Warbird Information Exchange

Ray, Miguel, Lou and JR are discussing the repair to one of the top fuselage skins that has been on hold for some time. Ray just about has the cockpit window frame ready to install so this is a good time to take care of it since it is just a few feet behind the cockpit. There are some corrosion issues just as there was in the window frame. As old as the airplane is, corrosion has not been as prevalent as might be expected. It must have been all that clean living up in Montana for all those years. Oh, would like to give a shout out to Bill Bolton who was a mech at Lynch Air Tankers back in the day and got to work on K. It was good hearing from you, Bill. He now works for Boeing on the 787 program. He had the privilege of getting a heck of a ride in K with Denny Lynch after getting her back airworthy. We look forward to the day we fly again. Please notice that Ichabod Crane is now in place and we are just waiting on a spreader bar for the sling to pull the left engine. A big thanks goes out to Arnold and David A for getting Ichabod running again. The other JR

K got her tail cone installed today. We have two new guys working with us now. This is Jim S., who works at Southwest Airlines, making the final adjustments to the cone. Clay will make us another clear plastic cover for it when we are just about ready to fly. We don't want to run the risk of cracking it at this point. Anyway, welcome Jim to the Team. He worked with JR way back in the day on 727's and DC-8's and attended our A-26 ground school a few weeks ago. Welcome to the team! The other JR

Another AF vet, Tim R, joined us today. He worked on F-111's first and then F-16's avionics for 24 years. He now works over at LM with the F-35 program. On his first day, he got to chase some fuel leaks along with Arnold. They removed the fuel selector valves where some of the leaks appear to be coming from. JR cleaned them good so we can open those up next Saturday and see about the O rings or other seals. Will have to replace one of the hoses so far. As JR said, it is far better to discover the leaks now instead of after the tanks are filled. Each main nacelle tank holds 300 gallons. The wing aux tank holds 100 gallons, but of course, if you looked closely at the new gauges, you would know that already! Glad to have Tim on board. The other JR

What does this have to do with A-26's? Not much! It is just a way cool picture. It was taken by Jim T, one of our guys who is on vacation down in the Florida Keys with a bunch of old AF buddies. They have caught some fish and had a good time, but this sorta messed up the plans for a little bit. Seems early for water spouts, but heck the wx is so nice here in Texas today that some of our avionics guys played hookey. That's ok because they did a lot of work during the week and it left more BBQ for us to eat today!! Will post more pics later. Aaron, have not forgotten your request. Will try to address it after studying the manuals a bit more. JR

Some people have all the luck! Another one of our guys is on vacation in Hawaii. Family reunion it sounds like with all of Tim's brothers, one of whom, has the misfortune to live on Maui. Awwww shucks, but guess somebody has to do it. The thing is, Tim did not invite the rest of us, but I suppose that is a good thing as there would be nobody left to work on the airplane. So have fun Tim and then come back. We have been saving something special for you to work on!! heh heh heh. Paybacks, buddy!! JR

Aaron, I am still working on your request, but it is doubtful we can remove the overhead panel to get the pictures. I got a little off track when I first looked at your museum website and saw you had a C model so I have been looking in the B/C parts manual, but what you really have, I discovered is a K. 657 did indeed suffer a crash in 78 in California when one of the props went into reverse while still airborne on approach to landing. BTW, this is why we will not have reverse props on K. Don't need the added risk. There is some difference though between the B/C and K in the overhead structure. About all that can be done really is to look at the IPC and try to figure out what parts are missing from the list rather than the illustrations. Discounting the typical hardware parts, the rest might be identified. There are a few companies here in the states with surplus parts for A-26's that might have what you need. If it helps, when the handle on the right in the picture is pulled, the pilot's canopy will open. This also raises the external handle on top. The other handle only opens the copilot's side and will not open with the external handle, at least as it works for us right now. BTW, the "IF" tail code on the vertical indicates that your airplane was assigned to England AFB, Louisiana, at one time. Our airplane had the same tail code and will again when the paint job is applied. JR

This is a shot of the external canopy release handle in the raised position. The two internal handles have also been pulled down. These release the dogs on the canopy locks there in the railings. When the CAF B model returns to the hangar from S Texas, I will go see if I can get some pics of the differences. JR

The forward section of the overhead contains the emergency jettison handle for both canopies. There is a warning in the pilot's manual to duck before pulling this handle as the canopies have a tendency to dip downward at the forward edge before being lifted by the windstream for bailout. The starter, primer, some lights and generator switches are up there as well. JR

