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The End of Summer Report

Holy smokes does it take a lot of hours to restore old airplanes! Glad you asked. In just the last three months, board members put in 105.75 doing organizational and administration stuff, while member/volunteers, worked 1649.5 hours on the Mosquito and 55 hours on the Hurricane. Total volunteer hours for this quarter were 1810.25.

Since taking possession of the aircraft from the City of Calgary in August 2012, board members have invested a total of 9558.5 hours in administration and organization work, while volunteers have put in 4596.5 hours on the Hurricane, and 63,323.25 on the Mosquito, for a total of 77,478.25 volunteer hours. At the minimum wage rate of $15/hr, our time would be worth $1,162,173.75. That's serious dedication, folks!

Hurricane

There have been no significant events affecting the Hurricane engine in the last quarter, due mostly to key people and their work and vacation schedules. The plan is to do one more run for 'immediate family', then to put on a run event for our members. After that we will begin to coordinate with the Hangar Flight Museum for the reinstallation of the engine over the winter, with the intention of doing a public run event early in the spring. We will pass along details as plans develop.

Mosquito

It's appropriate to start this section with some thanks and acknowledgment to our donors and network partners who contribute to the success of our restoration efforts. Thanks to Stewart Roberts of Thunder Bay, ON for donating some of his late uncle's artifacts, including a DH Canada wartime desktop model of a Mosquito, and an aircraft crash axe. As it turns out, our airplane sported a second one of these for the camera operator in the rear fuselage. Interestingly, former Spartan camera operator Roger Tessier, during his visit earlier in the year, mentioned how unlikely it was that one could hack their way out of the fuselage with the crash axe as during training back in 1954, he discovered that after whacking the balsa sandwiched birch ply fuselage, said axe bounced back at one's face with the same speed and force with which one swung it at the airplane!

After a hunt, now covering too many years, Andy W. managed, as part of one of his trade deals with Retrotec and an individual collector in the UK, to acquire some vibration mounts for the blind flying panel. Yea (to be read with a sense of tired exasperation...)!

Our friends with the Mosquito project in Windsor, ON continue to honour their end of our trade deals with more goodies manufactured by their skilled machinists who fired off a shoebox sized package of newly made Mossie bits and bobs for us. Thanks to their project lead, Richard Fox.

Now, on to some hardcore restoration talk...

Jack McWilliam

So, I have been informed that the 3rd quarter report is due, which also means we are getting ready for the upcoming winter season. I am currently looking at how far we have progressed on the project and what we may need from our storage trailers so that we won't need to make a 'parts trip' when there is a meter of snow on the ground and the temps are into finger numbing, minus bejesus degrees.

Gary T. is moving down the road toward completing the upper wing skin replacement, with the second to last just being fitted to the wing. As much as it might appear near completion the number of small skins and parts to be attached is still significant, such as the structure behind the fire walls. Gary has also completed all of the walnut plates and blocks for the rear spar, to which all of the flap brackets are attached.

Over to Jerry M. and Joe M. who have been reassembling and installing all of those brackets for the flaps and for the landing gear to the underside of the wing. These assemblies are attached to the front and rear spars by long steel rods with threaded ends. After sitting in slightly damp wood for almost 80 years the original metal rods are badly corroded and all need to be replaced. It's at this point that Richard serves a useful purpose in delivering the old rods and new steel stock to our friends Don B. and Barry H., working out of the Hangar Flight Museum, who put their skills and the museum's big lathe to work on our behalf. After cutting and threading the new rods, we pass them on to Don H. who gets them coated for corrosion protection and then they are delivered back to Jerry and Joe who mount the restored assemblies on the wing with the new rods. (And people wonder why it takes years to restore a wing and indeed a whole airplane...)

With the help of Michael H. providing transportation, we have been pleased to see member/volunteers Seina M. and Chris Z. joining us several times this year and this quarter. Seina does excellent work bead blasting metal parts which then get passed on to Cam B. for painting. Seina's impeccable work has saved Cam a significant amount of time in preparation for painting.

We've also discovered that the wing requires a lot of strange hardware, such as penny washers that are brazed to three inch bolts and three inch, #4 BA screws that fit into wing ribs. Replacements will have to come from England as no one on this side of the pond stocks these.

A number of regular visitors have commented on how much has changed since their last visit. So, while the glory boys work the visible elements of our project, the unsung heroes grind on. Among others, this includes Alan W., board members Colette P., and Michael H. and new volunteer Ashtyn R. who continue with cleaning, repairing and installing the copper grounding strips in the fuel bays.

Another new volunteer, Hana C., got the not so glamorous task of sorting small nails for Alan W. in his efforts to reinstall grounding strips. Though tedious, it is an important task, as these original small brass nails are far higher quality than we can now find with new stock.

Now the big shocker for this quarter: David D. has completed both firewalls and is now headed to fuel bay work! Never thought we'd see the day, but it's a milestone that demonstrates real progress. Congrats and thanks Davey.

