EAA Sport Aviation - September 2010

Emerald Isle
Aeronca

Restoring a 15AC Aeronca

BY GORDON HENDRICK, EAA 696414

DURING MY FLIGHT TRAINING at Birr Airport (EIBR) in Birr, Ireland, in 1999, my flight instructor suggested I buy a 1949 Aeronca 15AC Sedan that had been sitting at the airport. My first reaction was, “I can’t afford an airplane!” Fortunately, during the course of my training, I met three other flight students—Johnny Keating, Peter Hynes, and Mike Farrell—who, along with me, agreed to become co-owners of Aeronca Sedan EI-BKC.

As four flight students with an airplane we were unable to fly, we were fortunate to meet Tommy Mounsey. Tommy had many years of taildragger experience and was previously a flight instructor, and he was happy to fly us all over the country. Sadly, we lost our good friend Peter Hynes early in the rebuild, and Tommy took over as the fourth member of the group.

We began our restoration in October 2000, when we removed the wings and the fabric from the fuselage. We called in Dave Bruton, supervising engineer from Midland Aviation, to inspect the metalwork. He informed us that we had to completely clean the metalwork for the inspection. With all of the paint removed, the metalwork was passed and then painted and corrosion-proofed. When the paint dried, we looked at all the bits that were to be re-installed and decided to replace the old formers and stringers as they were badly rotted.

Since we had the control cables, timber, and fittings replaced, the next job was to completely rewire the plane. We then needed

dope and paint before we could start our reassembly. The cost of shipping the dope and paint from the United States was too expensive, so we decided to take the ferry to the United Kingdom for one major shopping spree. The first stop was an avionics installation workshop to get a secondhand transponder and altitude encoder. While there, we discovered that we could buy some used and certified avionics that were being removed from another airplane.

Back home, we were ready to begin, but had only one problem—we knew nothing about fabric work. After a quick lesson and much encouragement from Joe Davy, our certificated flight instructor, we began with the tail feathers and ailerons. Next, it was time to tackle the fuselage. We started by installing the wiring loom and the control cables. We decided to use a full fabric sock to speed things up. Then it was time to install the panel and wiring. We designed the panel and then installed the radio navigation equipment, GPS, radios, intercom, and new engine instruments.

While paint stripping the wings we discovered several missing rivet heads, so we called Dave. The wings were transported to him, and he found internal corrosion and determined the spar caps were beyond repair. After many days of cleaning and sanding, the wings received new outer skins, were corrosion-proofed internally, and sent back.