Typhoon

Movie.......Hell's Angels Book........ At the Sharp End by Tim Cook

Sorry Hauksbee but there are 2 flying Lancasters. One in the RAF Memorial Flight, and one here in Hamilton's Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. Last summer it flew to England and spent the summer flying formation with the RAF Lanc at airshows in England before flying back to Canada. As a matter of fact this morning I stood looking up into the bomb bay of the Lanc that we are rebuilding at our museum in Windsor.

I was at the airport working on our Mosquito project when one of the pilots came into the workshop. He said to me "hey you want to go for a ride?" I said "sure." He said "meet me in the pilot's lounge in an hour."I got a 1/2 hour ride in this: What a great day. We flew from Windsor airport to the Ambassador Bridge. North along the Detroit River to Lake St Clair the landed back at Windsor

Olham: Great to hear from you. I hope you had a great vacation. Back to the grind again now. Tony

Second best Christmas present ever!! Best was last week when the Oncologist told me there was still no sign of the the cancer returning Tony

There is the old bit about someone translating the phrase "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" into Russian and then translating the Russian phrase back into English, and it came out as "The wine is good, but the meat is rotten". Don't know if it is true or not but it makes for an amusing anecdote. Tony

Well last Saturday the powers that be decided it was time to test fit the Mosquito fuselage to the wing. It fit like a glove. All we had to do was plane 3/16" off the panels under the wing and it was all good. Here are some pictures. Getting ready to lift. Over she goes. Starting down. Almost there. I"m telling him to move it forward a bit. Finally there. The guy on the left is one of our pilots, the guy in the blue coveralls is one of the guys restoring our Lancaster. Gwen is our secretary and not much would get done without her work. The red arrow on the right hand side points to the tail gunner position of the Lancaster that they are restoring. In Place and it fits like it was made for it. This is the crew that was involved in the lift. Red arrow is me. In the immediate foreground is the top of one of the two brand new Merlin engines that we have aquired

We hope to have it fly, and we want to have a C of A, but there are some in our group who think it will be too valuable to fly. The wing has been passed as airworthy by Transport Canada Tony

Well last Saturday the powers that be decided it was time to test fit the Mosquito fuselage to the wing. It fit like a glove. All we had to do was plane 3/16" off the panels under the wing and it was all good. Here are some pictures. Getting ready to lift. Over she goes. Starting down. Almost there. I"m telling him to move it forward a bit. Finally there. The guy on the left is one of our pilots, the guy in the blue coveralls is one of the guys restoring our Lancaster. Gwen is our secretary and not much would get done without her work. The red arrow on the right hand side points to the tail gunner position of the Lancaster that they are restoring. In Place and it fits like it was made for it. This is the crew that was involved in the lift. Red arrow is me. This is the complete Mossie crew. some of whom were not involved in the lift I had to photoshop myself into the picture because I took it.

Next time I see one of our Stearman pilots I'll ask him about the windscreen and the effects of the rain

It's funny the way locals pronounce place names. We had a hydro plant on the Ottawa River Called Des Joachims, oddly enough the locals( mostly French Canadians) pronounced it Da Swisha Down here in the southern part of the province we have a town called St Joachim And the locals also French Canadian for the most part pronounce it St JO-kim Go Figure Tony

A guy brought this model into the hangar today. No one could identify it. The first one to get it right gets absolutely nothing. except a little satisfaction.

Kermit Weeks also has a Mosquito and he gives a walk around tour of it in this video: Tony

Ohlam: Yes it is to be an airworthy Mosquito. We have already had the wing and fuselage inspected and passed by Transport Canada. The inspector commented on the level of workmanship and told us that we could put the panels on the wing and put the 20,000 1/2" brass screws in. We are also building a mockup of the cockpit as an exhibit to go in the museum. Tony

There is only one pilot in the team that is building it. There are numerous pilots in our association but none are qualified to fly the Mosquito. We would probably get an Air Canada pilot to test fly it Tony

OOPS!! I was on the plane for the test flight. The rest of the ground crew went for coffee, not the aircrew they managed to bring the plane down safely. One person from each section that were involved in the inspection were required to go on the test flight. Just a local thing, there were about 8 of us "ERKS" on a plane for a test flight after an inspection Sorry for the confusion Tony

Speaking of Mossies here are some pics of our Mossie KB161 "City of Vancouver" project. Mike is adding a piece of wood to our cockpit mock-up Mike and Barry sanding the mock-up, notice starboard window cut in. Mike and Barry posing for photo Ron and Bob making adjustments to horizontal stabilizer during test fit Port side of fuselage with lower panel removed in preparation for fitting wing Starboard side of fuselage with 1 of 2 brand new Merlin engines that we have aquired. More to come later Tony

Here are a couple of mine. The Duck Caponi Triplane Coanda 1910

An "ERK" was a low ranking enlisted man usually the junior man on the crew. As an ERK I was required to go on the test flights on our C119's after an inspection. Not a real pleasant experience. It was usually very noisy and boring, except once when we lost an engine on takeoff, but it was still noisy. All the rest of the crew went to the cafeteria for coffee.

Hi Olham: Glad to be here. The Mosquito is coming along fine. We just about finished the tail plane. It was dry fitted to the fuselage today and fit perfectly. It will be removed on Saturday and the plywood skin will be put on the top. It will be left off the bottom for now so that the inspector from Transport Canada can inspect the internal structure. Also next week we will marry the wing to the fuselage. Hope to have some pics of that endeavor. The other thing we are working on is a mock-up of the cockpit as a display for the museum. Just about finished the outside. We are going to install a yoke and rudder pedals and a dummy instrument panel to give people an idea of the cramped quarters of the Mossie. Below is a picture of me sitting in the mock-up, this was taken very early in the building process. I will take some more pics on Saturday. BTW Olham I have another book for you, will send in a few days. Tony

HI

OOOOH I love bananas, and this site. I still check it out at least once a week. Tony

Boy is this place dead or what? No new posts for six days. I hope it is because people can't tear themselves away from WOFF 2.04 to check this place out. Tony

I went for my 4 month checkup this week and the doc could not be happier with my progress. X-rays and blood tests all came back negative for the cancer. He said I was the "Poster Boy" for this type of operation. I have been doing a lot of physical therapy to try and get my core strength back to where it was before. Creaghorn, he did say that I should be ready for the start of ball season in March as long as I wear the proper protective equipment. Tony

I'm back!!! The surgery went well and I am now recuperating at home This is the first time i have uesed the computer. I am still very weak but hope to get stronger soon. The good news is that there is no sign of the cancer. That means no chemo or radiatian. I am going to sign off now as I have to get back to resting for a while. Tony