Project Phoenix is our codename for the restoration of our Bücker Bestmann D-EQXC which we received as a donation some years ago. What is so special about this plane one might wonder, but it is actually an extremely rare Bestmann as it was built in Germany at the Bücker factory in Rangsdorf outside Berlin. While most of the Bestmanns still around were built under license in places like Egypt, there are only a couple of German built Bestmanns left worldwide. Once it is back flying it will be the ONLY flying Bestmann built at the Rangsdorf factory. In 2007 we received our Bücker 181 Bestmann s/n 331396 as a generous donation. After spending uncounted hours on getting a status of the project, usable parts, needed parts and work by our members, our maintenace team from Quax Technik could finally start with this demanding project. Main focus was the fuselage as this requires the most detail work the different areas to get all the systems back. Step by step we moved on and separated the cover from the rear of the fuselage, not a bad idea as we found quite some bad clue joints. So after building our own helling we were finally able to also seperate the lower fuselage covers documenting every step og the way meticulously.

As the different modules of the crashed and donated Bücker were in a really deteriorated condition, we decided to go the whole nine yards and replace all the stringers and ribs and effectively building a new fuselage frame. As one of our members owned a construction and design company and another one was a master carpenter, we were able to duplicate all the relevant parts using state of the art CAD drawings.

These techniques were not available in the old days and you could have gaps of 2-3mm. Our specialists were facing very elaborate and delicate methods of clueing the spruce wood parts in multiple multidirectional layers. Restoring the tailplane we were able to save and reuse old substance while the fuselage had to be reconstructed using templates of wooden blocks and contracting the assistance of computer programs.