Happy New Year's Eve! The Last (quick) Update for 2024.

 Hello Everyone,

I/we hope you all had a very happy holiday season!  We had the whole family home for the 1st time in a few years and it was great!  I have just one Prowler update and one machine update for you in this post:

1.  Francis is Starting Fuselage Work;
2.  LeBlonde Regal Lathe Rebuild Update.

Since I was out in WI for most of the summer and fall, my "to do" list here at home got a little loaded up.  So, with the with the couple weeks that I spend writing the previous updates and then the holidays upon us - I haven't gotten a lot of Prowler work done.  Starting Jan 2nd, I'm gonna get cranking again around here.

The biggest bit of Prowler work that I did do lately, was helping Francis.  We have been emailing back-and-forth as he gets ready to add his fuselage to his Prowler project.

1.  Francis is Starting Fuselage Work -  I reported in a recent, previous post - Francis has gotten the bulk of the construction done to his center wing section of his Prowler.  Now, it is getting close to the time for him to add the fuselage.  He started work on adding the side walls to the cockpit area of his project.  But, like all airplanes, everything is connected to everything else - and that means that sometimes you sort-of have to build "everything all at once."  That is kind of how the Prowler fuselage goes on, or goes together.

To back up just a little, here is an update to his firewall work - with his firewall located onto the cockpit floor:

He was now ready to add the motor mounts.  Here is the lower, left motor mount (in the cockpit floor channel):

It was in here, somewhere, that he asked me about what distance that the upper cockpit longeron should be above the cockpit floor.  Huh!?!?  Well, never having actually built the airplane myself yet, I dug up my drawings and stared at them for a while.  I had a pretty good idea of how to figure it out, and a quick call to the "Prowler Master" (thank you, again, Ray!) confirmed my idea here.

The height of the cockpit wall (vertical placement of the longeron) is really just the result of mounting the upper motor mounts in the proper place on the firewall.  Once they are set, then making the longeron parallel to the cockpit floor sets the vertical longeron height.  Here is the upper, right motor mount bracket (behind the firewall) and the longeron that is mounted around it:

Side view of the same:

And, another isometric view on the left side:

Then, finally, here you can see how setting this longeron parallel to the cockpit floor sets the "height" of the cockpit wall:

I actually learned a lot here, myself.  Then, Ray really made it clear by saying: "The upper longerons on either side actually makes up a 'waterline' of sorts for the plane."  I had never thought of it that way before.  But he's right!  These upper longerons are perpendicular to the firewall and parallel to the cockpit floor and they should be straight along their horizontal axes all the way back to the aft bulkhead (that the vertical stab mounts to).  I had observed that in the past, but never really considered it much from a builder's perspective so it didn't "sink in" - until now.  But, it is a great way to think about it.

Here's one last look at the upper, left longeron and motor mount bracket attached to the firewall as viewed from inside the cockpit:

BTW - that transverse firewall stiffener is just sitting up there.  It actually get mounted under the motor mount brackets when finally assembled.

The discussion of the longerons going all the way back to the tailwheel compartment brought up the fuselage jig.  Francis asked about some of the dimensions.  Again, I've not supported a builder through this point of their project - so I never had a need to measure it.  I have George's fuselage jig (via Chuck, then Ray) down in my storage shed.  However, it's too big to store assembled, so I have it broken down into pieces.

Here's what the jig looked like when George had it:

Since then, someone (I think it was Chuck) modified it to allow for tailwheel actuation:

And, these angled pieces I don't have.  Not sure where they went, or how, or what they supported:

Maybe that supported the airplane off of the MLG somewhere, I'm not sure.  Let me know, if you know.

Anyway, I went down to the shed and measured all the pieces of this jig that I have. It was raining (for 4 days straight) and I don't have enough inside room to assemble this jig.  So, after taking the measurements of each of the pieces, I assembled them "virtually" on my CAD software and came up with this (top view):

And this is the side view:

This took most of a day to put this together,  But, it was rainy and dreary outside anyway - and this made for a good inside project.  Hopefully, these drawings will allow Francis (and others, later)  to fabricate his own fuselage jig there in France.  Because, between the weight and the import duties, shipping one to him would be fairly expensive.

2.  LeBlonde Regal Lathe Rebuild Update - In between a lot of great meals over the holidays, I did get out in the shop a few times to try to get some projects moving (and burn off some calories!).  The project that I am most interested in getting finished up is the lathe restoration.  The one major piece of this project that has not been cleaned up and repainted is also the biggest, heaviest, and most important - the headstock.  In a previous update I showed the modified cart that I put it on.  Here it is with the lid still on and some of the old paint removed:

Here, I have taken the lid off so that I can clean up and paint the outer part of the lip, where lid attaches:

There was an old cork seal in a groove around the top that was pretty deteriorated.  I had to find a way to block off the big hole so that I could remove the old seal without pieces of it all falling down into the gears and clutches.  I used some hard cardboard with a bunch of packing material stuffed on the inside to hold the cardboard tight to the lip and seal area:

This worked well, and here it is with the old seal removed and the seal groove wire wheeled to get it clean:

Then, I taped off the lid area and continued cleaning off the old paint:

And, here it is with all the control points and cast-in placards taped off for painting:

Then, I put some primer on it:

Here is the lid.....Before cleaning:

Cleaned:

And, also primed:

That's about as for as I've gotten on the headstock painting.  It was supposed to warm up this week and get into the low 60's F.  I was hoping I could mix some paint and get this thing final painted.  But, it didn't really get very warm.  The warmest day was really windy, so it wouldn't have been a good painting day anyway.  In any event, now, they are ready to go for the next warm day.

That's about all I have for this year-end, wrap-up of 2024, blog update.  My next update will probably be next month when I finish the 5 remaining dies for the wing and center section of the plane.

Thanks for checking out this update.  I/we hope that you all have a very happy and healthy new year!