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Bob Grimstead
Captain

Gender: Male
Location: Perth, Western Australia or West Sussex, England
Registered: Dec 2006
Status: Offline
Posts: 2027

Click here to see the profile for Bob Grimstead Visit http://www.redhawksduo.co.uk Send email to Bob Grimstead Send private message to Bob Grimstead Find more posts by Bob Grimstead Edit or delete this message Reply w/Quote
Posted Friday, January 13, 2012 @ 08:54 PM  

I have no idea where I got this information, but being a Fournier jackdaw, I copied it from somewhere. I hope it's of interest. Yours, Bob

 Ed Bjornrud's RF4
                                                                                                                            
The Story of N30X                                                                         Cornville: January 14th 2002
 
The Early Years.
Fournier RF4D, serial No 4107 started life as “F-OGDO”  on April 24th, 1969 when the logbook was officially started. The first entry is ?  Since this is in French I don’t know what it is all about. J
 
The next log book entry in also in French, is dated March 11, 1969  but here the words “des Antilles” appear, so I assume that this means that by this time the little bird had arrived at its first home, which was The French Antilles in The Caribbean. The airplane’s owner was a local flying club based in Martinique.
The hours kept building and by July 1974 a total of 271.48 hrs had been accumulated.
 
With the help of my Senior Technical Advisor and Mentor, Patrick Faucheron I have obtained a picture of
F-OGDO on the tarmac next to whatever.
 
Nothing else is known about its early life except entries showing that it was being flown on a regular basis.
 
F-OGDO emigrates to the US and becomes N30X
 
May 16th 1975 the French registry was cancelled, and on June 1st, 1976, an “Application for Airworthiness Certificate “ was made to the American FAA, with a special request for a short “N” number. The “Bird” had flown the coop and was applying for US citizenship!
 
 On July 1st, 1976 a “Special Airworthiness Certificate”  in the “Experimental” category was issued for “N30X”, and the airplane took up residence in Florida, USA. The new owner was an A&P mechanic.
 
The change in citizenship also involved a major job of repair and restoration, as  the wings needed a complete rebuild in addition to replacing part of the rear bottom of the fuselage. All the control surfaces were also recovered. The engine was overhauled. I found a note that the repair work took 3 months. I have also found evidence of additional “repair” work.
 
After all this work N30X took to the air again and by March 1980 a total of 490.26 hours had been logged.
 
What happened after the initial emporia of having been rebuilt and flown, I do not know, but an indication is a picture from 1988, which shows the little fella minus horizontal tail and propeller and looking rather faded at an airfield.
 

 
New owner again
 
At the end of 1988 N30X changed hands again. The new owner was also an A&P mechanic, and the residence was still Florida.  Since there are no logbook entries between 1980 and 1988 I have no idea what happened in between, but obviously life had not been easy.. I have obtained some pictures which shows various stages of repair, but they do not show any kind of professionalism as I understand it.
 
The logbook entry from 1 May 1989 is a full page, and describes a complete overhaul and rebuild of the wing and also parts of the cockpit structure, in addition to the horizontal tail. The flying surfaces was also recovered.
 
There are no logbook entries after the overhaul, so I presume the aircraft was not flown for unknown reasons.
 
In 1996 N30X  was again sold to another A&P, and his job was to be a complete rebuild  of the airframe. Since he had already done a complete overhaul on another RF4D he was quite familiar with the type.
 
Unfortunately he was only able to complete the rebuild of the wing before he passed away. His son having all the airplanes he needed  (is that really possible?) decided to sell N30X.
 

--------------------
Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV

Bob Grimstead
Captain

Gender: Male
Location: Perth, Western Australia or West Sussex, England
Registered: Dec 2006
Status: Offline
Posts: 2027

Click here to see the profile for Bob Grimstead Visit http://www.redhawksduo.co.uk Send email to Bob Grimstead Send private message to Bob Grimstead Find more posts by Bob Grimstead Edit or delete this message Reply w/Quote
Posted Friday, January 13, 2012 @ 08:58 PM  

N30X moves to Arizona

I found an ad in “Soaring Magazine” for an RF4D looking for a home, and having tried unsuccessfully to buy an RF4D some 30 years ago I knew at least what an RF4D looked like. Most people in the US haven’t a clue what a Fournier or an RF4D is.

Having recently retired to Northern Arizona after having spent over 30 years in the Seattle area working on somewhat larger airplanes, I was looking for a project, something with airplanes written all over it. N30X seems to fit the bill.

N30X resided in Denver, Colorado, but that was a easy one day days drive (1,200 KM). Since I was not that familiar with wooden airplanes, and at the same time being all psyched up I made an deal to buy N30X.

Part of the deal was that the seller agreed to deliver the airplane with the 30’ trailer to my house.

This is how N30X looked when I first saw her. The landing gear is a specials version to cover all possibilities, both for taildragger pilots, or those more comfortable with a nose gear. Actually the extra gear which is attached to the main and secondary spar fitting makes it very easy to move the airframe.

The day after!

Since the wing had already been rebuilt, and being somewhat naive I thought the rebuild would be a simple job. There was just a few things that needed fixing! The fuselage restoration had not been started, but the control surfaces and the fin had been stripped.

After N30X arrived I stored the wing in a hangar I had rented and wheeled the fuselage into my two car garage, which doubles as my workshop. I did already have a drill press, a bandsaw and a compressor. So I expected that besides buying a sander and a few hand tools I should be in good shape. One tool that I also had was a Dremel Rotary tool with a 3’ snake. This tool has proved to be a Godsend, without it I would have been in deep dodo!

