My friend David cleaned his shed and invited me to bring the ME-109 for inspection.
Since I lost my job last week and have time on my hands, I took on his offer (order?) to assist.
So, over the last three days we re-attached the broken landing gear mounts, and worked out (by trial and error) a new alignment for the landing gear which is not towed out, but rather perfect strait. This was achieved while still being able to retract the landing gear into the wing with minor modifications to the wheel bays walls.
Achieving this was pre-requisite to an effort to fix the rest of the aeroplane for another test flight.
Over the next few weeks we will work on the rest of the damaged areas. We started by fabricating a new short spar for the wing tip and got it glued back in place.
David took on himself to re-build the rudder for me, and may do some work on the ignition and fuel tank trays.
On inspection into the vertical fin, the horizontal stabilizer glue cracked at the top joints, but is intact on the bottom joint. This should be a reasonably easy fix.
We will also need to attend damage to the cockpit area (which I am yet to investigate in full), the engine cowling, and multiple areas in the fuselage fibreglass (which do not look structural, so we may ignore them for now).
If David will keep cracking the whip on me, I expect rapid progress...
Cheers,
Eran
