History of RNZAF Harvard II NZ946

welcome to the first video and what I hope to be a bit of a series on the restoration of um this little project U which is a North American Harvard this is NZ 946 so it also had a serial number of ah1 197 so I'll tell you a little bit of history about the aircraft and then we'll uh do a bit of a walk around and you can have a look at what is left of this particular uh machine uh the North American Aviation uh number was uh 6 2759 and it was issued to the new um New Zealand um government under the Empire air training scheme so we sh to New Zealand on a vessel called The W tapu which is Mari meaning Y is water in tapoo sacred uh in May 1941 and it was assembled at hobsonville which was an Airfield just north of uh ockland City Central it was bought on charge on the 5th of July 1941 and it went to uh the number one service flying training school at wigram which is in the South iseland Christ Church that's the current site of the Royal New Zealand Air Force Museum and I used to fly gliders there back in the late 80s and early '90s um it was converted to an instructional airframe um which the number there was 144 with three territorial Air Force at wigram um in 31st of August 1950 and then it was sold uh by tender um tender was 26255 uh to the horl company in ash Burton uh for the uh big sum of Just £25 So based on the tender number I guess it was sold in [Music] 1955 uh it was then given to the JC's uh in methin which is little Inland Town um the skiing base for uh Mount hut ski field uh and it went there in 1967 was then converted um as a play thing had a a set of steps going up the back and a slide coming out the underneath side was mounted on Poes and had wings from another aircraft and also had tail feathers you know different sort of cing on the front no propeller so it was used by kids um and during that time got a quite a bit of graffiti some of it quite colorful and then it was acquired by John Walsh uh who's based in Blen and I F first saw the aircraft in 2005 I'd been to the um classic Fighters air show based at um om marker Airfield and went to visit John and have a look at um uh his farm where a number of p4s used to base themselves during World War II um and uh the the aircraft this aircraft here was sitting outside of that stage so it was um connected the um the rear fuselage was connected to the uh front fuselage and there's also a center section uh with it uh that's pretty rotten now so I don't know whether I will be um looking after that um basically because of the it's very poor condition so um I purchased it earlier this year um so first uh time I saw it was 19 years ago and I purchased it in uh February uh this year and I've just bought it down here to pukaki uh from blenham yesterday um in um June of 2024 so we'll do a bit of a walk around I've had a bit of a clean of the aircraft um so um this is the rear section here and we'll do a bit of a walk around from back to front so um that attached obviously to this part of it and the were attachment points which have gone now um and what I'm hoping to do at some stage is um get the um canopy um all loosened up and be able to move that back now to prevent kids getting out of it it actually had a um a grid mesh that was uh sitting in this area here and went right over the canopy uh was made of steel and you can see some of those stains there and that was to prevent cids climbing out of it and breaking the necks by falling off it um the panels here are actually relatively good the color was um originally kind of this blue under here so you can see the bare metal and then it had a blue um on the outside and then it's been very roughly painted um you can see the STS there from someone with a spray gun who's painted it yellow and even though it's a pretty rubbish sort of spray great job it's actually protected it quite well U from the elements so as I said it sat outside for a number of years and then John put it um under cover and which would have projected it a bit more but of course the birds found a nice little home of it as well so here's the uh the firewall at the front and you can see attachment points here for other bits of frame um little bit mted at the bottom there um was like that when I got it but also you can see that um it also prevented it sliding back on the trailer um measuring and transport when it was uh tied down so big hole in the front don't know why that was cut out um and you can see up the top that's pretty um corroded through there uh pretty uh rubbish metal and that'll have to be replaced and you can see all the quick fasten that were used here to put that panel on but the uh the best part of it really is the um the canopy frame looks very good very World War iish um so here's an electrical um function box of some sort sort um you see little um bits of writing on there and I've just shown um taken uh this video this time to show you the cleaning so it was covered with um algae um and I've just been brushing that off with um small um soft brush and also getting rid of the algae with water so again we can see where the uh the Mish was that um covered the um canopy frame um some of the panels still open quite nicely we can see that again people have scratched their names on it um we'll have a look around inside here now you'll notice it's pretty bare um there we've got the uh dashboard up the front for the instrument panel so obviously two pilots and what's missing here is framing cross framing that goes from basically left to right um which will made it very rigid and there's also another angled um um pipe that would have gone through there that's been cut out and that was cut out obviously so the kids could climb up through the bottom here up the steps and then slide down the slide at the front it's still got some of the original um plaques and things in it here so if we look up here you can just make our in engine particulars and it goes um fuel specification Etc so I'll be able to clean those up um but yeah all through it little bits of um colorful graffiti people have put the names on it um and I'll probably put some sort of um bar through the bottom there uh just to strengthen it up um and make it a bit more rigid so basically that's the interior and U nice to see some of the pla still there um down the back um you can see some of the original um uh writing on it uh here we've got baggage uh restrictions uh for normal eror btics um no load uh for normal flight uh what have we got there um I think it says um 95 lb um if it's got flares fitted or 85 lb no flares fitted G little bits of graffiti um down the back uh the cross member there is original uh for rigidity um but the two um box section steel parts were obviously put in to strengthen um the fuselage when it was used as um a slide in the kids playground so uh part of the floor's still there but a big chunks missing uh there and you can see the condition of the the back part I've yet to clean this but it looks like it's come out of a swamp but again you still got panels and things that um open up um again you can see all the corrosion that's on it so um yeah what gets restored and what uh gets retained is hard to say it would be nice to actually have the two parts M together again but that would require a bit of work so if you're interested in the restoration of this um keep following the videos I will post more as I clean it up and um do subscribe to our Channel um bipe flights um you also see on the channel we're restoring a royal New Zealand Air Force um A4 Skyhawk flight simulator so that's been progressing quite nicely over the last 6 months and um so yeah we've done over a dozen videos just showing the restoration of that so hope you like the video if you did uh click the like button and uh we look forward to to seeing you back in the next uh video

Channel: biplaneflights

Views: 4,279

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Id: C0UhsxKPxkk

Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2024