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Happy, Productive, Busy Summer

The Calgary Mosquito Society Report for the Summer of '24.

The engine is turning over. We're in the magazines again. We got a new camera. We had a great Mosquito Day and we are making good progress all over the Mosquito. Read on, read on friends, fans and members!

Hurricane

We continue to make progress on the Hurricane's Merlin engine on 'Slow and Steady Street', which should intersect with 'Fire'em Up Blvd' in the next quarter. We recently completed all work on the electrical system, including the buss board where all the copper lines come together. Having installed the club prop last quarter, we have it fully torqued down. The fuel pump is now installed along with a fan for the radiator.

We filled the coolant system with water and pressure tested it. It initially failed the test rather badly and as the countrymen of its design origins would say, 'It did a wee on the floor'. After much tracing, tightening and squeezing it now holds its liquids and should not require another diaper change.

Crucial controls such as the throttle and idle cutoff have been designed, built and added to the test stand. The instrument panel is also present and accounted for and we now have all the instruments we need to fill it out.

In the 'yet to be done' department, we have some bits missing from the left magneto which are proving to be a challenge as there are many variants of mags for this engine and we just happen to have one of the rare and unusual ones. The ignition harness needs a final fitting after which we can do an overall systems check, then have a third party come in and give it the once over before we add spark and fuel so that it can make appropriate Merlin noises.

On the road to getting there, we have turned the engine over on just the battery a few times and so far nothing has fallen off.

The Money Shot. Dick S. turns the engine over under battery power. Nothing fell off and nothing went ‘crunch’. Next are a few last details, an inspection and then we add spark and juice to see if it will run on its own. Closer, ever closer we get.

Mosquito

We start off with some very cool news and a very big thank you to Rose and Bruno Hutter of Hutter Instrument Services in Nepean, ON. Bruno came to Canada in the mid 1950s as the factory representative and technician for Wild Cameras. With Spartan Air Services being their biggest Canadian customer and other companies following their example, Wild invested in sending one of their people to provide technical support.

Bruno liked Canada; he stayed, put down roots, got married and started his own company. When we produced our video series in 2014 we found that not only was Bruno still with us, but that he had kept examples of Wild's finest early aerial survey cameras, the RC5 and RC8, and that he had kept them in pristine working condition. He also mentioned in our video that back in 1954, a Wild RC5 camera cost $20,000, when the average cost of a new house was just $8000. Click here for the video which includes Bruno Hutter talking about Spartan and the Wild camera: The Calgary Mosquito Project - Bruno Hutter Wild Camera Interview

Back in 2014, Bruno also made comments to our video producer about one day finding a good home for his treasures. Enter Mosquito Society board member, Saturday volunteer and fuselage restoration specialist, Don Henderson. For four and a half years, Don has been in regular contact with Bruno and Rose to let them know that we had a good home for one of their treasures, namely an original Spartan Mosquito. This summer, the Hutters decided to donate their complete and virtually 'as new' Wild RC8 camera to our project. Packed in custom metal cases, all of the bits and pieces took two pallets and a $2400 bill to get from Ontario to Alberta.

Years ago we did have an aerial survey company based in the NWT donate an RC8, but it was well worn and lacking a lens and other bits. We now have a beautiful, complete and functional camera along with manuals, tools and all the trimmings from Wild's original factory rep. Thank you Bruno, Rose and our patient, persistent and determined Don Henderson.

Don plays the part of ‘kid on Christmas morning’, enjoying the fruits of his years long good behaviour. Note the ‘as new’ condition of these now 70 year old camera components. Wowzers.

Jack McWilliam

Moving on, the first few Saturdays of this quarter were devoted to rebuilding our parts shelves, then relocating all of our parts crates and materials and restocking the shelves. If you recall from the last quarterly report, we moved everything but the Mosquito fuselage and wing to accommodate the removal of the Bomber Command's Cessna Crane which was hanging from the ceiling in the shop. We had parts boxes stacked and scattered all over the shop area and back out to our storage trailers to make room for the removal.