The Fuselage

After checking some suspicious areas I decided to completely strip the fuselage of paint and fabric, since what I saw did not inspire much confidence in the various repairs done earlier.

This is a picture of the “repair” done to the top LH inboard longeron. The front “splice” is not quite a 1:12 scarf I am afraid, and the rear aft “splice” is just a “butt joint” where the turtledeck starts. Plus plenty of “HobbyPoxy”. As far as I have been able to establish “HobbyPoxy” is used for marine and model aircraft applications!

Of the six top longerons which surrounds the cockpit area, four had to have the center part(about 50-75 cm long) replaced, and the inboard one on the LH side, which is about 2 meters long had to be replaced completely. The inside skin on the LH side in the cockpit also had to be partially replaced, as well as the outside skins on both sides of the cockpit area. The replaced pieces are each about 1 meter long.

This caused a potential problem since by cutting all the structural pieces at the same time, I was concerned about the structural integrity of the fuselage while I was trying to repair it. I did not look forward to the possibility of the airframe suddenly collapsing while I was trying to repair it! Fortunately I was able to sequence the repair in such a way that nothing broke.

The “skates” on the underside of the forward floor showed evidence of numerous belly landings. The landing gear doors were a local variations of the originals, plus that the whole belly was soaked in engine oil.

The tail cone was another disaster. It had also been “repaired” with liberal amounts of “HobbyPoxy”. The tail wheel support was full of rot, so the whole tail section supporting the tail wheel and the vertical fin has to be rebuilt. The support for the handle (tube) forward of the horizontal tail also had rot damage, especially on the LH side.

--------------------
Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV

Bob Grimstead
Captain

Gender: Male
Location: Perth, Western Australia or West Sussex, England
Registered: Dec 2006
Status: Offline
Posts: 2027

Click here to see the profile for Bob Grimstead Visit http://www.redhawksduo.co.uk Send email to Bob Grimstead Send private message to Bob Grimstead Find more posts by Bob Grimstead Edit or delete this message Reply w/Quote
Posted Friday, January 13, 2012 @ 09:01 PM  

The Horizontal Tail

No repairs had been done to the horizontal tail except the paint had been sanded off. After I had completely stripped paint and fabric off the horizontal stabilizer, I discovered that the repair done by one of the previous owners was totally unacceptable. There was plenty of “HobbyPoxy” all around! It would have been easier to fabricate a completely new horizontal stabilizer then to repair this one. After checking with Patrick, I decided to look for a new/used part. Patrick found a used unit in France, and that problem was solved.

An arrangement was made with Jean Michel Daubagna , an fellow “RF nut” who is also a Air France 747-400 Captain to arrange the transport of the “new” horizontal tail to me. This was accomplished as far as LAX with relative ease. In addition to the horizontal stabilizer I had also bought some parts from EIS in Germany and Jean Michel carried everything with him

I am not sure of all that happened at LAX, but the box containing the horizontal tail and also the additional part were loaded on a truck for transport to my home. After about a week with no box of airplane parts I stared to get concerned. After several calls to the trucking company I was able to establish that they had in their warehouse something which they thought was an airplane wing! They actually had a bet going on about what is was, but NO paperwork. Since my name and address was on the outside of the box they were able to establishe that I was the recipient. A couple of days later the “box” arrived.

When I “removed” the horizontal tail the whole box collapsed, since it was made mostly of cardboard with a few sticks of wood. The additional parts are still somewhere between California and Arizona I presume! The tail itself survived with only a few scratches.

Control Surfaces

With all the damage to the wood structure I decide that I did not need any more work that I was not familiar with, so I farmed out the recovering of the ailerons, the elevators and the rudder to a local A&P.

Bits and Pieces

Since I was not a “wood aircraft guy” before this job, the learning curve has been rather steep. One thing that I was concerned about was: how do I scarfe plywood? After some testing I decided that the Dremel rotary tool with a small sanding disk is the way to go.

I started the project in late 1999 and so far I have gotten the cockpit area mostly done and fwd the floor is in. The cockpit area took a long time since nearly all the pieces had to be replaced.

I kept looking at the tail cone for a long time, but since I did not have a good feeling of how to do it I postponed it as long as I could. The aft 40 cm had to be replaced. However it wasn’t a difficult as I imagined when I got started. The vertical fin interface was a major concern, but it seems to fit!

Upgrades etc

In addition to the repair and restoration I have decided to upgrade the engine with a Great Plains 1600 cc which will give me about 53 HP. The new engine has an accessory case attached to the rear which houses an alternator in addition to the starter. I am also replacing the single ignition magneto with a dual Leburg electronic ignition system . The umbrella handle brake will be removed and a hydraulic brake installed. This last modification is copied after Aiichiro Nakazawa. Haven’t quite decided on the brake handle location yet, the stick though is the front runner

As far as instruments go I am a firm believer in the “KISS” principle (Keep It Simple Stupid), so except for adding a CHT and possibly a EGT and upgrading to electric oil pressure and temp gauges, NO changes.

As far as a schedule,” I am way ahead of schedule”, since there is no schedule on this project!

Ed Bjornrud

--------------------
Flying and displaying Fournier RF4Ds VH-HDO and G-AWGN, building replica RF6B G-RFGB and custodian of RF6B prototype F-BPXV

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