Stirling Aircraft Project

12/08/2026

Sam, who is 17, came on work experience to us from a local college. He is hoping to find an apprenticeship with an aerospace company. He has completely changed my view of todays young people. In four days onsite he has understood and worked on the assembly of the first of six bomb bay doors for the Stirling project. I have been stunned by his ability to assess the information provided and interpret it to enable the assembly of the first bomb bay door, together with his innate manual abilities.
If anyone has an apprenticeship forthcoming in the aviation industry please let us know.

This lad is gold dust.

29/07/2026

This is a bit if a teaser, but the boys decided today that they would trial fit the upper fuselage frames that we have fabricated so far. This gives a tantalising view of the shape of things to come!

26/07/2026

This week the boys have been trial fitting frame 5 to check that we have the frame 5a aligned correctly. This is the first use of the scaffolding framework that we assembled some months ago and is showing some of the challenges we are going to face with the upper fuselage assembly

Frame 5 rises from the base of the sloping bulkhead and reaches up to the cockpit coupe base

13/07/2026

John has been installing fairleads onto the bomb bay. These (almost) finishing touches are starting to make the structure come to life now. We wanted to put these on before the floor structure goes on, because its VERY awkward working inside the bomb bay for us, whereas Shorts would have installed these once the fuselage was on the undercarriage so had much more room to work.

02/07/2026

Dave H has just applied new seat feet to this engineers seat. We have two of these seats and are intrigued that the front top bar has been removed on both examples. Does anyone know if this was a modification to the design during the war, or whether it will have been done post-war to make them more comfortable as a normal seat? These two seats (obviously) came from different aircraft so it does seem peculiar that they were both hacked about in exactly the same way.

We have no expertise in aluminium welding so if anyone could come forward to help us replace the missing 3 pieces of tubing, we would be most grateful! Unless of course it was an official modification in which case we will leave it as is.

02/07/2026

The lower front spar has arrived, and been clamped into place at frame 15. This is intended to allow us to jack up the forward fuselage so that we can have the bomb doors installed and that they can open and close. The spar itself was milled from aluminium alloy and cost us just shy of £2000. There is also an upper front spar which we will get milled in due course. If you can help us replenish funds after this rather large purchase, please donate to us at the following location: https://stirlingproject.org.uk/donate or on our page there is a donate button too. We would really appreciate it! If anyone runs an engineering company who could CNC mill one of these for us instead, to save us some money, please let us know. It was milled from a roughly 150mm square billet and is 2.10m long...

09/05/2026

Dave assembled the air brake filter panel for attachment to the sloping bulkhead of the bomb bay. The filter itself was machined based upon the corroded original by Alan McDade. I hope you agree it looks fantastic!

08/04/2026

Today we have set up the scaffold "box" which we hope will allow us to hang the upper fuselage frames in place over the foundation - the bomb bay. The bottom pf the scaffold beam running the length of the box will be used to locate the fuselage frames 9-14 which we have already formed. A bit more work is required to ensure the dimensions are correct and to provide support for the frames which sit under the cockpit coupe.
The bomb bay itself requires completion, of course, but this is another significant step forwards. Onwards!

30/03/2026

Another part recreated. The dunlop air filter body has been remachined by Alan McDade , who was a Shorts machinist for part of his career. Thank you, Alan!

29/03/2026

Here is the latest news update from David

If you wandered into our workshop in the last few weeks, progress since the last update may appear to have been slow. However there is a lot going on as we get close to the point where we will begin to rivet up the bomb...