The local friends of the Port Elizabeth South African Airforce Museum are a friendly bunch busy with many projects designed to enhance the visitor experience to the local Airforce Museum.
Museum friend, Paul Stringer, writes about the restoration of the Airspeed AS-10 Oxford Mk2:
The holiday period affected progress on the Oxfords restoration, as did a considerable time spent trying to correct the sudden inability of the spray gun used to paint some of its parts, to coat properly. Eventually, it was decided to buy a new one. A third attempt to tint the matt green camouflage paint to the correct colour proved successful.
Fred has renovated and fitted parts for the emergency hand starting mechanism, a sprocket and chain linked contraption with a starting handle operated from the top of the inner wing, which engages with a small gear box on the back of the engine. Both engines have this mechanism, however, parts are missing for the second one.
Errol has started work on an electrical distribution board, having disassembled it, cleaned up the various parts and is now busy re-assembling it, sometimes having to substitute correct parts as shown in the original manual. A start has been made on installing the wiring which will be a mammoth task given that the main harnesses were cut at some stage in the aircrafts history.
Errol is also taking a look at two of the many spare magnetos’ we have, it would be great if they can be fully renovated, so that they might be swapped for missing items we need. The Museum has received correspondence from a chap in Canada who is undertaking the restoration of an Oxford who is initially looking for information but apparently has many spares. The museum staff will interact with him on both information and potential swap deals.
The SAAF Museum’s Art Gallery & Art Collection is taking shape with four new paintings now hung. The top two are on permanent loan to the Art Collection and the bottom two are in the gallery for sale at R2000.00 each. PESAAF Friends, Volunteers and staff receive 20% discount with an additional donation made to the Museum.
Artist Don Bell can make prints for sale of all the work to sizes to suit your needs.
Alan Straton
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