AeroVenture Home of South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum

The end of the tail-boom is severely damaged and will take some work to mate it up with the tail-fin. The RAF spray bay now eagerly awaits the main body so that it can be stripped too.

Some of the undercarriage components have been disassembled, cleaned and inspected. This was another difficult area with many of the attachment bolts being corroded solid. One of the skids is un-useable as it is severely damaged and cracked along one third of its length. At the top left of the photo is the fwd U/C cross tube, the end fittings of which are made of aluminium alloy. these are showing signs of heavy corrosion and the tube may have to be replaced or at least the end fittings changed.

This picture is taken from above the engine attachment point. The engine attachment frame itself has been removed to facilitate the repairs to the skin. Because the skin is a honey-comb sandwich the repairs consist of two metal patches and an araldite filler. The damaged areas have been smoothed out and rounded off in preparation for the repairs. The area in the lower left shows some of the many dents on the airframe that have been repaired with doublebond cream which is a two part mix body filler used to repair aircraft.

Some of the damage to the underside is clearly evident in this picture. This is the forward belly panel out of the three belly panels fitted on the Gazelle.

The controls have been removed from the lower mixer unit and along with other control rods have been immersed in OM-15 which is a hydraulic oil with good penetrative properties. The mixer unit is the item to the left of the bucket, to the right is the passenger footwell floor with a tail rotor control bellcrank still fitted.

The forward floor has been removed eventually. The pilots cyclic stick remnants were severely corroded and were very difficult to remove. As you can see we eventually managed it.

All the floors have been removed for assessment and repair. Two or three came out easy, but the remainder, that had the control runs fitted to them, took some persuasion.

The lower fuselage is now being looked at. It has suffered from quite a bit of impact damage. All the receptacles for the lower belly panels have been removed due to excessive corrosion, the damaged skin repaired or dressed out and primer applied. Then new receptacles are due to be fitted. I will send a picture of this tomorrow, these are the first of the new parts to be fitted to the airframe

Meanwhile the instrument console itself has been stripped and re-shaped. This will be sprayed soon before we commence re-fitting instruments that we will be getting from XW851, a Gazelle currently in storage in RAF Shawbury. This aircraft has been given to us to strip as necessary by the Gazelle Integrated Project Team. The IPT is the main fleet controller of our aircraft. To see the instrument console before work started, click here

To repair the area where the battery bay fuse box hinge is fitted, a new insert has been manufactured. The insert is covered by masking tape to aid drawing lines for the holes to be drilled.

Using console blanks to keep the console straight. New upper angles have been drilled.
We had quite a few upper angles available after an incident with a Gazelle in Canada. The whole instrument panel suddenly fell to the right during a flight when the upper angles which support the instrument panel mounts suddenly cracked through. Subsequent investigation into our fleet in Northern Island found 10 out of 22 cracked to varying degrees.

We have removed the damaged hinge section and the upper angles.

Once the interseat console was removed we assessed the damage.

October 2006

Another photo of XX411 arriving in Aldergrove.

XX411 has safely arrived in Aldergrove and is in its temporary home in one of the two RUBB hangars that are used by 1 Flight of 5 REGT AAC to store their Islanders. I will attach photos to a weekly e-mail to show how we are progressing.

Unless other credit given photographs on this site are copyright Jim Keable 2002-2008