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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Location
    near Warragul, Victoria
    Posts
    3,718

    Default Manufacturing aircraft in australia


  2. #2
    Join Date
    Aug 2015
    Location
    QLD
    Posts
    735

    Default

    Interesting vid.

    Didn’t realise we made so much of the engines here in Oz. Under licence to P+W obviously.




    .

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2020
    Location
    Bacchus Marsh, victoria
    Posts
    27

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by YBAF View Post
    Interesting vid.

    Didn’t realise we made so much of the engines here in Oz. Under licence to P+W obviously.




    .
    My dad joined the RAAF as a wartime thing. He was involved with three parts of the engine;

    The crankshaft.
    Among the local contenders to supply crankshafts, dad told me once that one of the early samples made was welded together then machined. When it was cut up and examined, the grain flow lines were obvious. Australia did produce forged crankshafts ultimately.

    the Spark plug.
    My earliest memory was of a sparkplug on our mantle piece. The plug was mounted on a piece of SRBP (synthetic resin bonded paper). Dad said this was the first production plug off the production line after the approvals process. The plug was in a box under the house after we moved to a new house in 1950. The plug finished up going rusty and it was thrown away during a clean up around 1980.

    The magneto coil cover.
    The first mouldings were made by the Company Moulded Products. This company became Nylex Corporation.
    I still have some 9/16 UNF pressure couplings and some airframe aluminium rivets. I also have a couple of aluminium frames to do with the overhead valve gear. Dad used them to make bearing housings for wood working stuff.

    The war effort gave rise to the industrialisation of Australia and laid the prosperity that we enjoyed through to the 1980's. They were good years.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2020
    Location
    Greendale Vic. Australia
    Posts
    64

    Default 'Uncle Bern'

    I still have and treasure a beautiful little tenon saw which Bern Hessey used to use building aircraft during and after wartime, I think he used to build a twin, maybe a Blenheim or similar. He had some interesting tales and was a very fine craftsman.
    He wasn't my uncle, that's what his neighbours in Black Rock called him. The tenon saw had a second life building guitars.

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