We’re continue to make lots of progress on the Bulldog these days. landing gear is coming together and we’ve installed bushings on the gear pylons along with grease fittings. The landing gear on the Bulldog is an interesting design combining ideas from a few other airplanes including the gullwing Stinson.
Above you can see the left pylon with the gussets tacked on. Eventually these are formed to the tubing and welded. Below you can see the finished pylon with bushing and grease fitting.
We have some drawings for the Bulldog that Jim has collected over the years and they’ve been invaluable in recreating this classic air racer. The sheet below has been getting a lot of looks lately as we continue to spend a lot of time on stations 1 & 2.
As helpful as the drawings are, they don’t have all the answers. Jim has worked for many years to collect as much information as possible about the Bulldog. Sometimes when you think you’re just going to get a short newspaper clipping about the airplane, you instead are given more information than you expected. Jim was able to discover some information from the clipping below that he had not found anywhere else. The discovery ended up leading to a major change to the Bulldog. We’ll have more info on the changes from the newspaper story along with some pictures in a future post.
