Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Red, That's a Chipmunk in the background, I think it had been a duster or something like that because it had "Farm Aviation" painted on the side.In the photo posted showing the vertical fin, you can see that. The G-APOS identifys it as English Registry, I think. Eric sold it to a guy in Tucson, Az who thought he couldn't live without it. I was hoping to put an Allison Turbine in it, but it went away, probably a crazy idea anyway.

Larry

[Red]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Thanks Larry, I couldn't make out the writing and it was hard to tell without the rudder on it. Did you do any work on it? Thanks for the response.

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

In one of my posts, I think there was a Stearman in the background. It belonged to Eric and a friend, Tom Wiedlick. (sp) While waiting for the Percival, I was attaching stringers , getting ready to put the fabric on the fuselage. There was also a Howard DGA-15 that belonged to Lorentzen that I was working on. There was plenty to do at the hangar, and I was loving it, getting an opportunity to work on lots of different aircraft. I asked Eric if I could bring my Fly Baby to the hangar, and he said I could, so that gave me an opportunity to finish it there.

I received a phone call that the Percival was inbound from Tucson, so we started watching for it. After a short while we noticed a strange bird flying overhead that had a real strange silhouette, and figured that it had to be”Percy”. We watched it turn onto a downwind for runway 3, then turn on base, then final, and the closer it got the uglier it got. When it taxied to our ramp and parked, we were cracking up. It was not only ugly, there was some fabric flapping in the breeze on the ailerons, and tail feathers. There were parts of the canopy broken out also. I could hardly wait to meet the wild man that had flown it from Florida. When he climbed out you could sense the relief on his face. He was some happy to have completed this “mission”. Eric must have paid him well to flog this buzzard cross- country. He came into the hangar and sat down at the picnic table we had there and asked if we had something cold to drink. After he had a cold drink, and calmed down, he began telling us about the trip. He said that shortly after take-off from Florida, the engine started running sour, but he babied it to the first fuel stop. After refueling, he fired it up, did a mag check, and it seemed to run O.K. Shortly after take-off, it started acting up again, but he continued on to the next fuel stop. He decided that he was having magneto trouble, so he bought two, and changed them. Luckily the mags were common to several aircraft, and were readily available. Again after take-off the engine went sour again, but he made it to another fuel stop. During the trip, he had bought six mags, changed them, and continued on. He didn’t stay long, and called for a cab to the Phoenix airport and went home. Something told me he had not got a ferry permit to fly “Percy” to Scottsdale, and “wanted out of Dodge” as soon as possible! I lifted myself up on the wing, and scooted up so I could see in the cockpit, and I could not believe it. Sandy had climbed up also, and started laughing, the back seat was full of coke cans, fast-food joint bags, and other trash, including a pile of the magnetos he had bought along the way. This guy, I think his name was Jim was one brave dude, and must have needed some cash real bad! It wasn’t very long that there was a rather large puddle of oil on the ramp. I wonder how many gallons of oil he bought on the trip? I always liked a challenge, but making old “Percy” airworthy to the proper standards may be a little more than I had bargained for. It reminded me of a joke I had heard, something about perfuming a pig. This was more than Sandy and I could handle, so I called my brother Dale and asked him if he wanted some work to do. So begins the saga of Percival one-zero-four-one-papa!

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Red, No, I didn't do anything to the Chipmunk.

Larry

[Apteryx]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

N1041P

[dxlyj]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Red, That's a Chipmunk in the background, I think it had been a duster or something like that because it had "Farm Aviation" painted on the side.In the photo posted showing the vertical fin, you can see that. The G-APOS identifys it as English Registry, I think. Eric sold it to a guy in Tucson, Az who thought he couldn't live without it. I was hoping to put an Allison Turbine in it, but it went away, probably a crazy idea anyway.

Larry

Since it seems relevant to this part of the story, my Avatar is my Chipmunk that is Nord 3202 firewall forward (and all the weird engine instruments Larry referred to - I put rub-on numbers on the tach/manifold pressure so you could easily match up power settings w/out the book).

[aircooled]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

N1041P

That plane is currently sitting on the ramp (as shown in the pics) at Camarillo Airport in southern California. Its been there for years, don't know if it flys, but it always seems dirty.

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Apteryx, Yep, That's MY "Percy", as you will see in my next posts. We had lots of fun flying this airplane. There's some interesting stories about this that I am going to post. Thanks for the Site.

Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

dxlyj, Interesting conversion, Chipmunk/ Nord Potez engine. Is it a 4D32 or a 4D34? Figuring out the instruments was pretty strange wasn't it? When we first flew the Nord, I was suprised at how noisy and loud it was, common to a supercharged engine with "short stacks" though. Are you using the Hartzel three blade prop?

Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

The Stearman and Howard DGA that I mentioned in a previous post.

Larry

[dxlyj]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

dxlyj, Interesting conversion, Chipmunk/ Nord Potez engine. Is it a 4D32 or a 4D34? Figuring out the instruments was pretty strange wasn't it? When we first flew the Nord, I was suprised at how noisy and loud it was, common to a supercharged engine with "short stacks" though. Are you using the Hartzel three blade prop?

