Hanger Mates.

Resasi

Gold Supporter
Joined
Jul 2, 2007
Messages
9,088
Location
London/ Kilifi Kenya
Aircraft
Gyrs, RAF 2000/Mgni/Bnsn/Hrnet/Mrlin/Crckt/MT-03/Lyzlle AV18-A/Prdtor. GT-VX1&2, Pax ArrowCopter
Total Flight Time
100+ gyro, 16,000+ other
With some friends we are getting an old lady back into flying condition. I do love most flying machines and while these have been around us for a while I hadn’t appreciated quite how privileged we are with some of Lottie's slightly more senior lady guests in the hanger.

Posing as oldsters are some 90% scale Spitfires, and since my father had flown this type along with Hurricanes during the war I enjoy seeing them here. I have flown both Chipmunk and the Tiger Moth but have only had simulator time on the Spitfire.

I took my son and we enjoyed a couple of hours on a Mk IX. The Instructor was a old friend who I had been in the airlines with. He had, I thought, rather perversely chosen the Mk IX for us apparently because it was the trickiest to keep straight on TO and landing! Luckily we both avoided an embarrassing excursions.

Here are some of them.

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And slightly more diminutive. Lottie herself

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She’s exchanged her Brock’s for Dragon Wings, re-pitched the 3 blade 52’’ Arplast, and we are working on trying to get her equally elderly ‘EFIS’ to behave itself and give us an Engine RPM and some temps for oil and coolent.

My last excursion in her was less than impressive but hopefully the next will be better. In the meantime we are in good company.
 
Hello Resasi,

A nice collection of hanger mates.

About five years ago I met Bob DeFord from Prescott, Arizona that scratch built a full sized Spitfire Mk lX. A really beautiful replica. Bob chose to use a non-turbocharged Allison V-1710. One, the engine is more plentiful here in the U.S. than the Packard Merlin. Second, the engine is very simple and quite reliable in the basic non-turbocharged form, and he was able to purchase several inexpensively. For Bob, the plane is for buzzing around below 12.5K and to display at airshows so the Allison was a good choice.


Wayne
 
That is so cool, thanks for linking that Wayne.
 
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