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Well, as related elsewhere I just arrived home with this lovely disassembled Rose Parrakeet, now to reassemble it and fix what needs fixing without accidentally diving into a full restoration:
The airplane's in pretty good shape. The main things I plan to do is to replace all the wing attach bolts and all the wire ends, many of the latter having surface rust... no doubt still airworthy, but "while it's apart..." There's also some surface rust bleeding through the paint on some of the steel parts, the N-struts in particular needing attention, the underlying metal seems solid.
The reassembly should be interesting. The landing wires and roll wires attach to the top wing, not to the cabane struts, so the top wing has to go on before the bottom is self supporting, not sure how visible it is in this image:
To [hopefully] simplify rerigging, only the flying wires (3 each side) were loosened. All wires were marked with tape exactly 2" from the terminal, as were the adjustable ends of the N-struts, so the new hardware can be installed to the exact same dimension. My thought is to build a wood support frame for the outer ends of the upper wings. Install the upper wing(s) with a bit of extra dihedral to avoid having to loosen the roll wires. Then the N-strut and the bottom wing. Install the landing wires (which were never loosened) and remove the upper wing support letting the wings down against the landing wires, then install and tension the flying wires to the same 2" dimension, verifying the tension is OK. In theory that should put everything back in the same rig, no?
But what is the proper tension? All the wires are 3/16, rather lighter than what you'd see on other biplanes (but the 'keet is lighter than most other biplanes).
Then, the ends, plated AN665 terminals on stainless wires... MoS2 antiseize or not?
As for the painting, the small welded parts like the wire end attachments I'll probably sandblast and prime and paint from scratch. The struts, I'm hoping I can just sand the affected areas and reprime and paint instead of redoing the whole thing. They were painted with Dulux enamel (as was the whole plane, one thing I'm not happy about, but it's still in good shape).
I'll probably look into some seat or pedal mods, the builder was taller than me, and a release like a glider towhook for hand propping. I'd like to add a starter down the road, it's a C-85-12 so it has provision for a starter... a friend over on the homebuiltairplanes forum built a nifty starter using the original continental front end with the cable actuation, and replaced the original heavy motor with a 1/2" DeWalt cordless drill, just swap out the battery for a charged one. (Anybody got a dead Continental starter?)
The airplane's in pretty good shape. The main things I plan to do is to replace all the wing attach bolts and all the wire ends, many of the latter having surface rust... no doubt still airworthy, but "while it's apart..." There's also some surface rust bleeding through the paint on some of the steel parts, the N-struts in particular needing attention, the underlying metal seems solid.
The reassembly should be interesting. The landing wires and roll wires attach to the top wing, not to the cabane struts, so the top wing has to go on before the bottom is self supporting, not sure how visible it is in this image:
To [hopefully] simplify rerigging, only the flying wires (3 each side) were loosened. All wires were marked with tape exactly 2" from the terminal, as were the adjustable ends of the N-struts, so the new hardware can be installed to the exact same dimension. My thought is to build a wood support frame for the outer ends of the upper wings. Install the upper wing(s) with a bit of extra dihedral to avoid having to loosen the roll wires. Then the N-strut and the bottom wing. Install the landing wires (which were never loosened) and remove the upper wing support letting the wings down against the landing wires, then install and tension the flying wires to the same 2" dimension, verifying the tension is OK. In theory that should put everything back in the same rig, no?
But what is the proper tension? All the wires are 3/16, rather lighter than what you'd see on other biplanes (but the 'keet is lighter than most other biplanes).
Then, the ends, plated AN665 terminals on stainless wires... MoS2 antiseize or not?
As for the painting, the small welded parts like the wire end attachments I'll probably sandblast and prime and paint from scratch. The struts, I'm hoping I can just sand the affected areas and reprime and paint instead of redoing the whole thing. They were painted with Dulux enamel (as was the whole plane, one thing I'm not happy about, but it's still in good shape).
I'll probably look into some seat or pedal mods, the builder was taller than me, and a release like a glider towhook for hand propping. I'd like to add a starter down the road, it's a C-85-12 so it has provision for a starter... a friend over on the homebuiltairplanes forum built a nifty starter using the original continental front end with the cable actuation, and replaced the original heavy motor with a 1/2" DeWalt cordless drill, just swap out the battery for a charged one. (Anybody got a dead Continental starter?)
