Assistance sourcing early Mark Spitfire cockpit for Filming

True!

It could be worse, this might be a forum where a fair few of it’s members are cockpit owners, where even they don’t give a t055; lets face it, we are right in the middle of “us and them”

Thanx BB! Enjoyed it! This thread amuses me! It is Historic Aviation supporting both grassroots and mainstream aviation projects but as it is not prime ‘armchair enthusiast fodder’ is of no interest to anyone!! Maybe if it was a bunfigfht about buried (or otherwise!) spitfires or the correct colour of the **** tube on a seaking or complaining about what colour the owner dared to paint his aircraft it might actually interest others?! Bemused!

Great photos, Rocketeer. We were so pleased to have you and your cockpit on the shoot. As I have said, it enabled us to get shots that we would have struggled to have got otherwise, if at all! It was a great compliment to R4118, and I felt greatly honoured to have dealings with 2 such amazing examples of the results of both your and Peter Vacher’s years of incredible passion and devotion to such awe inspiring projects. Thank you.

For it to be for such a worthy project and memorial is doubly special for ml, I hope we do credit to the great men and women who did so much and gave even more for our today. We all hope that the project is finished in time for as many of the sadly diminishing remaining veterans get to see it, so we can truly know if we have done them proud. All involved worked really hard, and it was incredible to think that every one of us felt particularly passionate and privileged to be involved with the subject matter. We were certainly hampered by bad weather, but considering all the hoops, none least the highly restrained budget, so far all are very pleased with the initial results, but there’s still a heck of a lot of work to be done by the CGI magicians.

It’s certainly the greatest cause I have ever worked for, and will always be immensely proud of my small part.

I got permission to post a couple of photos of my cockpit (P3554) being used for the filming. Good fun!

Hi Dylan9391

I am so sorry for not spotting and responding to your kind offer sooner, my apologies.

Thank you very much indeed for the offer of your Spitfire, I would love to see photos of it, what an amazing project! Unfortunately though, the budget overspend, with nearly a month to go, is such that as it is, the replicas that we will feature have been reduced from a Spitfire and Hurricane to just a Hurricane, as sadly we cannot afford the cost of the extra aircraft that was offered. 🙁

The whole planning of the shoot has been very tricksy indeed for the poor producer, and she’s doing a great job of getting as much possible for the incredibly modest budget involved. It was always known that CGI would have to play a major role in certain parts of the film (dogfights and general flying) but now it seems even populating the airfield with other aircraft sadly will have to go that way too.

As it stands, it may interest those of you here who showed initial interest when I first posted, that the main featured squadron of the film is now going to be flying Hurricanes! This came about for a variety of reasons, none least through the very supportive approach taken both by Peter Vacher and his R4118, and Rocketeer from on here. Against all our hopes and expectations, Peter made it affordable for our budget to have the sole surviving airworthy Battle of Britain Hurricane in the film – and just as importantly, Bob Foster is involved in the project and he flew R4118 with deadly efficiency and success in the Battle of Britain, which is another great connection! Whilst we were never in the realms of funding any aircraft to fly for us, the fact that R4118 can start up and taxy will add that extra authenticity which is very exciting for us.

The difficulties involved in squeezing an adventurous storyboard out of the budget, the logistics of availability, etc, has meant some fairly lateral thinking and so we are essentially using R4118 for all the green screen ‘studio’ action, alongside Rocketeer’s fantastic Hurricane cockpit which I have had the pleasure of seeing for myself. With this combination, we are hoping to get the various authentic shots of the pilots in their cockpits in action and from their view that we need, as we can get the authentically accurate details necessary of the cockpit interior and instruments, etc, that we wouldn’t get from any replicas that were both the correct Mark and geographically near enough to work with the budget. We will then get some exterior shots of R4118 starting up and taxying. The tricky part (avoiding mention that we’re totally screwed if the weather doesn’t hold up for us!) will be that any exteriors will have to be matched up with the majority of the rest of the filming that will have been shot the days before at a totally different location, over at Ashdown Camps!