With the Crane gone, it was time to reverse that process, put all of our shelves back (plus a new section, hoping our hosts wouldn't notice as we continue to expand, bit by bit...) But like socks in clothes dryers, our challenge is to locate some parts that have disappeared in the process, including some very tiny screws in very small quantities. In retrieving some of our crates from the storage trailers, we also took the opportunity to bring in some additional bits for winter projects.

But back to the Mosquito related work, Jerry M. is sorting out all the metal work for the rear spar to flap attach points. As much as this is 'an all wood airframe', there is a great deal of metal that holds the moving bits together. A lot of the metal for the trailing edge of the wing has been powder coated or painted, cleaned and in some cases, such as the hardware, remanufactured. Once Jerry has the port side pieces reassembled, we will focus on the starboard and replicate this process.

Above, newly minted volunteer Bob J. helps Matthew S. refill and organize the rebuilt shelf units. The fuel tanks were brought in from the storage trailers for winter project work. Below, Jerry M. reassembles the restored metal bits for mounting and controlling the flaps on the trailing edge of the wing.

Don H. also continues to labour away as our rear fuselage specialist, configuring the camera install area and replacing all the hydraulic and pneumatic pipe work in the rear.

We reached a milestone in that Don's work in the back and Andy's work in the cockpit are now joined and must be matched as we installed the starboard under wing panel which joins all of these lines together. With this side panel in place, we can no longer walk through the wing cut out area in the fuselage. Sadly for our habit bound oldsters, this panel will now remain in place until the final assembly of the wing and fuselage.

To continue his high standards in rebuilding the cockpit area, Andy W. has learned the fine art of annealing aluminium pipe (heat treating it to make the pipe more flexible). Upon detailed examination of the some old photos, Andy discovered that the lower portion of the instrument panel is micarta and after mapping out the placement of all the instruments, controls and mounting screws, he had one cut with a water jet process. What he discovered was that the extreme pressure of the water used to cut the micarta also separated the material itself when cutting small screw holes. Andy had a second one cut, leaving out the small holes which we can do with a good old fashioned drill press. Again, the learning curve is often a vertical line.

The crew installs the restored under wing panel on the starboard side of the fuselage. This panel carries all the fuel, pneumatic and hydraulic lines from the front to the rear of the airplane and from the cockpit to the wings. Andy’s work in the cockpit is now connected to Don’s work in the rear fuselage.

Andy W. dry fits the new water jet cut, micarta portion of the instrument panel. This is the second one, minus the small screw holes after we found that the very high pressure water jet separated the material when cutting the small screw holes. The vendor was good enough to not charge us for this one.

A lot of our volunteers, new and old, have spent many hours with scrapers in hand, working on the large panels from the underside of the wing that enclose eight of the fuel tanks. If anyone wants an original fabric sample from our airplane, courtesy of the cleaning and scrapping work, we have lots to spare. It's tedious, grubby work but our crew have never complained and have done a great job on them. As with other areas of the airplane, we have preserved some original labels, instructions and parts information on these panels.

A project on the go through this whole quarter has been stripping the under wing fuel tank panels. Upper Bob J. and Joe M. haul the last one out for storage for its turn on the table. The panels are fabric covered on the outside and painted on the inside. Below are Bob J. , Joe M., Nigel W. and Markus S. Four guys working for a whole day can strip about half of one surface. Repeat after me, ‘We’re in it for the glamour…’

These large fuel tank panels are held in place by aluminium angles with nut plates riveted to them. Age and misuse have seen some of the nut plates broken and the rivets holding them in place well worn or missing completely. Dick S. is our man on this project. Also working on wing and fuel bay projects this quarter are Gary T., Michael H. and, back from a summer off, young Markus S.

Michael H. has been prepping the fuel tank bays in the wing including new paint and grounding strips. Markus S. is working on getting the straps that hold the fuel tanks in place. These need to be stripped and repainted. Gary T. is replacing some of the wood corners that hold round edged fuel tanks into square cornered fuel tank bays. Not surprisingly these wood straps look simple, but are anything but. Not only are they curved, but there are different radii within a single strap and a number of them are also twisted to accommodate the taper of the fuel tank bays and the tanks.

Once this crew has replaced and installed the wood corner straps, we will order the felt that buffers the tanks to the straps. After much head scratching and net searching, we found a saddlery and western shop right in Nanton that can order what we need from one of their suppliers.

