Santa To Fly Into Weston-super-Mare

In order to rest his Reindeer for their heavy Christmas work load, Santa and his Elf Entourage will be flying down from their Toy Factory at The North Pole by helicopter to visit the local children of Weston-super-Mare.

Santa will be landing at The Helicopter Museum's Heliport to host a special Christmas 'All Children Go Free' Family Fun Day on Sunday 8^th December.

As well as being able to meet Santa, Children will be able to visit his helicopter grotto, sit in his famous Sleigh and test their pilot skills on a Winter Weather themed Flight Simulator.

Also on the day there will be charity stalls selling toys, books and presents. There will also be games for the younger visitors, open cockpits and helicopter flights in the afternoon (additional cost). Seasonal fayre will also be served throughout the day from the Museum café.

All children are allowed free entry to the museum with Santa's Ho-Ho-Helicopter scheduled to land at 11am (dependent on weather both here and at the North Pole) and is looking forward to greeting all the children from the local area.

Filiform Corrosion

Work continues on our Queen’s Flight Wessex this week. All contaminated areas have now been stripped and the vast majority of the rivet work and corrosion treatment has now been completed. As I mentioned before in my last post, the type of corrosion identified on this aircraft is filiform corrosion. I have had a number of people ask what this actually means. For the uninitiated I have found the following...so here it goes...

‘Symptoms: Corrosion occurring beneath paint in the form of random threadlike filaments. Often causes paint bulging as blisters.’

‘Causes: Moisture and corrosive agents that reach the metal through cracks or damage in the paint and set up active corrosion cells. Particularly severe in high humidity, marine and industrially polluted environments.’  

Queen’s Flight Corrosion

For the second day in a row Agusta Westland specialists are working at the Museum on our Queen’s Flight Wessex  XV733. Deterioration has recently been developing on this historic aircraft (see pictures below) which has been identified as of the filiform type of corrosion. It is believed that in many cases the corrosion in question is linked to rivet positions on the aircraft.

In agreement with Museum staff, the experts from Agusta Westland have recommended a strip, treat and refinish for the affected areas. This consists of stripping the current paint from the corroded areas, the removal of corrosion using a brush and specified forms of abrasives, all followed by pickling and refinishing. So far the original paint has proved very tough to budge, but the initial stage of removal is now largely complete. As you can see below, the corrosion to be treated is the black element on the stripped part of the aircraft body work.

Many thanks to the Augusta Westland staff who have done a great job so far! I will aim to update the blog as and when progress is made with the project.