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Swift N90354
By Dorothy Golding, Marion, TX

Caretaker Dorothy Golding writes...

I started work on my Swift after buying Duane's part from him on the project we had bought together. Duane agreed to help, or agreed that I would help him finish it for me. We started on the project in May of 2000, the fuselage was all flush riveted and looked to be finished, but as they say looks like it is 90% finished and 90% to go, in this case it was 200% to go on the fuselage. I bought a Cont. IO-360 core from Vaughn Armstrong along with the Merlyn Mount, and a prop and other goodies, and Duane brought them back in his pickup while I flew back commercial. Then the fun began and 14 months later it was finished.

The wings, tail feathers, and all flying surfaces were recovered and flush riveted. Did the finishing of the cables and all that (fast) ha!ha! stuff, then time to start on the cowl which had to have some modification and lots of work to make it fit correctly. Had to look for a good spinner and finally found the spinner but no back plate. I did remember that when I saw Mark Holiday at Oshkosh, he said he had a back plate and a good exhaust, so he sent that to me. Then we put the wings on the plane and what do you think would be wrong now??? The leading edge of one side of the centersection was pulled in too far so that the wing and center section did not match. So, now we had to remove the leading edge of the center section and recover and then what do you think we found??? The center section leading edge was covered with .025 so we took the other side off also and replaced both sides with .032.

Next was installing the engine and building the baffles and hook up all controls and do all the wiring, which is all new wiring, nothing old. The instrument panel is modified and angled toward the pilot and all instruments and wiring were done by the radio and wiring man on the bench and then put in the plane and plugged in, (with a few minor adjustments).

In May it was time for the paint, so we go to the paint store and I fall head over heals in love with a sample of paint and inquired about the cost of said paint and about passed out at the price so decided on another color. Went home and called the painter and he came out with samples, and I still could not think of any thing but that beautiful paint I had seen in the paint shop, so I looked at the paint samples again and asked for a price to put that beautiful paint that I had fallen in love with on the plane. About 3 days later the painter came back with a price and I said I was only going to have one last plane so I said GO FOR IT, and we did and it is gorgeous.

Now it was one week before time to leave for Oshkosh and the gear would not work correctly, it would go down but not up every time, only sometimes. Finally got that problem fixed and so time to test fly my beautiful bird and was I nervous. The first flight was almost a disaster as the stick hung up in a certain spot and the tail was not rigged correctly. I had to use all the up trim I could and lots of forward pressure on the stick, thank goodness it was much better a slow speed and I made a good landing. It was back to the drawing board. But now it is time to leave for Oshkosh and so Duane drove as the weather was not too good, and I stayed home and tried to figure out what the problem was. Talked to the IA and he and I were pretty much convinced that the problem was the incidence in the horizontal stabilizer. Sure enough, I removed the fairing and there it was, the back of the stabilizer needed to be lowered and with that done and the battery moved forward some and I was back to flying once more.

Then we found another problem, the left wing was very heavy, so finally got the tabs on the ailerons and now it flys very good. I have not gotten to try it for speed yet, will do that soon.

This Swift was born Sept. 9, 1946 and was delivered to Flordia to East Coast Aviation Co. in November 1946, The plane has a total of 853 hours plus my 16 hours I have put on it. I put a Factory remanufactured engine and the Electronic International instruments and the Bendix IIIC, GPS, I drove to Mobil, Alabama to pick up the engine, that was a nice trip. Left one morning got there that night and picked up the engine and was home that night. I have painted fiberglass wing tips built by Dave Cutter and had to paint the tips of the stabilizer as they did not pass inspection of polishing. The plane is approved and sighed of by a DER who knows a bit about Swifts.

Hope you enjoy seeing the pictures and reading about the plane, I have a picture book to take to the fly-ins and hope to get to go to Sun & Fun, Nations, Lake Elmo, Oshkosh and Westover.

Postscript...
This Swift is now owned by New Jersey Swifter Ed Benguat.

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