Laurie wanted to do some spray painting tody, the blue automotive paint he had got the supplier to carefully match with our sample. However, when he opened the tin it was purple! No matter how long it was stirred, it stayed resolutely purple. Never mind, there are always plenty of other tasks to be done.…

We have arrived at the happy stage where bits are being put back onto the fuselage as opposed to taken off. Laurie made a start with replacing the tail wheel brackets. When checking the bearings on the tailwheel, we decided to replace them as the existing ones feel a bit lumpy (at least we think…

Laurie couldn’t do the blue paint details as planned due to rainy, humid weather. Doesn’t look much better for the coming week either. We disassembled the canopies and generated quite a bit of work for ourselves. In particular, the guide rollers for the rear canopy frame are in a sorry state, The bearings on a…

Liz and I have been away on a short holiday, up to Armidale via Thunderbolt Way, across to Dorrigo, Bellingen and Urunga via Waterfall Way, then back home via Port Macquarie, all very pleasant. Yesterday Ed and I finished the drum brake installation on our club’s PW 6, turned out well and was signed off…

About time I posted again, have been too busy with club PW-6, changing the (useless) disc brake wheel back to a Tost drum brake per original certification. Numerous attempts to obtain original equipment like brake handles either from local sources or from Jezow in Poland proved unsuccessful, although we did get an offer from Jezow…

Thought I just do a little painting jobthis afternoon, coating the canopy rails and aluminium cockpit surrounds. As always, by the time I sanded the surface rust and masked the surrounds, a couple of hours had whizzed by – I don’t think Laurie took much longer to spray the entire fuselage! So after two coats…

Finally the weather gods smiled on us and dropped the humidity below 70% so we could spray the top coat on. I’m using the royal plural here since Laurie did all the spraying, all I could contribute was mixing the 2 pack polyurethane and wiping down the plane with acetone. And a great job he…

Today we finished covering the ailerons with sky blue Oratex. It’s fair to say that this job was quite nerve-racking due to the constant attention required for all the various individual operations and their sequencing. A moments inattention can have potentially disastrous consequences. Because of the high cost of the Oratex fabric, it is not…

It’s March already! We’re supposed to be flying KYU by now. Wouldn’t have anything to do with adding more fabric covering jobs to the To Do list, would it? Speaking of fabric covering, the tailfeathers are done, put the finishing touches on today (well, Laurie might find a few more wrinkles to iron out. Unfortunately…

The best laid plans of mice and men…….. Well, the humidity did drop below 70%, but only because the temperature had soared to 28 deg. by 10 am when we were ready to commence spraying. Checking the forecast, it was heading for 34 today which proved to be accurate. As such there was total agreement…