The floats present tough problems for the technicians because access into the interior strcture is so limited, making bucking of new rivets from the inside nearly impossible in some areas. The Garber staff has even surmised that the Japanese may have used small children to hold the bucking bars in place because of the confined passageways in some sections inside the floats. With dismantling complete and reconstruction under way, the Seiran floats are moving toward completion. One stubborn obstacle on the project has been locating documentation on which to base a replica of the destroyed instrument panel. Help has come from a Japanese source, and a display near the aircraft of the panel and its layout indicates to visitors the lengths the Garber staff will go to in order to create accurate restorations.
Boards hold images of instruments and the current knowledge of the airplane's panel.
A close look at the Hurricane's fabric covered after sections. Detailed closeup of the Hurricane's structure. The fuselage of Betty Skelton's Pitts Special is just getting started, with the fabric installed around the steel-tube weldment that makes up the principal structure of the airplane. Meanwhile, another biplane, the Nieuport, is still uncovered as technicians work on its wooden structure, replacing parts that have suffered from old age. George C. Larson Funding to purchase original parts for the Nieuport has been provided through the Florence Gould Foundation, an organization promoting good will between the peoples of the U.S. and France.