We started work in May 2006, and so far have managed to strip out the cockpit, remove the engine, main fuel tank and outer wings. (The booms and tail had already been taken off and stored before we started.) Everything has ben carefully photographed and "bagged & tagged" and is being restored piece by piece whenever help is available.
Currently I am finishing off the restoration of the main fuel tank bay and the firewall, prior to getting the inner wings off (hopefully in the next few weeks). The plan then is to turn the Fuselage Pod up on end so that it's sitting on the firewall, as this will make it easier to work on the rotted wood on the Pod, and will also save space in the working area. The wings will be stored, and the main areas of concern for the rest of this year will be the pod and the engine.
Although the aircraft is complete (aside from the radar), its time spent as a Gate Guardian at HMS Dryad in the 1970's did it no good at all, hence the need to replace a lot of the wood on the fuselage. However we're using a new 3-D laser scanning technique to capture the shape of the pod so that when we put the new wood on we can recreate the profiles and curves exactly. This should save us some time and produce a more accurate result.
We're two years into the work and I reckon there's at least another 5-6 years left to go! Visitors are always welcome - The Museum is open afternoons on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and all day Sundays and Bank Holidays. I'm usually there on Saturdays and occasionally on a Sunday.
The engine and outer wings are already removed and the cockpit is stripped out and the components are being restored individually. Currently we're working towards getting the inner wings removed, which will allow us to store them somewhere out of the way and concentrate on the Pod. Taking these off will be a complicated business as we haven't got a lot of room to work in, and getting a crane in means moving a lot of other aircraft out of the way first, which of course requires good weather (they have to go outdoors) and lots of helpers. Nonetheless I hope to achieve this by mid-summer at the latest. The other main activity is the stripping and cleaning of the engine, which we would hope to have completed by next year which is the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Museum - so we would like to display the fully restored engine as our team's contribution to the festivities! Once the inner wings are removed, work can start in earnest on removing the rotted wood from the Pod. This will be a slow process, because to preserve some structural integrity the wood will need to be replaced just one section at a time. Eventually the cockpit floor will need to be replaced as this is rotted through in some places, but I would like to get the 'shell' of the Pod back to a sound condition before attempting that.
