  
 Anson
Restoration Project
By Colin
Ainsworth, Project Leader
31 May 2006
During
the past month Ernie Killen, Mike Dandurand, Keith Brenson, Peter
Campagna and Jerry Aucoin, started the construction of the port
wing.
During the past month Ernie Killen, Mike Dandurand,
Keith Brenson, Peter Campagna and Jerry Aucoin, started the construction
of the port wing.
 The
assembly is best done with the wing upside-down because greater accuracy
of measurements is possible in this position. The spars have less (or
sometimes no) bevel on the bottom edges and the lower edges are
generally in more nearly the same plane on the lower side of the
airfoil. At the same time the rib locations are marked. The
ribs are then glued and nailed to the spars, and then the
rib-to-spar trusses are set in. The gussets are then attached to the
forward spar. These gussets will provide attachment points for the
metal wraparound leading edge when it's installed. The
electrical wiring for the port navigation lights and the aircraft
landing light will also be installed during this part of the
construction. After all this is completed the wing will then be ready to
be covered with plywood and fabric.
Chuck Calder and Butch Fluery painted
the cabin floor and continued the installation of the manual
undercarriage handle. Peter Miller and myself installed the last of the
cabin lights and completed most of the electrical wiring and installed
the last of the instruments in the bomb aimer’s compartment.
One day was taken up by a "Big
Clean Up" we finally managed to convince our "Patron"
that it is very hard to reconstruct an aircraft in an area the size of a
phone booth.
After cleaning up a lot of surplus
items, we now have enough room to place both Anson wings on tables,
which will make it a lot easier when the time comes for them to be
covered.
Next month we hope to complete the port
wing and start on the wing trailing edge that is attached to the
fuselage, and to construct the radio rack at the radio operators table.
This month's "Anson Trivia"
is taken from the book "The Plan" by James N. Williams
"Memories of The British
Commonwealth Air Training Plan".
Student
Pilot, RCAF:
On
Ansons we did a lot of instrument training, a little bit of bombing
training, and a fair amount of navigational training, we were constantly
trying to use DR courses-getting wind estimates and course
alterations-nothing particularly sophisticated, but compounded somewhat
by the fact there was no radio.
We
used to do joint runs, where one student pilot would be the navigator
and keep an air plot, and the other one would be the pilot. This was
kind of fun and it kept you both tuned up; you might have known
everything in theory, but it's nice to be able to do it in the air. I
remember one time my partner said, "Let's bomb McGregor Lake with a
Coke bottle." And by gosh, we hit it to!
Teenager,
civilian:
One
time I was coming from my uncle's place, I used to work at his farm -
and it was January and I was skiing across the field. It was quite open
country their and this Anson came over. He was about 100 feet away and
he was so low that when he went over the fences he had to rise up to
clear them. About a mile further on there was the main power
line from Luc du Bonnet to Winnipeg, and he rose up over the lines and
then dropped back down again. The sound was soon lost, but I must have
stood there for fifteen minutes, waiting: "Maybe he'll come
back."
Next month we will continue with more
stories from "The Plan."
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