Well it's cheaper than 'Fly in' and 'Fly with'

Looks great. Well if you ever continue the build be sure to keep us all posted.

It would have been, yes….

http://www.lightaircraftassociation.co.uk/pdf/DataSheets/Isaacs%20Spitfire.pdf

I have plans for a 60% scale job somewhere in the house.

Leave the airfix for now, you can always come back to them. Your 60% scale sounds interesting. Would it have been your first build?

Well if you ever decide to step up in scale then this is the place to be for advice. What size were you once considering?

I have plans for a 60% scale job somewhere in the house.

£4 is plenty enough. Particularly if you’ve travelled to the museum and have a few kids. I think they’ve got it about right.

I would love to sit in a Spitfire, £4 doesn’t really seem like enough for what would be a pretty special experience 🙂

Not me, no. Once, maybe, but not these days. My replicas are 1/72 or 1/48 these days.

Well if you ever decide to step up in scale then this is the place to be for advice. What size were you once considering?

Daz – is my memory failing me or arnt you building a replica spitfire? Apologies if I have the wrong person. If so, soon you can relive 68 over and over.

Cheers

Not me, no. Once, maybe, but not these days. My replicas are 1/72 or 1/48 these days.

Ps. Makes you think that actually a very good investment would be for Hendon to build a very convincing replica spitfire but with an extremely tough replica interior that could withstand punishment. It would never be empty?

Or a replica Beverley along the same lines 🙂

I once paid a £5 donation to sit in the cockpit of a well-known Spitfire replica at Duxford.

Why? Why not?

The donation went to the museum, and the chap in charge let me close the door, slide the canopy forward, and pretend I was hunting Buchons in 1968 for as long as I wanted. So I did.

You can be any kind of enthusiast you like. Just don’t rain on someone else’s parade because you don’t approve.

I don’t ‘not approve’ . If someone wants to dress up and sit in it and machine gun noises I don’t care. Although I think pretending to shoot stuff is an odd way to spend ones time. Like people who dress up as soldiers – why?

Perhaps I’ve not made my meaning clear. xf940 said the museum at Hendon didn’t cater for enthusiasts because his friend got in trouble got crossing off the walkways and because the jp was protected. Well, it’s a museum. If the jp wasn’t getting protected then people would complain equally. Likewise how difficult is it just to walk on the obvious route. If you have a need to touch and look inside put in a research request. The jp with just a fake stick and Perspex cover is only intended for kids.

Xf940, for clarification it was that element I was questioning but admittedly in a rushed way. Nothing wrong if somebody wants to play pilot or fly a real aircraft. Free country and it takes all sort.

I do disagree that a sit in exhibit has to be the full thing. I sat in the jp at Hendon as a kid and I wasn’t fussed about the non authentic elements. It is still better than a sim.

Daz – is my memory failing me or arnt you building a replica spitfire? Apologies if I have the wrong person. If so, soon you can relive 68 over and over.

Cheers

I probably would. Does that make me a bad person?

Moggy :angel:

Definitely not a bad person 😀 Perhaps I would if a) I was a bit smaller (the Hunter is a tight fit in the single-seat variant) and b) I had a bit more disposable time. To be honest, just taking in the feel and smell, probably most of all the smell, is enough but flicking switches and hand on throttle and stick is quite satisfying.

My co-owner of the Pup is an ex-RAF Phantom pilot and I couldn’t get him to sit in the Hunter, but he was quite taken by the smell and did lean in and flick a few switches and waggled the stick a bit.

I think museums like the Jet Age Museum are more in tune with what people want, rather than the sterile and quite ‘jobsworth’ type museums like Hendon.

It could be the only chance a lot of people will get to sit in a Spitfire.
I bet there will be a long queue.

I have a Hunter F4 cockpit in the garage. I don’t sit in it and ‘play’ Pilot.

I probably would. Does that make me a bad person?

Moggy :angel:

Why does an enthusiast need to play pilot anyway. A true enthusiast surely could just look like everyone else. Those who love art don’t need to finger the oil paintings they look at etc. A good eye for getting kids excited though

I once paid a £5 donation to sit in the cockpit of a well-known Spitfire replica at Duxford.

Why? Why not?

The donation went to the museum, and the chap in charge let me close the door, slide the canopy forward, and pretend I was hunting Buchons in 1968 for as long as I wanted. So I did.

You can be any kind of enthusiast you like. Just don’t rain on someone else’s parade because you don’t approve.

I have a Hunter F4 cockpit in the garage. I don’t sit in it and ‘play’ Pilot. I don’t need to, I have a 50% share in a genuine British classic at Kemble that I can fly. I do however like, wherever the chance happens, to sit in the front office of other aircraft and ‘take it all in’. I’m sure lots of other people do too. I consider myself an enthusiast, but not someone who is only interested in collecting tail numbers, or taking a particular type of photograph. Your comparison with art is a poor one, as art is designed to be looked at. From a pilots perspective, an aircraft is designed to be sat in and operated.

If a museum makes available a fairly common airframe as a sit-in exhibit, then it should be just that, otherwise they may just as well get in one of those horrendous ‘Red Arrows’ simulators that cram 20 people in for ‘the ride of their lives’.

I presume the £4 will fund somebody to watch over the ‘experience’ so may be a little more authentic than the JP.

Getting children excited about aviation can’t be a bad thing can it?

Moggy

Why does an enthusiast need to play pilot anyway. A true enthusiast surely could just look like everyone else. Those who love art don’t need to finger the oil paintings they look at etc. A good eye for getting kids excited though

If it’s anything like the JP they had at Hendon a few years back, everything will be ‘plated over’ in thick perspex, the ‘seat’ was a wooden plank across and IIRC the stick tops weren’t even JP. You couldn’t actually touch or play with anything other than ‘the stick’ – it was hardly what I’d call a ‘sit in experience’.

The friend I was with got constantly shouted at by security (and even the cleaners) because he transgressed the carpet onto the lino, and got shouted at for looking a little too closely into the Phantom that had steps and a platform, and the canopy open!!

Hendon is a horrendous place for true enthusiasts, but I suppose it’s protection against the marauding hordes of ‘young adults’.