Well, the undercarriage indicator looks to be genuine…

WOW…My mate has got an original panel from a MkVb with about 90% original instruments, only wanted best offers around £9k for it..so will tell him of this one LOL

http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?133319-Projects-Wants-And-Trades-2015/page12

DONT LOOK ETHANOL

I think ethanol is flammable, if that helps…..

Auwtch. Hope they fictionally made an AD for those type of floats!

The following story is a work of fiction that is not based on any person, living or dead.

Once upon a time, a fuel vendor, responding to initiatives by a major political donor ethanol producer promoting lower cost, environmentally sustainable fuel, blended a small percentage of lower cost ethanol into avgas. This was part of the future and would help lower costs for aircraft owners. It was good. Not quite right, but meant to be good. This was not done without research, as it is known that ethanol may degrade certain seals in fuel systems. But the modern research never really covered shellac, which dissolves in alcohol, and nobody reasonably knew that shellac coated cork floats existed in the fuel systems of 1930’s biplanes. Who would ? Anyway, some of this fuel went into a 1930’s biplane with shellac covered cork floats and the floats degraded filling the tank with particles and sludge. This was OK until one day the fuel supply was interrupted upon takeoff and with faltering engine the pilot decided to turn back, which caused a stall and a fatal crash. The cause of the crash was the pilot’s decision to turn back.

Anyway the pilot owned a lot of stuff which had to be sold. A cupboard full of AGS which he had purchased for thousands of pounds sold for a few hundred. Ditto for streamline wires, spar timbers, carefully collected parts. Some things went for weird prices at the auction where things were sold. The auctioneer was more usually engaged in the selling of fine art, so his distribution list went out to folks that wouldn’t blink at spending millions on a mere canvas. Two absentee, high powered finance types in the City bid up an instrument panel from a famous WW2 fighter plane to an astronomical amount, because it would go well on a wall next to some framed, illustrated pages from a 16th century Koran. It would be a good talking piece, affordable. Maybe they felt sorry for the widow. Maybe they knew the pilot.

The moral of the story is that a genuine WW2 fighter panel with provenance, presented in a study littered with books, dirty ashtrays and a farting dog with mucousy eyes eating a leftover microwave dinner, will probably sell for less than a non genuine panel displayed in a glossy catalogue and fussed over by well dressed gay courtiers in a Victorian building next to a cafe with gourmet food in an auction by a firm used to dealing with people with tax problems. These people sell AGS as scrap but leverage human frailty into gold : look at my famous WW2 fighter panel ! The other moral is that although the pilot would have been pleased with the return on investment, he did not get to enjoy it. Amortizing this splendid, single gain against losses from other disposals meant a far more average total return. Better not to have had a fire sale at all.

This fantastical story may seem far fetched. It may be true that famous WW2 fighter panels are suddenly worth a lot of money. Let’s get together and knock a few up ! Oh the bits and pieces we walked past in our yesterdays or stupidly gave away for just a smile and a doughnut ! I’m going to knock a few famous WW2 fighter panels up, once I have worked out how to check for ethanol in fuel.

Long toggle switches for Mag and round top Bfp as well…Could build a cockpit for that money.

I had a close look at the actual panel. I don’t know much about Spitfire instrumentation, but the two things I found ugly about it where that the panels were freshly painted full gloss black, and that the instruments were all held on with special screws to prevent removal of any of the instruments; on the exposed side they had no recesses. These screws seemed to be made for the job as the turning marks were fairly coarse. Going to a bit much effort, I think, as the museum was fairly small and not well known – I wouldn’t have thought thieves would be a problem.

Looks like it – its neither fish nor fowl. Most similar to a Mk 9 panel, but without the supercharger switch. There’s some expensive parts there, most notably the U/C indicator, but there are also quite a few incorrect ones, or bad replicas. At best I can see 5-6K in it.

Bruce

Frankenplane?

Two people with more money than sense.