November and early December was a time to finalize fabrication and assembly of some of the fuselage of this Texas Flying Legends Museum’s P-51C project in preparation for interior painting. Machined form for top rearfuselage skin. It is seven and a half feet long! The cockpit interior is being finished to the point where it...Continue Reading
Some visible changes have occurred in the restoration of Lope’s Hope 3rd these past few weeks. All of the cowl formers have been fabricated and fitted. Fitting of the new top cowl skins is being done now. Ryan fits upper cowl skins. Work on the doghouse and scoop progresses. Always a noticeable assembly is the...Continue Reading
This month the final permanent riveting of many of the fuselage skins took place. The balsa fuselage tank supports were completed. The doghouse progressed nicely and is nearly finished. One of the major mysteries was what command radio and radio compass would be correct for a CBI P-51C-5NT. Through lots of help from knowledgeable Mustang...Continue Reading
As more skin is added permanently, the P-51C characteristic cockpit windows are beginning to take shape. Research has centered around determining the correct radio compass and command radio installations for the original Lope’s Hope 3rd. Those installations aren’t detailed in the engineering drawings we have so we are searching tech orders for the information. Fuselage parts...Continue Reading
May found Lope’s Hope 3rd getting more fuselage frames fabricated and installed. Randy and Ryan were fitting more skin sections. It is a long process to make a replacement skin section. If an older but unserviceable section is available, it can be used as a pattern to layout the new section and a template for rivet hole...Continue Reading
The fuselage frame parts have been produced and fitted together in the jig. Turtle deck frames distinguish this fuselage as a C model. Once that was done the frame parts were disassembled and given their first coat of zinc chromate, the yellowish colored first coat that goes on before assembly. Later on , after complete fuselage...Continue Reading
With the horizontal and vertical stabilizers complete and the rear fuselage done as well, work moves on to the forward fuselage structure fabrication. This part of the fuselage is in the jig and it won’t be too long until it comes out, joins the firewall forward structure and is mounted on a stand. The firewall forward structure is...Continue Reading
