at the helm, the P36C made it’s first UK flight and the Mustang was also up. The Harvard was busy with crew currency flights in between.

July 7, 2015
News from the hangar

Our chief engineer has found a gap in his schedule to update everyone on where we are with aeroplanes.

“With the ‘Tea’ things washed up (giving away my northern roots here) it was time for a strong coffee and think about a hangar update……!

This weekend has seen us busy completing the shakedown flights and test flying of the Curtiss P-40C which has gone remarkably well with nothing but a couple of minor snags (or squarks for our US cousins) to deal with.

As I write this update our surveyor has emailed to say the (CAA) Design team are happy with the submitted flight test report and he is calling by tomorrow (Tuesday) to issue the full Permit to Fly.

We also got the opportunity between rain showers to complete the grounds runs on the Nimrod which has now been refitted with its long tail pipes as it was originally configured. These new pipes were hand-crafted for us by Chris Baglin at Merlin Engineers and are a beautiful piece of fabrication being hand rolled and welded from sheet stainless steel. We opted to fabricate from stainless steel as the original pipes were made from mild steel and rotted out all too quickly as Nick (Grey) will attest having nearly set fire to the aeroplane when one of the pipes had corroded out under its mounting clamp. (video in last diary report)

P-51 Miss Velma has completed her annual inspection and was flown on check flight last week to verify some adjustments we have made to the engine valve timing and maximum take-off boost.

Corsair FG-1D is the last fleet aeroplane to undergo its annual inspection and with that now complete will undergo a short check flight this week at the hands of a certain travelling kiwi warbird pilot, Keith Skilling, to ensure all systems are operational and function as required.

Flying Legends is just around the corner (had anyone noticed) and this week will see more aerial activity as TFC and Guest pilots alike get familiar with their chosen mounts; Watch out for the first flight in the UK of the Curtiss P-36. We are indebted to our group of volunteers who are hard at work helping prepare the aeroplanes for the weekend, there’s still a handful of aeroplanes to ‘spruce up’ before the weekend; the days are likely to be long, but spirits are high and we look forward to welcoming friends new and old to Flying Legends 2015.

July 6, 2015
View from the Office

Martyn decided he wanted to go to Holland at the end of May. As luck would have it our Mustang and Corsair were going that way.

June 9, 2015
Hangar update for end of May

This would usually be part of the Online Fighter Log update available to Friends of TFC- it answers a lot of “which aircraft was where and when this week end” type questions so here you go:

A busy weekend in May…. The Hawk75 and Gladiator made our first European outing of the 2015 season with Stephen and Patrice at the controls for the trip to La Ferte Alais. The transit necessitated a brief stop-over at Abbeville for fuel before flying on to LFA were TFC engineers Roy and Paul were waiting for their arrival having departed Duxford at 5am Thursday morning via Folkestone. With some quite complicated logistics Nick who was due to fly the Gladiator in the show made the transit to LFA from Geneva on Thursday evening. Operating away from base is always a challenge particularly when your tools and spares provision needs to fit into a modern family saloon!

The VE Anniversary show at Duxford was combined with the departure of three TFC aircraft Spitfire V, P-51D, Corsair) to the Oostwold Airshow , Groningen, Holland. EP120 was able to make the dash across the channel on Friday (beating the weather) at the hands of Alan Wade as it was not required for the Duxford show; regrettably the MkXIV wasn’t able to depart for the show due to an as yet undiagnosed over-fuelling issue with the carburettor. With the weather closing in on us the P-51D and Corsair weren’t able to make their planned slot to leave Duxford on the afternoon of the Sunday show and finally left at 08:20 local time Monday morning (another lay-in missed !).

All aircraft made the recovery back to Duxford on Monday, with the Hawk75 and Gladiator first to arrive in the late afternoon and our Dutch contingent finally returning 18:45 local time. All in all a very successful weekend both here at Duxford and across our European commitments. Many thanks to those of you who visited us in the Friends area and had a close up look at the Bearcat.

And finally…. ‘A little knowledge is dangerous’…..on occasion we have to respond to inaccurate information placed on public forums and disseminated as factual. We were recently made aware of a thread running on one such forum suggesting the Sea Fury FB11 needs a new centre section! You might imagine that as Chief Engineer these are things I would normally know a little about, particularly if one were actually needed (which it isn’t).

To be absolutely clear; the Sea Fury hasn’t fallen off jacks; it isn’t on jacks simply because it doesn’t need to be on jacks. However, there is a small area of damage to the lower spar boom port side were a bolt was incorrectly orientated in the landing gear retraction mechanism and which on retraction test (some years ago) caught the underside of the boom flange. The damage is repairable and a scheme has already been identified in accordance with the aircraft repair manual and our resident design organisation, therefore no one need worry that the aircraft is not being currently progressed for the absence of a replacement centre section. Our priorities are set by the Principals and Chief Engineer dependent upon our developing workloads, Inspection Programs and ultimate goals; suffice to say we have not forgotten about G-BUCM and its time will come….shortly…..

May 27, 2015
Happy Birthday G-FGID!

Well 70 years ago this week our Corsair rolled off the production line in Goodyear Aircraft Corporation’s factory in Akron, and was accepted by the US Navy shortly after. We will be putting up and old article detailing the scheme she currently wears for Friends. Here she is basking in the sun earlier today:

Here is a photo of it in a previous scheme:

And with some cake this morning:

This months desktop celebrates the corsair with a striking image of it taxiing back in from Shoreham last year, be sure to download it!

You can read more about the history of our Corsair on it’s profile page: http://fighter-collection.com/cft/goodyear-corsair-fg-1d-g-fgid/

April 12, 2015
April Desktop

Bet you thought we had forgotten! No, but this time we feature our Goodyear Corsair as it returns to Duxford from the airshow at Shoreham last year late in the evening, with PK at the controls.

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April 4, 2015