Dad in the Lil Buzzard

I’ve started setting aside one day a week to help dad get his plane back in the air. A few years back he built the Lil Buzzard for keeping close to the house instead of flying the Musketeer. I really think that he prefers flying the smaller planes because he started out there with my uncle all them years ago..

Tornado Wreckage

He got about a year of flying around the patch in the Buzzard when the ‘tornado’ hit.. The tornado pretty much trashed the local grass strip airport. It took out a lot of old planes, and ruined quite a few good planes that were still flying.. I think the pile of scrap in front of what is left of dad’s hanger was Andy’s plane.. It was in dad’s hanger and on top of the Lil Buzzard.

2 Stroke

As you can see, there isn’t a lot left of the hanger either.. I have no idea how the plane didn’t get more damage than it did.. Since the plane needed a total strip and recover to look for bent metal tubing dad decided to beef up the engine a bit. It was running this small 2 stroke engine that was fine for taking him and one of my ‘small’ cousins around the field, it had no power and was just ‘slow’.. The obvious solution was to go with a larger Continental engine.

First Cut.. Bad Idea..

The weight isn’t an issue, but the new size is.. It has left us with a cowling that is far too narrow and cuts back too steeply from the front.. We are going to be building a new cowling for the plane, but we need a starting point.. So out with the jig saw and we split the cowling in half and section it about 3″ wider..

Sectioned Cowling

We didn’t get too much farther than this today.. It was 2pm and tummies were grumbling and food needed to be found.. Next weekend I think we will be sealing off the nose with thin sheet aluminum or cardboard and then making a foam shell to serve as a base for a new fiberglass cowling.. The original plan was to use a C140 or C150 nose to work from, but even junked ones are far more money than we are willing to spend what what is essentially a template that we are planning to throw away when we are done..

Just to round things out, here are a few more pics from the tornado damage at the airport.

What Hanger?

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