Edgar Percival – and the Percival Aircraft

Mark

I forwarded your photo on to a friend and received a reply which contained the following:

“I remember this – I was there at the time, Wodonga, November 1976! Quite an occasion – but no trilby! I was still in my teens”

quite a co-incidence I think. (I have de-identified the reply – no names no pack drill!)

cheers
Ross

Maurice is completing his DH89 Rapide which is about 6 months away from completion, I expect he will then move to the Proctor which is stored in the same hangar.

Regards

Mark Pilkington

Mark

Thanks for the info, another question, is VH-UXS under active restoration?

cheers
Ross

,
Ross

Yes VH-BQA is Leigh Giles project, originally carried the registration VH-ACA and was formerly owned by Lord Casey, BQA is a subsequent registration, not a current registration or reservation.

VH-UXS is the current registration of Maurice Rolfes Proctor restoration, formerly VH-DUL.

Regards

Mark Pilkington

Ron

That’s a great photo and VH-CCM belongs to a friend of mine. Pity I don’t have his email.

Mark

I am interested in the Under Restoration
Vega Gull II VH-BQA
Proctor I VH-UXS

strangly enough, I am completely familar with the restoration of VH-AHY. Is VH-BQA the one Leigh has? and did it once belong to Lord Casey?

cheers
Ross

This is Edgar Percival posing with Gull VI VH-CCM at Wodonga on 6 Nov 1976.

.
VH-EPN is a complete example formerly with the Drage Airworld collection at Wangaratta, now privately owned and under restoration by Todd Miller in Victoria.

c/n 28 VH-EPN ex- VH-DAI/SSC/SSV ex-G-APBR under restoration Victoria, Australia

The fuselage of a second is displayed in “quasi” Army scheme in Lincoln Nitschke’s collection in South Australia

c/n 46 ex- VH-SSR ex- VH-DAV fuselage only Lincoln Nitschke Aviation Museum, Greenock, Australia

2 out of the 9 world wide survivors in Australia, 7 complete, 2 fuselages (4 currently airworthy).

It seems a reasonable effort to acknowledge Edgar Percival.

I understand he did the design of the EP-9, it being the first product of his “new” company Edgar Percival Aircraft Limited after he had sold and left the Percival Aircraft Company to Hunting, although Australia holds a few other notable Percival products including:

Flying
Gull IV VH-UTP
Gull VI VH-CCM

Under Restoration
Vega Gull II VH-BQA
Proctor I VH-UXS
Proctor I VH-AHY

Static Display
Gull VI G-AERD
Proctor I VH-FEP
Proctor I VH-AUC
Proctor 2 VH-BQR
Proctor 2 VH-AVG
Proctor 5 VH-BCM

The Gulls & Proctors probably being the better memorial to his sleek pre-war designs, that he was best known for.

Regards

Mark Pilkington

When chasing the drawings for the Proctor, I was told that Percival Aircraft was sold to another english aircraft manufacturing company and the owner of that company hated Edgar and ordered that the drawings be destroyed

I can’t remember where I heard it, does anyone else recall hearing a story along those lines?

What sources of Percival Aircraft Drawings are there, any in the UK?

Who is restoring VH-EPN?

cheers

Does an EP.9 have a place on display in Australia to honour the man or was he in the background in terms of design by then?

Well, there’s one under restoration, VH-EPN, and another fuselage in Australia, according to Wikipedia.

Does an EP.9 have a place on display in Australia to honour the man or was he in the background in terms of design by then?

The National museum of Australia has a substantial collection of his trophies and memorabilia, and papers, as well as Gull 6 G-AERD.

http://www.nma.gov.au/collections-search/display?irn=34445

A search under Edgar Percival nets most of the material, including many examples of ‘Display stand for a small scale model of an aeroplane’ for which the full record is ‘a display stand for a small scale model of an aeroplane’, no image available. Nice cataloguing. :rolleyes:

The Silverster book is well worth tracking down.

Edgar Percival

Prickly guy – I remember the tingle that ran down my spine when I came home from work one evening and my wife said “An old gentleman has been on the phone for you” – yep, none other than EWP himself, after a copy of “Vintage Aircraft” magazine in which I’d published a photo of the prototype Gull under construction at Lowe-Wylde’s workshop in Maidstone!

I’ve scanned his obit from The Times for you:

Edgar Percival Obit.pdf

There is another good book on Percival’s called ‘Percival and Hunting Aircraft’ by John Silvester

They were taken over by Hunting and Son Ltd in 1944.

The company history is covered in “Percival’s Aircraft” by Norman H Ellison, published by Chalford Publishing Company in 1997 in their Archive Photographs series

Happy New Year

Ralph