Scottish Spitfire Grounded

LA198 looks ready to go in those photos! I wish I’d managed to get some photos of her at the transport museum.

Nice to see LA198 on the ground again. It sure did look good when finished. In the tent in Hangar Two.

A couple of months after it first arrived at East Fortune.

TE462 was looked at for restoration on numerous occasions, if I can remember; I think it was a matter of money in the end. I think there was a plan to run the engine at one stage, but with the cropped props, that wasn’t going to happen.

I think I did as well.

|was lucky enough to get to sit in that Spitfire as a kid long before everything was regulated and Health and Safety risk assessed.

First museum aircraft at EF, it was the reason the museum managed to get space there in 1971. (Photo taken 1975)

TE462 back on public display at East Fortune. I think I approve of the way its displayed. Some restoration could have been carried out in advance patricularly the cropped propellor blades that always look odd to me. A great improvement over how it was displayed before.

Looks good displayed like that. Agree with your comment re the prop blades and not having had some work done on it.
Always seemed to me to be a rather forlorn exhibit. Shame, since it was one of the first aircraft they had there-if not the first.

This must be the ultimate aircraft up a pole or poles.

http://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/boeing-747

Bruce, if you are thinking of Myerton then it is still open.

That’s actually a pretty good way of making room in a hangar, without hanging from the ceiling.

There used to be a motor museum not terribly far from EF, which had at least a dozen Spitfire prop blades lurking in corners, though I think it has closed now.

Bruce

TE462 back on public display at East Fortune. I think I approve of the way its displayed. Some restoration could have been carried out in advance patricularly the cropped propellor blades that always look odd to me. A great improvement over how it was displayed before.

I always like seeing photographs of East Fortune in the ’80s and ’90s as this is how I remember it from my childhood. My brothers and I would go with my grandparents semi-regularly back then. I seem always imagine that they had a lot more exhibits back then, but I think it only must be because they used fewer hangars as display space? I am interested to see how it will all be reworked, lets just put it that way!

I like the suspended Spit in the Kelvin Grove. It is a bit unusual and a bit wacky, but that seems to be one of the central themes of the collection. You get a good view of it from the balconies. By contrast, the mockup of the Spit at EF looks like it will be quite far off the ground, so you will only get to see the underside! It looks like a waste of space.

No

So are they swapping the F21 for the XVI?

Short video available on Youtube –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0XZWl6wQ8c

The first pic of post #10 brings back memories.

Oh for the days when Hanger 4 was full of aircraft … not just about full with one aircraft

:highly_amused: You never know!

I hope it’s being re-furbished before they do that, as the repaint carried out by the RAF in about 1970…

Not in the pseudo Mediterranean G-F scheme I trust.

Mark

Yes its the East Fortune Spitfire TE462 thats going up in the air. I hope it’s being re-furbished before they do that, as the repaint carried out by the RAF in about 1970 is fading underside and is going a bit pink and the propellor blades have been cropped.

Hi K5054NZ, I think Robert is just using that illustration as an example of how East Fortune’s Spitfire is going to be displayed – that isn’t the actual aircraft in the drawing. The one on the left is the Mark 21 in Glasgow.

Nitpick – the aircraft in the photo isn’t a XVI 😉 Perhaps a XIV?