Fuel tank bays on the underside of the port wing, newly painted and being prepped for the reinstallation of the tanks. Some of the original wooden corner straps have been replaced, but will need new felt liners. Below, a hint of how stupidly complex these straps can be with different radii in the curves and a twist to accommodate the taper of the fuel tanks. Begs the question of how de Havilland designed the whole airplane, with a million critical details and got it flying in just 11 months…

Gary T. is still hard at work on replacing the top skins on the wing. He is down to the last three sheets covering the center portion of the wing. Working from the wingtips inward, the structure under the wing skins has generally been in very good condition. That said, we are now moving to an area where we can see that some repairs below the skin are necessary. The area in question is the stringers and skin above the engine radiators immediately adjacent to the fuselage. Over time, near boiling liquids have clearly done some damage to the wood above the radiators. Stay tuned for 'steamy' details in our fourth quarter report at year end.

Above, Gary T's wing skin replacement work is closing in on the center section. Below, we can see the damage done to the wing stringers and skin above the radiators. Some structural work will be necessary before new skins can go on in this area.

We have put David H. to work cleaning bits of rib and skin from the trailing edge of the wing, aft of the rear spar. What remained of the trailing edge after the airplane got back from outdoor storage by 410 Squadron at Cold Lake, AB, fell off years ago. We have an assortment of broken and rotted trailing edge bits and pieces, rife with nasty little brass nails waiting like kitten claws to rake the flesh of unsuspecting volunteers. The most we can expect from this collection of broken bits is to serve as patterns for a completely new trailing edge.

Jaime G. continues his great work on the main landing gear and now has one side almost reassembled. In September he reinstalled the iconic rubber blocks in the main gear legs. The one challenge remaining is to locate some custom bolts to hold the structure together.

Our undercarriage specialist, Jaimie G. inserting the iconic rubber blocks into a main landing gear leg. The blocks were another de Havilland innovation, replacing expensive and hard to manufacture hydraulics.

Steve S. is designing an extractor to remove two seemingly fused bolts on the second main undercarriage structure as part of the disassembly process.

Davy D. is plugging away on the two firewalls and is running out of parts. That is a good thing as it means that all of the loose, restored, repainted bits have found a permanent home back on the firewalls. These firewalls will be mated to the main undercarriage once it and the firewalls are complete.

Cam B. has been diligently applying his airbrush skills for us in repainting an endless stream of hardware and small metal bits for us. That said, as we were forced to focus on moving shelves and parts for the Crane removal, we had to rein in his painting until we could get back to normal ops.

Circling back to Gary T.'s projects for a moment, we discovered that during restoration, one of our flap hinge brackets sprouted legs and likely ran away to join someone's 'cool stuff' collection. Sad but true. In scratching our heads about how to replace it, Gary dove into the world of amateur metal casting and found a fellow in town who does this sort of thing as a hobby. Gary supplied him with a mould, and with technology going back to the Bronze Age, our new friend and supporter made a number of aluminium sand castings for us. Gary selected the best of the batch and has begun a series of machining operations to create the flange, bearing seat and mounting holes on it. It's all about devotion, time, skill, determination and resourcefulness.

An original flap hinge bracket above, now MIA, and the new sand cast example fresh from the home foundry, awaiting a number of machining operations to make it serviceable.

I wanted to give a shout out to a company that has helped us out for the past number of years, in addition to being my 'go to' source for paint and coatings for decades. This is Smith McLeay Coatings, which sadly closed their doors at the end of September after decades of service to the aviation and automotive community. This Calgary based small business opened its doors when I started in the aviation business and I have spent my whole career attending to commercial and corporate aircraft painted with Endura product supplied by Smith McLeay. I will miss their knowledge, friendly banter, handwritten receipts and their old fashioned, handshake style of doing business. Happy retirement.

Just as I finished this report I received a phone call from Randy Hallett whom I met just before my restoration update talk on our annual Mosquito Day event at the Bomber Command Museum. Randy asked if I would be interested in a picture of his mother Evelyn Mitchell, who, during World War II was one of the thousands of women building Mosquito components, through subcontractors for de Havilland. Randy had a picture of his mother, which I used to help tell her story and that of the women who pitched in when needed and helped to build our favourite airplane. I was thrilled to hear from him again and to accept two photos of his mother with her wartime crew and to learn more about her experience in building Mosquitoes.