We’ve had to split the filming locations because at Ashdown Camps they have Nissan huts for us to film the interiors, the pilots’ scramble, running to the aircraft, and for filming exteriors around the cockpit. As such, we are going to have a Hurricane replica at Ashdown for this purpose, and ideally we would have had a Spitfire in the background, as the script starts with a squadron of Spits returning to the airfield from a sortie, before we are introduced to our main characters on Hurricanes. Like I say, we always knew the flight’s arrival would be CGI, but now budget means even a static Spit in the background will have to be CGIed too, which is a shame.

As previously mentioned in posts on this thread, much effort has been, and is continuing to be, made into the authenticity of the uniform and flying gear, as well as the casting of background extras. This has turned out to be a fairly mammoth task, which we half expected, but what hadn’t been banked on, was that our shoot clashes with some rather big events around the country, at which the leading re-enactors are committed to appear. This has greatly diminished our resources of both kit, which we are now gradually making headway with, and appropriate looking young men to be non-speaking background actors (as pilots and ground crew). We’re pretty much there tbh, but if anybody does know of anyone who lives close to the Evesham area, aged 20-40, would be prepared to have their hair styled and/or cut to an appropriate style please and would be interested in being involved in a historic project, please feel free to PM me here. The shoot dates at Ashdown Camps, nr Evesham are 22nd and 23rd May. Obviously if they do have any appropriate BoB era uniform and kit, brilliant, but if not, uniforms will be provided. Like I say, we are mostly sorted, so at this stage, even if it’s just for having some names and numbers in the book that we could call upon in the event on no-shows, anything would be greatly appreciated.

Apologies for the long old essay once again, but I thought it may be of interest to some on our developments, as so much fantastic help was offered from many folk on here when I first posted.

Finally, apologies and many thanks once again, Dylan, for the offer, we obviously would love your involvement, but sadly with the budget stretched as it is, I don’t think we can offer fair recompense for your replica’s involvement – especially disappointing as we were always hoping to have a Spit to compliment our Hurricane and yours is the perfect Mark for the era!

Best wishes

Rob

I didn’t think of cardboard as that would have been quicker. What I did was go back to my radio control modelling roots and after using the wing fillet drawing to establish the shapes I made a balsa plug and made a fibreglass fillet from that. I found that to be a difficult part to make. I have got a 1/2 scale drawing of the full fillet and full size for the front but I found it difficult to read.

Tried cardboard as a pattern then fibreglass over the top?

Can you share with me how you made the complex curves, ie front of the fin and the wing fuselage fillets. I reverted to aluminium after attempting to use ply.

Hello Robert, Yes I am building a complete airframe and I do have a limited number of photographs of the construction as I hadn’t thought about it at the time. They are not very good photographs though. What I have done is used balsa, ply, spruce and fibreglass in my construction for lightness strength and durability, with panels, rivets and detailing added as appropriate to replicate the original airframe.

Here are a couple of photographs of the wing construction on another Spitfire I am making a Mk16. I started making parts for the second one to use up spare material from the first and to make use of the huge number of plans I have acquired along the way. Not sure what to do with the second one, but plenty of time to think about that at a later date.[ATTACH=CONFIG]226981[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]226981[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]226982[/ATTACH]

I’ve got a replica Spitfire which I am currently in the final throws of completing. The aeroplane is being modelled on a Mk1 Spitfire allocated to 610 County of Chester Squadron.

Are you able to share any photographs of your construction. Are you building a complete airframe?

Hello Rob, I’ve got a replica Spitfire which I am currently in the final throws of completing. The aeroplane is being modelled on a Mk1 Spitfire allocated to 610 County of Chester Squadron initially based at Gravesend, but then moved to Biggin Hill before the Battle of Britain. In 1941 it moved to Tangmere but while the squadron stayed there till the end of the war my particular aeroplane was lost in 1942.

I live in Cambridgeshire but the end of June could be awkward as I have commitments with the aeroplane during the latter part of the month.

Hi QldSpitty

Very good question – I had forgotten about that Doctor Who episode! Mind you, I only have vague memories there, but do you have any recollection as to whether it featured the interior of the cockpit at all? I seem to remember shots from outside of him in the cockpit – is that correct? If it was just that, I could imagine with the flagship status of the show, they’d have a budget way big enough to knock up a mock-up just for them… I’ll see if i can find any clips of that show, but thanks for the reference.

With regard to Dark Blue World, I’ll have to look up my notes, but I know I have spoken to someone whose Spitfire was involved – it may have been Barry Wallond’s..?

