Command Aire N970E Restoration

01/27/2022

The process of recovering has begun

01/15/2022

Well yesterday I was stuck in a place called Bethel Alaska waiting on our company jet to offload our cargo before making our next trip. Since next week I will be on my scheduled 10 days off I decided to make an aircraft spruce order. I calculated the airplane is gonna need about 75 yards of fabric and decided 12 gallons of Poly Brush/Poly Spray was a good place to start with. Since some of you may not know the wings on the Command Aire are only a few inches less than a Stearman, it’s gonna take a lot. Unfortunately the price of fabric went up in the last week. I still ordered extra since I have two other projects that will one day require fabric as well.

01/08/2022

We will soon be coming to the point where it is time to choose paint color. The atomic pumpkin begins to grow on you, but from all my research I cant find where this would have likely been a typical color scheme came from my airplane. Command Aire also had very few color ads. The "Wings of the Morning" advertisement was used to paint a 3C3 N136E currently at Yanks Air Museum. Many of the other Command Aires still out there tend to stick to the cream and other primary color paint scheme none of which are only blue and cream which is where I began the idea of painting my airplane. Unfortunately as of now I havent been able to find a period correct photo of my airplane, and if anyone has some good connections in South Carolina or England and feels they can help let me know. Thanks to Jupiners collection of photos though they have a photo of N525E which someone else claims it was the sister ship to my airplane. Supposedly both aircraft were sold to the Orangeburg Flying Club of South Carolina in 1930. With that photo I attempted a colorizing app which showed based on a computer program the sheet metal was more than likely a dark blue, but as you can see it also showed the cowling as possibly green. As I began researching Berryloid I was shocked to come across the color "Command Aire Green". This left me in a tough decision of what color should we paint the airplane. We dont know what the airplane was originally painted unfortunately those people are no longer around, but I did use Microsoft paint and the color copy from the Berryloid ad attached to see what the airplane looks with Diana Cream and either Consolidated Blue or Command Aire Green. Which do you prefer?

01/08/2022

Since this is a Command Aire Trainer model I am attempting to arrange the cockpit correctly, taking some reference from the terrific work done by Tom Brown on the restoration of the 3C3T I have acquired these Consolidated gauges for the panel. Other Model Command Aires had a single panel in the rear cockpit from consolidated which is why I got as man consolidated pieces as I could. I also have a oil temp gauge not in the photo.

01/08/2022

01/08/2022

Starting to remove old fabric

01/08/2022

Plenty of slow and steady progress here are some photos from earlier in the year with all of the metal pieces including cowlings/baggage compartment, and cockpit sections

11/15/2021

A recent eBay find! I couldn’t be happier finding it! In many Command Aire ads I was excited to find references to Eastern States Aircraft Corporation in Springfield MA. The airplane is next door in Westfield MA, and there were records of them flying around the area as well. Then to find this ad was terrific!

09/01/2021

Here’s the removal

09/01/2021

I thought you all might enjoy some of the work from this past week, this has been a lot of the work I’ve been doing lately. Let me reccomend never to paint another airplane solid orange…

08/19/2021

Here is the ratcheting trim mechanism in cockpit. It is then connected with a push rod to the mechanism in the tail. Here you can see the before, and the beginning of the clean up. Since the air frame is cleaned up, Ive been working on all the individual components to reinstall them back on the fuselage.