Larry

It was the 4D34 w/the Hartzel 3 blade. Hartzel wanted that prop back *so* bad (so they could cut it up). And yes it was noisy and yes it shook like crazy at low rpms.
Dave

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Dale had a lot of paint to strip, he took everything down to bare metal, while Sandy and I were prepping the ailerons, elevators, and rudder for “Stitts” fabric.

I am posting a photo of Percy as it looked when it arrived, the photo doesn’t show the bad things, makes the aircraft look much better that it was. Note that it had G-AOLP registry, which probably confirms my thinking that “Jim” didn’t have a ferry permit, just kind of sneaked it into Scottsdale. I did the paperwork to get N1041P, which took some doing, had to do some creative writing to accomplish this.

“Jim” had mentioned that the brakes were barely functional, so I had to address that problem. The Percival had air operated brakes and flaps, the air pressure provided by a pump on the rear of the Gypsy Queen 30-2 inverted 6 cylinder engine. I chose to replace the brakes with hydraulic disc brakes and wheels from a Beech Baron, choosing that particular system because it came closest to fitting the Percival axle. I left the flap air system intact, but I don’t know as if it worked properly. Before flying you would have to make sure the air gage showed the proper pressure, and the flap indicator showed that the flaps were up. After landing, and shutting the engine off, the flaps would slowly bleed down. I had several guys go over the system with me, and there didn’t seem to be anything malfunctioning, so maybe it was designed to operate like this. On two occasions English pilots that had flown corporate jets into Scottsdale noticed Percy sitting on the ramp, and stopped by to tell us that they had did pilot training in England flying a Percival many years before. I asked them about the flap situation, but they said they didn’t remember anything about it. They chuckled and said that it was probably normal.

Of course the engine ran backwards, I wonder why the English did that, and I always had to warn new pilots to beware of that, but now and the one of them would forget, and run off into the dirt.

Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

dxlyj, our Hartzel blades were "color coded" with a red, yellow, or green stripe near the hub. The prop was supposed to be indexed with the crankshaft in a certain way so that the red blade absorbed some kind of harmonics or something, and it was supposed to be removed and destroyed after X number of hours, and the yellow blade removed after XX number of hours, but the green blade could be used like maybe forever. Were you aware of this? I seem to recall that blades from an Aero Commander were the same blades.

Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

I noticed on the N1041 site that Apteryx posted on the Percival that the flaps were bled down in the photos. Interesting!

Larry

[bluffman]

Re: Critical Mass - Blind Man's Bluff = SPLIT THREAD

Contrary to the N1041P site that Apteryx posted our Percival was configured for two “students” in the rear, and a provision for a third. The documentation that I had, indicated this to be the case. There may have been some that were different, but who knows? When Freddy Laker tried using Percival Prentices for an airline service, he made provisions for five people in the rear, which made seven including the pilots in the front cockpit, and he had called them “Super Sevens”, and had a big number 7 painted on the vertical fin and rudder. Of course this plan was a failure, it had to have been very cramped for that many people, and besides that the Prentices had a horrible safety record. When Eric sold the Percival, I sent lots of folders of documentation with it, I wonder if it still exists? Our paint scheme was copied from an original photo, the P in the circle was for prototype, and the yellow belly with camouflage upper was correct. I could go on and on about this, but I will try to “cut to the chase”.

When I began scoping out the interior, I noticed something strange. There was a large circuit breaker panel behind the front seats, not accessible from the front seats. Could it be that there had to be someone in the rear compartment during flight operations to monitor these?

When I rebuilt the front cockpit, yeah, where the double “spade handle” control sticks were, I put a circuit breaker panel in the lower right side of the instrument panel , as can be seen in the photo I am posting. Not only was it within reach from the front seat, it was a whole lot lighter than the original CB panel.

The seats were upholstered with green, to match the paint, Mohair, and let me tell you, it was very expensive. Of course the tinted canopy was per Lorentzen’s request, like the Nord.

I sent four of the Magnetos out to be tested, and they were all good, which told me that the problems “Jim” had was not due to mag failure. I was tracing down the spark-plug wires, and noticed that they ran through a round brass tube that was capped on both ends. I pried loose the rear cap, and some liquid spilled onto my hand, and it burnt like hell, like battery acid or something, I dashed over to the bathroom and doused it with water, and the burning stopped. I borrowed a pair of Dale’s thick rubber gloves that he used when stripping paint, and went back to check further. The only way I could get the plug wires out of this tube was to cut the ends off of them, but there was no doubt in my mind that the wires were junk in there someplace. It took some real work to get the wires out, but once out, it was apparent that this had been the problem. The insulation on the wires was all swelled up, and split, and apparently when the engine was cold it didn’t short out real bad, but after take-off, and the heat built up it got much worse, and completely shorted out on some of the wires. I don’t know if water had seeped inside that brass tube, and caused some kind of corrosion or electrolysis that created this acidity, or whatever. Anyway, the new plug wires fixed the problem, we never had any repeat occurrences.

We were moving right along, Dale was beginning painting, and Sandy and I had rebuilt the main landing gear, and tail wheel assembly. The fabric was on the ailerons, and tail feathers, and ready for paint.

Larry