In the distant past I posted some information about the Shack 58's that I had in my warehouseup here in Lancashire, they were airworthy and in huge mid blue packing cases, that if undoen needed my overhead gantry crane to remove, the enginnes were fully inhibited with alsorts of blue to pink moisture cards all over the place, with the engines themselves being in a big zipped up cocoon bag again with alsorts of moisture indicators on them, like wise the huge amount of boxes of propellors (for Shackletons) that I purchased from the MOD sales about 1993/4, these numbered about 160 boxes about 15ft long x about 24 " square, each box was a carpenters work of art with the two props each space and cossetted in really soft felt fully waterproofed with the two hubs feathering rods and translation unit, every item had a form describing what is was ( in Mil Speak) along with all the part numbers and varous gaskets and rubber seals, due to being contacted by the Pylon Racer Gary Levitz we needed to open all the boxes to see what we had(with tickets) hold ya breath, we had 70 sets of brand new (and refurbised ex Hawkers at Bolton) props, with 90 used and well used and some damaged, after taking advice we sifted the damaged ones out and scrapped them, all the good ones went to the Plyon racers, to fit into variouse single seaters including the one that finally destructed itself sending Gary Levitz to the big runway in the sky.
they fitted the Griffon 58 direct to the engine mounts of a highly modified P51, this also had lear jet wings grafted into it to try to get more speed, then they fitted the Shack Contra props, cut down the allow the nose to come level for take off and landing, they cut the props down on the apron using a tape measure and a power hack saw, when I asked them about balancing those cut down props they replied we just grind a bit here and there, I hope they wernt too supprised when Miss America tore itself to pieces, especially as they had taken out the centre spark pugs from the Griff 58 and substituted injectors for the NItro to go in when full throttle was asked for, if you want to try and see these pict I posted them under my old monica VfrpilotPB, you should find em.
Along with all this kit I sold new CSU's new Mags( I had 200 of those) new coils new prop bearings in fact you name it I had it along with all the special tools to fit and remove alsorts of kit, before I committed this kit to the US flyers I rang every museum in the UK who might have some interest....no one had any time to talk or space to hold such spares, sadly I too need the space and we scrapped 150 boxes of prop nose cones, intermediate cones and engine shrouds along with 50 8ft squre boxes of undercart frames and stub axles, hundreds of hydrualic rams for bombay doors and the huge rams for the radome
To those of you who now want such things, I did my damdest to find everyone who might want them, some of the props went to be hung up inside Schipol Airport some to private collectors, but all the working stuff went to the states.
I hope I have not ruined your weekend or bored you all.
Peter RB