Cheers

R

Who did the Spitfire pits for the Dr Who episode Danny Boy?Also wasn’t there one done for Dark Blue World as well?

Hi G-ORDY

Thanks for your post. We first saw, and were greatly impressed by, The German back when the company was pitching for the contract a year or so ago. It’s a great short film and whilst it differs greatly in its fictional tale, in many other ways, it’s sort of in the visual and logistical territory that we are looking to be working. The behind-the-scenes programme that’s on YouTube as well really demonstrates many things, not least how they used a fuselage section and cockpit. My producer wrote to the makers of The German about a month ago, but has yet to hear anything back unfortunately. We would love to know whose fuselage and cockpit they used – if there’s anyone here who have any means of us contacting the makers or anyone involved with the making of the short we’d love to hear from you. I had a great conversation on Monday with another fantastically helpful person, John Coombes up with the Lytham St Anne’s Spitfire who is doing his best to find a past email that he had from or received from them. He seemed to think there was something about East Europe, possibly that that’s where the cockpit was or is now.

Hi Robert

Thanks for your post too. That photo looks like the Spitf4Hire Cockpit Simulator that I have seen photos of, yes? Whilst it looks promising initially from this angle, the only shots I have seen from the other side do seem to show that the cockpit more serves as a cockpit shaped space to add reality to a fly simulator on a computer screen inside. That’s not meant in any way to insult their setup (or indeed anybody’s throughout this whole project), I am just looking at all these marvellous creations from the perspective of what will work/look good on film for us.

I have just Googled your name + Spitfire and it would appear that I have found a couple of photos of your Spitfire fuselage at various stages of development. That looks brilliant, you must be so pleased with it. Whilst you say it’s got a long way to go yet, may I ask at what stage you are with it and if you have any idea what timescale you’re working on? Well done and keep up the great work, Robert!

R

Spit4Hire had a MkV complete Replica but this was sold to Nothern Ireland recently. He also has a simulator cockpit.
Sadly my own Mk1 fuselage has a lot of work to be undertaken before it would be suitable.

I don’t know if the production company behind “The German” can be of any help?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNbTVobWzTw

Hi TonyT

Many thanks for that – we have indeed had Tillys mentioned to us at various points, so good to have your confirmation that it’s good information, appreciated again. Tbh at present, my/our main attention is being spent on the aircraft and location possibilities, but will be back on to the vehicles/props/costumes/background characters fairly soon.

Hi Firebex/Mike E (would that be the very helpful Mike E who I spoke to last week on the phone?)

Many thanks also for your info – I have just looked up Neil Macarthy online and he would appear to be involved with Spit4Hire, is that correct? I know from the research notes that were handed over to me by the Producer, that they were already aware of Spit4Hire, the only note being that they have unfortunately sold their Mark I (sic) Spit. It sounds like it matches up with your comment about Neil having sold his MkII, even if the notes state the wrong Mk! I can find out if the Producer actually got in touch with S4H, but it’s interesting that there is not a note about a suitable cockpit option. Admittedly, the mention that I have just seen online, backed up with a short video clip and photos, gives me the impression that whilst it looks like a section of cockpit fuselage from outside, the inside aappears to have a computer monitor with a flight simulator playing in it, and it is described as a Spitfire cockpit simulator for hire. Does this match with what you are referring to, Mike, or do you think Neil does also have an accurate and fully reconstructed cockpit as well? If so, that is what we are requiring, subject to it being the correct Mark as said. No problem if you don’t have the answers to these, I just thought I’d ask as you’d brought this new info – I can get in touch with Neil/Spit4Hire and see what the score is.

I know I keep saying it, but many thanks to all your input and of others away from this forum who I am gradually getting to speak to (but who possibly are also here but I didn’t realise!), it really is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Rob E

Neil Macarthy has got a spitfire cockpit section that can be sat in but I cant for the life of me think what mark it is.He has recently sold of his Mk2 to the Ulster Museum of science and Industry but I am almost certain he still has the cockpit section.

Mike E

Correction, should be the Standard Tilly

http://www.yorkshireairmuseum.org/exhibits/historic-military-vehicles/standard-12hp-light-utility-vehicle

http://www.network54.com/Forum/47208/thread/1355953465/RAF-RN++Tilly