Dick Ransome / pre-crash damage to K7

[Wonderboot]

I'd agree with all the above views. I know the intention is to bring K7 back to the beginning of 4th Jan '67 state, but if the spar fairings are back at Nov '66 condition I don't think the Donald would mind too much, surely? As Nigel says, a little too contrived - and a great shame not to judiciously sanitise on perhaps this one occasion!

[ace_chris]

What ever the history behind the bird dent, if it is left 'as was' you can guarantee that all will be remembered from visitors viewing the completed K7 will be "they could have fixed that bit too!"

[Wonderboot]

Absolutely!

[Renegadenemo]

Have to say I agree with doing away with the duck dent. If we had the fairing and could extract the relevant stretches from the water damage as we can probably do with the seagull dent then that's one thing but building the damage from scratch seems pointless.

[mtskull]

I have said my piece on this one before but for what it is worth, I believe that if a piece exhibits damage that was present before the final run then it is entirely appropriate to conserve the piece and preserve the damage in order that it might tell its own story.

I can't, however, see any point whatsoever in faking damage to a newly fabricated part on the grounds that the original, lost part was damaged.

I would suggest the most appropriate course of action would be to replace both damaged fairings with new-build and then display the recovered fairing (with crash damage repaired but bird damage remaining), close to the port side of K7, along with a life-size contemporary photo of the damage and some suitable explanatory text.

[Renegadenemo]

I would suggest the most appropriate course of action would be to replace both damaged fairings with new-build and then display the recovered fairing (with crash damage repaired but bird damage remaining), close to the port side of K7, along with a life-size contemporary photo of the damage and some suitable explanatory text.

The problem there is that the seagull ding is so lost amongst the rest of the damage that the only story it would tell is one of high speed water damage. If it's dug out then it may as well go back on the boat as one more piece of original tinware.

[Richie]

i say use original material, striaghtened and repaired... no duck ding.


My rationalle is a selfish one....... i dont want folk to look at our hard work and say "Gee they did a pants job with that... its all dented in"


I know K7 bears the scars of her life... she is covered in them, but to float her out there with crushed fairings in my humble opinion wouldnt be to great.

[Renegadenemo]

My rationalle is a selfish one....... i dont want folk to look at our hard work and say "Gee they did a pants job with that... its all dented in"

We're going to get that no matter what because the average punter doesn't understand the correct ratio between rocketry, advanced engineering and 'what have you'.

[mtskull]

I would suggest the most appropriate course of action would be to replace both damaged fairings with new-build and then display the recovered fairing (with crash damage repaired but bird damage remaining), close to the port side of K7, along with a life-size contemporary photo of the damage and some suitable explanatory text.

The problem there is that the seagull ding is so lost amongst the rest of the damage that the only story it would tell is one of high speed water damage. If it's dug out then it may as well go back on the boat as one more piece of original tinware.

I'll get my coat.

[Renegadenemo]

I'll get my coat.

No you won't - the idea is sound enough. It's what we did with the air intake skins, sort of.
The originals are full of holes and badly squished so they're home-ported in the museum as a display and the new ones are on the boat. Nothing is wasted.