The Stinson has been stripped bare. With the exception of the tailwheel, every part, wire, piece of wood and bolt has been removed from the SR-9C’s frame. There are a few repairs that need to be made (see picture below of a broken piece of tubing where the step attaches to the frame), and once they are made, the frame will head down to Everett to get media blasted where they have a long enough room for the big Stinson.
Many of the parts are in great shape and will only need some cleaning and refinishing. Some of the wood work will have to be rebuilt as there was a fair amount of less than perfect wood on the plane. While we’re ending up doing a complete rebuild on the Stinson rather than the originally planned sand, paint and fly, in the end this plane is going to look really great and we will have a fully restored aircraft that we know will give us many years of great flying.
Now the debate is which should be finished first? Both the Waco and the Stinson have a lot of work ahead of them, and we want to see them both fly as soon as possible. Decisions, decisions….
