Scrap/damaged 35" tire for a museum display?

[georgediemer]

I am a restoration volunteer at the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, CT. We are restoring a WWII US Navy blimp gondola which used a single 35x15x6 Goodyear Airwheel balloon tire. A reasonable match for this would be a 35" bush tire. We only need a scrap or damaged tire, as the l.g. will be retracted and the public will only see the bottom few inches of the tire. We are looking for leads to such a tire in the New England region.

Any information on the whereabouts of such a tire would be appreciated. The restoration project, the K-28, is visible on the New England Air Museum's website. The project is nearing completion after 21 years. Goodyear was contacted years ago and declined to help. We were thinking someone with a worn-out tire might let us take it off their hands.

Thanks for any guidance you can provide.

George Diemer
Marlborough, MA

 

[mike mcs repair]

i sent an email to someone that i think used to have some..

also have you thought of calling Airframes AK/alaskan bushwheels??? maybe they have some practice ones from when they were getting the new tire plant up and certified?? http://www.airframesalaska.com

 

[sj]

Hi George,

I have been to that museum, it is a great one! Normally we don't allow "want ads" in the forums, but in this case I will certainly make an exception!

Good luck on the search!

sj

 

[cafi19]

Ditto on it being a great museum. We used to take my son there often...loved the open cockpit days.

Hopefully someone will have what you need. You do great work there and it is a great cause!!!

cafi

 

[georgediemer]

I apologize for being in the wrong forum -- I posted before reading the directions. I appreciate your tolerance. Thanks for the interest and support. Our K-28 blimp gondola is getting more and more attention from the viewing public now that it is nearing completion. Most histories of WWII omit the Navy blimps' contributions altogether, even though they saved a lot of merchant ships and sailors from the German submarines. It's fun to work at the Museum in Connecticut, with so many old veterans of Sikorsky, Pratt & Whitney, and Hamilton Standard to guide the restorations.

Thanks again for your help.

George

 

[WA L16]

Sounds like a neat project. If I read the post correctly it sounds like you need a 35" tire to fit a 6" wheel, unfortunately the AK bushwheel 35" tire does not fit on a 6" wheel. The largest AK bushwheel for 6" wheels are 31" tires. It's possible you could make the larger diameter wheel for the 35" tire work for your application but you'll need to source a wheel as well.

 

[cubdriver2]

Can't you just keep adding air till a 31 is 35" ?

Glenn

 

[georgediemer]

Re WA L16 - We don't have the 6" wheel, or the landing gear strut either, and likely never will. So a 35" tire on a 10" wheel or facsimile would certainly suffice for us. The blimp car is mounted on a low cradle, so only the bottom segment of the tire would ever be seen by the viewing public. You can't see up into the wheel well where the wheel rim and strut would be. In fact, even half a tire would work.

Re Glenn - An overinflated 31" tire on a wheel would probably work for us, but we are assuming a tire good enough to be inflated is valuable and beyond our means. We were thinking about the best we could get was a punctured or damaged 35" tire. And realistically, a damaged 31" tire would be good enough for us also, given the viewing angle and amount of tire visible.

Thanks for the input.

George

 

[skywagon8a]

Just in case some of you are in a position to help in this quest, it is December and approaching that time of year when contributions are in the minds of us all. http://www.neam.org/images/501c3 statement.pdf I'm sure that if anyone can help that they would appreciate it. Maybe someone has the whole blimp landing gear in the attic of their barn? Stuff like this does happen.

I remember seeing this Burnelli at Baltimore Maryland years ago. http://www.neam.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1395 It is nice to see that it is still alive.

 

[georgediemer]

Hello Everyone,
Thank you so much for your assistance with this project. I believe we now have a donation of a 35" tire in the works, and we will begin working on the shipping process. The rest of the blimp restoration crew will be thrilled when I tell them this, as will the Museum staff. It might even allow us to convince our Restoration Hangar to commit some resources to fabricating a landing gear strut and fork.

You all are a wonderful community and amazingly generous. As soon as I can figure out how to post pictures I will try to send you progress reports. For now, here is the New England Air Museum website article about the K-28 restoration.
http://www.neam.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=143

The article is quite a bit out of date regarding progress, as there have been over 40,000 hours put into it over the last 21 years. The project leader, who started it in 1993, is 86-year-old Russ Magnuson, a former tool designer and draftsman, who is still working on it. Right now he is supervising some sheet metal guys who are pounding out aluminum cowlings for the Pratt & Whitney R-1340 engines.

Our Navy blimp car was not a sponsored restoration like some at the Museum (B-29, A-26, VS-44, etc.) so the project is funded from volunteers' pockets and the kindness of strangers. We are proud of the K-28 restoration, as it is the only WWII K-class blimp frame in the world. Several other K-class frames exist, such as the one at Pensacola, but those represent modified blimps from the mid-to-late 1950's.

Thank you again very much for your support. It's a great Christmas present to the Museum.

George