Above, Evelyn is seen outside her house in Toronto in her early 20’s. Next door is the boarding house were Randy’s future father checked in after returning home from the war, minus one leg. Randy’s father went on to a 37 year career with DND as a prosthetics maker. Below is a photo of Evelyn Mitchell (back row, fifth from the left) and the rest of her crew who did their part during the war by building Mosquito wings through DH subcontractor, Massey Harris.

Events and Miscellaneous

Busy bees we be in the third quarter of the year as it includes the summer season of event days at the Bomber Command Museum, which is highlighted by Mosquito Celebration Day; this year falling on July 20. We were blessed with perfect weather, great crowds and lots for visitors to see and do. Thanks to Bert, Bev and Penny for managing book and merchandise sales which did really well this year. Just before lunch Jack gave the crowd an update on our restoration efforts, followed by a Lanc tail turret demo and then my talk on "Mosquito Men I Have Known' to an audience of approximately 160. Of course the day's events were bookended by Lancaster and Bristol Hercules engine runs. As is traditional, the museum allows us to pick the lucky folks to sit in the Lanc for the engine runs.

Jack holds court for the lunch crowd with a talk about the past year's restoration progress and challenges.

Bert, Bev and Colette chatting with a visitor at the sales table, while Zac M. looks incredibly relaxed and in charge in the right seat of the Lanc for the morning engine run. Volunteering has its perks.

One of our Mosquito Day attendees spent considerable time chatting with Jack and wrote up a nice 5 page restoration update article for AEROPLANE magazine, helping to spread word of our efforts to the larger English speaking world through this very popular vintage aviation magazine out of Britain. The October issue in which we are featured, should be on the stands by now. Big thanks to author Graham Heeps who really went the extra mile to produce what is likely the most factually accurate piece on our bird done by someone outside our organization.

A mention on the cover and a nice 5 page article by Graham Heeps on our restoration progress in Britain's best selling vintage aviation magazine. Nice, thank you Graham.

When we returned the Hurricane to the City of Calgary in November 2019, it was a great opportunity to highlight Gordon Hill who flew this very airplane when he and it were both with 133 Squadron of the RCAF in 1942. The Eduard Model Company out of the Czech Republic has just released a 1/48th scale kit of the Spitfire which Gordon flew later in the war, which he dubbed 'Sweet Sixteen'. Another great way to 'Honour and Educate'. Eduard Model Company - Gordon Hill's Mk. XVI Spitfire Model Kit

Eduard Model's latest release of Gordon Hill's Mk. XVI Spitfire, in which Gordon is seated at an airfield, 'somewhere in Europe' in the winter of 1944-45. Gordon honed his skills as a fighter pilot in our Hurricane earlier in the war. 'Tres coolio', as they likely wouldn't have said over there.

As usual, we participated in all the special event days organized by the Bomber Command Museum, which in this quarter included Parade Day on August 5, Bikes and Bombers on August 17, author Ted Barris's book launch and Lanc night run on September 20 and the traditional season ending Halifax 57 Rescue Update Day on September 21. Great weather and great crowds for all events gave us the opportunity to speak with hundreds and hundreds of visitors and to spread the gospel of the Mosquito and of the men and women who designed, built, flew, maintained and repaired them.

Bomber Command Museum's event posters for this quarter. In addition to Mosquito Day and more, it made for a fun, busy and productive quarter in lots of ways.

The end of the summer season also meant saying farewell until next summer to two of our amazing junior volunteers, brothers Andrew and Matthew S. Andrew is returning to his second year of engineering studies at Western University and Matthew is in France on an exchange program for the year. We are very pleased and proud of these incredibly gracious, talented young men.

Andrew S. at left with his prized Mosquito and Hurricane profile prints. Younger sib Matthew with his farewell profile print as we wish him well on his one year exchange in France.

And it's also 'So long' until whenever to another long term Saturday regular, Nigel W. who has headed for his new home in the far east. Fare thee well and thank you.

Richard de Boer, President

October 11, 2024