No holidays when it comes to the F-84

[Clifford Bossie]

As the F-84F project is good therapy I chose to continue working through the holidays. One goal was to get the serial on both sides of the fin. After three attempts I finally got the right side to look like the left!



And painting the inside of the speedbrakes:



One of many things that bothered me was the plates that someone found necessary to rivet over several openings. The usual ecuse is "That was to keep out water." Yeah right, it traps dirt and moisture and leads to corrosion. So, I finally gound off the rivets and removed the plates. (there were some original stencilling which I photographed.)





And then painted. (Should have taken those plates off to begin with!) Opening up those vents really adds to the appearance.



We hope to place her back on display by next month. There will still be a need for work for some time though.

Happy New Year!

[The Inspector]

Usually those types of covers are installed to keep 'souvenier hunters' and birds from gaining access to the cubbyholes in an airframe. The MoF has a very pretty T-28A parked outside @ the Restoration Facility @ KPAE all shiny bare metal and yellow and red paint, with a yellow painted FRAISER-NASH R-1300, and about 26000 English Starlings living and crapping inside the wings and fuselage while raising generations of squawking, crapping chicks. Imagine how much worse your airplane could have been inside without those blank off plates. I'd consider installing some 1/4 inch 'critter mesh' coverings for the openings, even in a hanger birds and rodents are a potential issue, I'd hate to see all your effort go for naught.

[Clifford Bossie]

Usually those types of covers are installed to keep 'souvenier hunters' and birds from gaining access to the cubbyholes in an airframe. The MoF has a very pretty T-28A parked outside @ the Restoration Facility @ KPAE all shiny bare metal and yellow and red paint, with a yellow painted FRAISER-NASH R-1300, and about 26000 English Starlings living and crapping inside the wings and fuselage while raising generations of squawking, crapping chicks. Imagine how much worse your airplane could have been inside without those blank off plates. I'd consider installing some 1/4 inch 'critter mesh' coverings for the openings, even in a hanger birds and rodents are a potential issue, I'd hate to see all your effort go for naught.

I am considering "critter mesh" when done, although it looks like we might be able to put the plane inside when done. When cleaning up the airframe we cleaned out bir nests from the speed brakes and mouse nests from the gun bays.