Ye Olde P40 Shop Photos

[jmoore]

...I hope I am not stepping on anyone’s toes with this answer.

Not at all! An excellent answer, and a good link.

We also used a non-spring loaded version that is slower to use but has wedging action built in. The downside to the "English pins" (that's where we bought them) is that they were anywhere from US$3 to US$6 apiece.! We had 2-300 between two of use. But Clecos we had by the bucketful! When I find more photos I will post them if anyone is interested.

Are these P-40's your speciality JM?

I suppose, but I was actually drawn in by a more or less penniless but mad enthusiast who started the "factory" by sheer willpower. He even named his son Curtiss. I had started messing with old airplanes seriously with the restoration of the N1K2 Shiden-kai that's in the US Navy's aviation museum in Pensacola, Florida

http://www.navalaviationmuseum.org/e...aft-on-display

(Click on the

N1K2-J Shiden Kai (GEORGE)

link in the first link above for a full descrpition.)


They aren't wrong about this being the best preserved of the surviving Shiden-kai. Even the markings were exactly duplicated that were on this aircaft as captured. We found out who flew it (A ten victory pilot who later flew for JAL), and discovered and tranlated the poem lightly scratched under the LH tailplane. We even had a woman who worked in the engine factory come by during the restoration- she was in high school at the time and more or less got "drafted" as a factory worker.

BTW: all the New England Air Museum did with the plane in the almost 20 years they had it was to de-rivet one wing and the horizontal, and do their best to lose the canopy and cannons. We had it from '93 to '94 and spent most of our time just reversing their mess. Not that I still get teeth grinding angry about it....

Dang, I miss that old N1K2! I slept inside it 2-3 days a week whilst I was working on it for about a year.