Hi Everyone,
Firstly I'd like to apologise for the lack of updates on the various forums, and the sporadic and sometimes contradictory information that was sometimes posted on social media. Hopefully these times are behind us now and normal service can be resumed. As I'm sure you can understand it's been a troublesome year for WR963 and the remaining crew.
I'm Phil Woods, on of '963's crew. I'll be posting the regular updates from now on if the interest is still there, and hopefully answering any and all questions you all have to the best of my ability. Although I'm not quite as knowledgeable as my brother, I work on WR963 regularly, I'm qualified to crew her as P2, admin on the two facebook groups we run, run the eBay shop and assist with the Instagram account and website building. More recently I've taken over running the "Friends" side of things and I'm one of the two directors of the company that owns and looks after WR963. So I hope that I'll be up to the task.
We've had a bad year in terms of reliability, Hydraulic issues on the last evening run back in February and starting issues with the engines since. Coupled with radio problems too and it's not been the year we wanted or expected. We've slowly been working our way through these problems though, and I'm pleased to announce that WR963 is now servicable and capable of running all 4 engines.
The number 4 engine problem has now been found and fixed. Initially thought to be fouled plugs, these were stripped, cleaned, gapped and refitted. We checked for power getting to the booster coil and magneto, and the points were cleaned and gapped in both. Still it refused to run. Eventually, we found that although power was getting to the booster coil, it wasn't supplying power out and once swapped for a brand new unit from our stores the no4 engine ran beautifully.
Hydraulic issues are drawing to a close too, the Hydraulc pumps have both been removed, sent away to be fully rebuilt and refitted. A fully rebuilt hand pump, cleaned and remade lines, cleaned filters and solenoids, and correctly adjusted pressure reducing valves should now see these problems cured.
The next run we have is this weekend, the Saab club is hosting their AGM at Midland Aviation museum and we're providing a 4 engined run as entertainment afterwards. I'll take photos and report back on Sunday! Fingers crossed for the first 4 engined run since February.
Sorry for the lengthy first post, believe me I've condensed a LOT of work into this update, I didn't want to swamp the place on my first go.
Regards,
Phil Woods