Progress – in the Arnprior trenches with the troops. Hi to all our members and donors, I am reporting to you from our Halifax REBUILDSHOP in Arnprior, Ontario where the airframe of our Halifax is being rebuilt by KNOX TECH with Scott Knox and team, diligently doing magic with aluminium and bringing back to life a Halifax for all of us.  So, after getting our Hercules No. 3 engine up and running in Nanton, Alberta for our engine runs at special events in 2025, I was off to work on Halifax airframe parts in concert with Scott Knox and his team, based in Arnprior.

Before I arrived at Arnprior from Nanton, Alberta for this 3 day visit to help out, Scott told me ”you will have a surprise when you arrive at the Rebuildshop.” Well I was gobsmacked, because as I entered the shop on Thurs. I saw the ENTIRE center-section of our Halifax bolted back together!!  If you want see what I saw and said when I realized the center-section was ‘´born’´ then watch the video down at the end of this report, yessssss!! As you can see below, it is so cooool to see this major step become a reality after so many months of hard work and waiting to see the major progress on the ”backbone” of our darling Halibag.

 

 

Scott and team wanted to surprise us and they sure did, as I knew the center-section would be going together this year but not so soon! While admiring this big step forward in the Halifax restoration, I was also doing recon on the wing joints of Halifax HR871 we recovered from underwater off the Swedish coast. See the wing main spar joints and intermediate wing joints that I will be de-assembling for assessment in using for the next phase of rebuild. We can now move even further along on the wing. See the wing joints that connect all sections of wing together.

Remember, all pieces of Halifax airframe, when saved, are used as templates for copying or reference as we use them or machine these (new) using the old parts to copy. Plus, I pulled out a complete intermediate wing rear-spar – all 9 feet complete – from the crate of Swedish parts we recovered last year, for use in restoration that will go beyond the center-section – gotta stay one step ahead of where we are at.

And then see the great work of manufacturing all the Flap ribs, using Sweden flaps as templates and following the blueprints, ribs stacked up on this photo—- only about 80 more flap ribs to go on the back of the Halifax wing!!

 

So while we bring the bones back together, I must talk about the parts recovery ops further afield. There are costs involved and I must explain we have some bills to pay in the coming weeks and months. This is where you folks come in, me hearties.
First off, those 2 HERCULES engines ( 2 X 3,000 pounds weight) donated by the RAF Museum to our rebuild must be transported by lorry in the UK from the RAF storage building to our Halifax parts 20-foot storage container – 110 miles – and that bill will be $2,700. – cannot do any better than that price in the UK.

Then I will – in late JUNE – early JULY – be in the UK sorting and readying the Halifax parts container – with 5 tons of parts – for shipping to Canada to the Port of Montreal. —- cost $9,600. We have a BIG assortment of Halifax parts in this container from all over Europe. Further to this, we must move one of the 28 foot Halifax OUTER wing sections from Arnprior to Nanton, Alberta by truck in late JULY — for those of you in the UK that is 2,000 miles and takes 34 hours driving by fast car.
At present I have a price quote of $9,000 for the wing move, but I am searching for a better price of course.

So you see we have expenses that we just cannot avoid! I hope you will consider donating, for if each one of you of the 700 members we have on our master list of supporters, if you each donated $100 we could keep going and stay ahead of the costs of putting together a Halifax. This is big business of course, building a symbol of Freedom and combat excellence, especially for our Bomber Boys and for those Canadians who flew Halifaxes for that Freedom.  70% of all bomber combat done by the RCAF in Canadian squadrons in WW2 was on the Halifax, hmmmmm, I wonder if this effort is worth it, should we continue??? You all know the answer, you know our determination and resolve. So as we soldier on is this Halifax pilgrimage — we hope you will stick with us and support us and donate to a most unique project, a Halifax bomber for the national memorial Bomber Command Museum of Canada.

Please consider helping us as we build this project, thanks for your support so far and you know we at H57RC are in for the long haul. We have miles to go before we sleep. —- you dont know the half of it!

Hope to hear from you with your donation and your support.

WE LEAVE NO HALIFAX BEHIND

Warm regards, Karl K.