As most of you probably already know, our Chapter owns two donated gliders that need to be restored. Since EAA Chapters cannot operate an aircraft, the gliders will eventually need to be transferred to another entity if they are ever to fly again. To that end, a group of Chapter members (and others?) have gathered to form the Brazos River Glider Club.
If interested in joining the fun, please contact Dick Keyt to learn more. Below are excerpts from an email sent to glider club members on 23 December.
This is a summary of our work this past weekend. We have the glider in Jordan Normark’s workshop. The left wing is laying down on cradles and the right wing is vertical, resting on its leading edge. This past week we removed all of the steel parts from the left wing that were relatively simple to remove. The spoiler mechanism had enough friction that it was not retracting. All of the steel parts were de-greased and bead-blasted in preparation for priming and painting. I will make every effort to prime and paint these parts before our next meeting. Andrew Ingersol has volunteered to help me do this painting and I will coordinate with him on when to do the painting.
The goal for our next work session will be to reassemble the left wing, then disassemble the steel parts from the right wing and clean and prepare them for prime and paint. We need to manufacture “bullets” to be used to assemble the wings to the fuselage. These will aid in aligning the holes for the bolts to be inserted.
Carl has been speculating that we could be ready to do the re-covering of the wings by late January…..
Our next meeting will be on Saturday the second of January at Normark’s hangar/workshop at 9am. Normark’s address is 9611 Taxiway Dr. in Pecan Plantation.
Have a great Christmas and Holiday week and I will look forward to seeing everyone on the second of January 2021! (hopefully 2021 will be better….)
Dick Keyt