Inflight reverse can only happen under 2 conditions - pilot commanded (bypassing the interlocks) or mechanical failure. As you're still running the original props, the second situation is still possible. Your best bet is to properly maintain the system and just not use it except on the ground to check it occasionally. Attempting to lock-out the feature will only protect you from a pilot inadvertently activating it, it won't prevent a mechanical failure from allowing it to happen. The props the K uses are the same ones as on the CV-240 and the DC-6, and they are extremely robust and reliable. I don't have the accident record you speak of to know what caused it, but I've only found 1 instance of an R2800 reversing inflight and that was on a DC-6 with a -CA15 engine, and it was improper handling of the emergency that caused the accident (feathered the #4 in error when the #3 was in reverse during takeoff/initial climb), not the inflight reversal itself.

Unless you've got some stats I've not seen that show those props to be an issue and have a reliable method of preventing them from reversing even with loss of oil pressure, then I would not disable reversing, just don't use it. I'll tell you right now, Bud would have done something about the props had they been dangerous, just as he disabled high blower on his CB16's and turned them into (effectively) CB3's through mechanical and electrical lockout of the blower clutch, but he didn't. The biggest issue I'm aware of is that they can be balky going into reverse on occasion, which is part of why you don't rely on it as part of your landing calculations.

CAP Flyer, we don't have the black boxes for the prop controllers for reverse and would probably not be able to keep them running even if we did have them. Our props were locked out upon overhaul. They can't go into reverse. Neither do we need them to do so. We will never land on a runway shorter than 5000 ft. As low as our blades are to the concrete, it would only chew up the blades and put more stress on them to boot. Our brakes are newly overhauled. So we elected to go without reverse. As for the accident I referred to in the earlier post, go look at Aaron's website for the pictures of it. According to the pilot, one prop reversed when he hit the arming switch on short final. Once armed, nothing is supposed to happen until the pilot selects reverse after touchdown. Only it didn't work that way in this instance. The only thing saved was the cockpit and that is what Aaron's museum in the UK is restoring. It is just a risk we would rather avoid. That's our thinking. JR

Hi JR,

Thanks for the pictures, and info.
Do you guys know of any old plexi glass for the 26? we don't really want to buy new airworthy Plexi for the cockpit as it would be a waste of money.

_________________
Aaron
www.wingsmuseum.co.uk
A-26 Invader restoration
P-63 King Cobra restoration

JR, I understand the thinking and don't pan it. Again, my concern isn't whether you use it or not, it's whether you're really reducing the risk of inflight reverse by doing so. I'd also be interested to see under what STC or approved procedure the lockout was done, because the prop model doesn't come in a "non-reversing" version and there wasn't anything in the maintenance manuals that I can remember (although I didn't get too deep into them when doing the work with Air Tahoma since that wasn't my primary job). Not that I think they did anything wrong, I just never saw a modification for it and find these kinds of things interesting to see how they do it. Air Tahoma used those props in daily service as recently as 2009 and never had any issues with the system and the boxes were never a problem. We had more issues with bad mags and carbon seals (had 4 of them delivered either with bad points or bad carbon seals but with yellow tags once) than prop issues.

Aaron, here is another shot showing the handles split. The B model is still down in S Texas and not expected back for another week or so. As for glass, you might try a company in Ohio that makes plastic instead of plexi. They have forms for everything but the windshields themselves. Not sure what you need. Our old glass is spoken for already or I would offer some pieces of that. We had them signed by the Nimrods and have sold some to raise money for the restoration. They have become collectibles. JR

Hi JR,

Thank you again for the picture and info, i will get our curator to contact them and see what they can do.
Aero trader want $795 for each windscreen and $500 for each access door plexi, i do remember seeing somewhere that the upper nose glass is $10,000+

Aaron

_________________
Aaron
www.wingsmuseum.co.uk
A-26 Invader restoration
P-63 King Cobra restoration

Aaron: we did get the right side windscreen from Aero T. May I suggest seeing if they will trade for something that you might have they need for one of their projects? If you have B-25 material especially, could be that would help the deal. The bombardier nose glass for the C model is very rare. The K's came with both but it was used for recon cameras instead of a bombsight. Due to the better aerodynamics, it added about 10 knots to the speed. But all of the NKP airplanes had the gun noses for going after trucks on the HCM Trail in Laos. Good luck! JR