Andy W. and Don H. continue on their respected ends of the fuselage, installing bits, systems and components. This means constantly chasing crates and boxes for this-or-that small part. We've put some of our newer volunteers to work searching photo files of crates and boxes in storage to see which may contain the needed nuggets. Repeat after me, 'We're in it for the glamour...'

One of Andy W's projects this quarter has been to overhaul the emergency hydraulic hand pump located in the cockpit. Not even the seemingly bottomless resources of the internet can provide a manual or documentation for this 80 year old Turner Mfg. Co. Ltd hand pump, which, depending on the mod status of our airplane, may operate just the undercarriage, or it may also handle the tail wheel and flaps. After a lot of head scratching, and with the input of Gary T. and Dick S., Andy created his own 9 page illustrated analysis of its bits and workings, and he figures we are in the 'probably works' and 'good enough' territory with it. Given that we will never be retracting the undercarriage, this level of work and analysis is illustrative of the determination and quality he invests in our restoration project.

We mentioned in the last report that the good folks at the KF Centre for Excellence loaned us the air dryer from their Mosquito as we did not have one and needed specs and details to create our own. As civil engineer Andy was scratching his head trying to figure out how best to build one, Richard half jokingly suggested we 3D print one. This happened within earshot of Sulis clan member, Matthew, who happens to be well versed in the technology, and who took it on as a personal project. The results are amazing and we are hard pressed to tell which is which. Thanks again to KF for the loan and a big pat on the back to Matthew S. for the super work. Mosquito restoration moves into the 21st century.

(And if you are geeky enough to wonder why the Mosquito needs an air dryer, let me explain. Several cockpit canopy panels are double layered. The air in double layered panels can accumulate moisture, which at high altitude turns to frost, obscuring the crew's vision. All of these panels are connected by tubes to the air dryer, located forward of the instrument panel. The air dryer contains moisture absorbing silica gel desiccant to keep the air between the layers dry and clear).

When not assisting Andy, Dick S. is busy putting heli-coil inserts into the lower landing gear as some threads inside the phenolic piston cap are stripped out. We have looked into removing another piston cap from our spare undercarriage legs, but this fix seems to be the least intrusive. Meanwhile Jaime G. is busy working on the second main gear leg assembly, including having to replace some large rivets with bolts and looking for various replacement bits we used to finish the first leg.

For the past few Saturdays, we've put our young guns to work helping to remove the heads and banks from a seized up Merlin 68 engine belonging to our hosts at the Bomber Command Museum, while I size up what comes next to put us in a positive position for the winter. It's likely we will fetch some fuel tanks from the storage trailer and ready them for installation once we acquire some new felt strips for holding the tanks in position within the bays, and after the bonding straps have been reinstalled.

As Gary completes the last top skin replacement, we can shift our focus to the leading and trailing edges of the wing. In order to do this, we will look at flipping the wing 90 degrees, from the vertical to its horizontal orientation over the winter.

Events and Miscellaneous

Being the summer season, we had a full slate of event days, the most important of which (to us at least) was Mosquito Celebration Day on July 19th. The fairies in charge of weather, blessed us with clear and sunny, which supported a terrific turn out, aided by the annual AMC car show in the adjacent fields.

As always, the Bomber Command Museum allowed us to pick two people for each of the two engine run events, to sit in the cockpit of the Lancaster. Volunteers Penny S., and Saturday regular Alan W. were able to experience the Lanc from the inside for the morning run.

For the afternoon run we chose stalwart volunteer Davey D. and we were very pleased to be able to get John Phillips into the cockpit. John has been a strong supporter of the Mosquito Society and an active adviser on the overhaul of our Hurricane's Merlin engine.

Beyond that, John devoted years as the man most responsible for the overhaul of the four Merlins on this Lancaster. Now well past his 90th birthday, we were more than pleased to have this opportunity to get John into the cockpit again as an acknowledgment of his huge contributions over many years to both organizations.

VP and restoration boss, Jack M. did his usual lunchtime restoration update talk to a full house and in the afternoon, I presented a new talk in the main hangar on 'Facts and Follies: The Truth About the Origins of the Mosquito' to a crowd of about 170 people.

We were also pleased, on this day, to accept a donation from Wes Kraus, President of the Medicine Hat chapter of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society. Our thanks to them. We were also supported by the participation of a number of volunteers who specifically come out to help with book and merch sales: Penny S. as well as Bert and Bev F. All in all, an excellent opportunity to 'Honour and Educate'.

Next on the event day calendar was Heritage and Nanton Parade Day on August 4. This was followed up with the annual 'Bikes and Bombers' on August 23, with the season wrapping up on September 13 with an afternoon talk, an evening book launch and a Lancaster night run as part of Halifax Day. As always Mosquito Society members split their time and energy into selling merch, talking to guests and visitors, and continuing restoration work; all of which makes for an exciting, fulfilling and exhausting day.

And that's a wrap for this quarter.

Richard de Boer, President

October 9, 2025