  
 Museum’s
Anson Restoration Project
By
Colin Ainsworth, Project Leader
Mar 09
Over the past month, Keith Brenson, Ernie
Killen, Mike Dandurand, have been getting the aircraft ready for the
installation of the aircraft fabric, Al Sheppard spent a lot of time
finishing off the electrical wiring and installing the antena wiring
from the forward antena mast to the rudder, all that is now required is
to connect it to the radio at the radio operators station.
Click
here to see the
latest pictures.
Butch Fleury and Peter Miller started to clean
up and paint the aircraft interior from the nose to tail. However
the major part of the refurbishment has been the preparation of the
aircraft prior to its painting. This work has been carried out by
the 14 Wing ACS Shop headed by Sgt Johnathon Porter and Sgt Bill Scott.
The ACS Section technicians have spent a lot of
time and effort ensuring that the wings and fuselage were smooth prior
to the painting.
Another time consuming job was manufacturing,
the port and starboard wing fillets, cabin windows and the crew escape
hatches located in the roof of the cabin. Numerous smaller items
were also manufactured to complete the aircraft.
It is hoped that the aircraft will be ready for
display in 14 Hangar for the Mess Dinner on the 31 March 2009.
Before the aircraft goes on display I would
like to review the general specification and data and also a brief
description and history of the Avro Anson MK11.
The museums aircraft Serial Number
7135 was one of 340 Anson aircraft built at Ahmerst , Nova Scotia.
The aircraft was completed in December of 1941 and taken on strength at
15 SFTS Claresholm, Alberta until it was sold as scrap to an Alberta
farmer in August 1946.
The Avro Anson first flew on January 7 1935,
and production finished after 11,020 Anson's were built, including 1,832
Anson MK11's built in Canada.
The prototype Anson MK11 S/N 7069 adapted from
an Anson MK1 by Federal Aircraft Limited and first flown on August 21
1941, was the first of 1832 MK11's built by six sub-contractors, Fifty
were supplied to the USAAF in 1943 for advanced crew training as the
Model AT-20 with 350 hp Jacobs R-915-7 engines.
Anson MK11
Engines and Dimensions:
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Engines Two 330hp Jacobs
L6MB
Wing Span 56ft 6in
Length 42ft 3in
Height 13ft 1in
Wing area 463 sqft
Max speed 195mph
Cruising speed 165mph
Ceiling 19,000ft
Range 660 miles |
The Avro Anson had a colorful career while it
was in service, one story states that in June 1940 three Ansons on
patrol over the English Channel not only survived an attack by three
Messerschitt 109's but by surreptitiously throttling back, succeeded in
destroying two and damaging the third as they overshot.
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