03/02/2026
March 1, 2026
OK, have bean REALLY delinquent in posting! Again. Not that we haven’t been busy, it’s just that most of the work has been cleaning, repair, paint prep etc. that doesn’t have very visible results. We are working on getting parts ready to put in the cockpit – instrument panel, engine controls pedestal, control columns, rudder pedals, …
We also started reconditioning the auxiliary bits on the most complete of our Cheetah engines – fuel pumps, magnetos, etc.
One task we did accomplish was sourcing the wood to fabricate the wing spars. Like most Ansons sold as scrap after the war, ours had the wing cut off and will need new wing constructed from scratch (well, actually from the blueprints). The Anson wing has two box beam spars (front and rear), each with a top and bottom fl**ge made up of between eight to thirteen laminations of 7/16 inch spruce, so a 56 foot span wing requires a fair bit of lumber. A local sawmill (about 200 kilometers away) agreed to custom cut the wood we needed. Now it just needs to dry in the hanger for a few months. In the meantime we will experiment with bending some test pieces to the required dihedral angles, glue tests, etc.
Oh, and we got a new stable mate in the restoration hanger, a Canadian built 1946 J3 Cub that will be restored to flying condition. The airframe and engine need very little work, the main task will be replacing all the aging fabric.
