Latest at Old Kingsbury in Texas

[Sgt Pepper]

That's great news. Hopefully we'll have both the DR 1 and the D VII ready for test flight right as the weather turns nice again. I dont know about the rest of you volunteers, but it sure will be nice to see years of dedicated work pay off when these planes leave the ground.

[Sgt Pepper]

Hopefully the weather will co-operate. Last month we were working in the rain.

[Sgt Pepper]

Photo's by T. Gaylord.

[Sgt Pepper]

Saturday, November 11th, 2006 was a gorgeous day for
working at Roger's... cool temps, though a bit breezy
early on.

The day got off to a slow start as team members
trickled in. Mike Chancy was expected around 9:30 AM
to pick up his Fokker D.VII fuselage, so this item
needed to be pulled from the rafters. So that task
was the first order of business! the hanger floor was swept out as all
the projects had been moved outside to get Mike's
D.VII fuselage down.

Ultimately, we had a great turnout! Dennis Kirby,
Derek Staha and Mike McCormick drove over from
Houston. Carl Canga and Karl Holbert drove down from
Austin and Bryan Kelly drove in from San Antonio. You
might think Bryan's appearance wasn't any big deal,
but Friday the 10th was his birthday and he showed up
at Roger's by 9:30 AM, even with a hang-over! Dick
Schenk also showed up.

Mike Chancy showed to pick up his fuselage, but then
he and his builder, Dana (?), stayed to chat and help
out with the projects. Dana has built several Fokker
triplanes and recently completed an airframe for Mike
(to be powered by a Russian M-14P radial!). I might
have the details a little messed up, but I think Dana
was in Houston to deliver Mike's airframe.

Mike McCormick is obviously comfortable in a
woodworking shop and he dove right into the interplane
struts. He started with large chunks of poplar and
had to split them to get the wood needed for the
struts. Very high level of craftsmanship!! I'll look for the pix of this.

This was Derek's first attempt at working on these
airplanes and he became our expert for the day in
turnbuckles and clevis pins, and served as an extra
pair of helping hands whenever anyone needed help.
Derek connected the landing gear bracing cables after
rummaging through Roger's extensive collection of 10
billion loose clevis pins (all the wrong size!).
Derek also assisted Dennis with the aileron cable
turnbuckles and attached the rudder cable turnbuckles.

Dick Schenk did his usual stellar turn as supervisor.

Dennis Kirby now has more Fokker Triplane seat time
than any of us. He spent nearly the entire day in the
cockpit fitting aileron turnbuckles and aileron
cables. Then, when he tried to get out of the cockpit
he was pushed back inside to work on the lower wing
bolts.

Yes... the lower wing was taken off as the starboard
rear mounting bolt had proved to be a smidge too
short. Roger couldn't sleep at night thinking about
it, so it had to be rectified! Bryan had had enough
wrenching on these difficult to reach bolts last time,
so he brought an air wrench with him which greatly
speeded up the process. The closest thing to a proper
length bolt was procured, installed and the wing was
reshimmed and reinstalled. Sounds so simple yet this
task represented 1.5 - 2.0 hours of labor by several
people!

Carl and Karl tackled the fairings again. They had
several discussions with Dana and Roger and produced
paper patterns of the final fuselage top fairing
pieces. Along the way they had to modify the existing
top fuselage fairing to provide clearance for the
aileron cables. Metal was eventually cut and shaped
for the fairing pieces before they had to depart for
Austin.

The final task for the day was getting the 80-hp Le
Rhone rotary engine mounted in place. The entire
engine mounting spider, firewall and engine was
hoisted up on a forklift blade and four bolts were
stabbed into the longeron ends. These bolts are
temporary... bolts of the proper length couldn't be
found in the shop! Big surprise...

All hands celebrated the day's work accomplishments
with a well deserved beer! Except for the supervisor,
Dick Schenk, who celebrated with a snort of brandy!
Class always shows!

(entry by Tom Gaylord

[Sgt Pepper]

trying to find the best one for the 50k limit.

[Sgt Pepper]

one is real one isn't. Can you tell which?