Westland Whirlwind P7056 "Pride of yeovil"

There are other photos available on the Facebook site…

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Westland-Whirlwind-Fighter-Project/256647147740291

Chris.

Any chance of some pics please? Great news and good luck to you all.

Your wish is my command![ATTACH=CONFIG]237214[/ATTACH]

Any chance of some pics please? Great news and good luck to you all.

Pictures will be along shortly…Chris.

Also, thanks must go to Chris Hayward, Merlin57, who won’t say it himself but who has volunteered to take on the Secretary’s role and has kept the whole thing together while some heckled from the sidelines.

Many thanks for your kind words Matt but lets face it without you and Mike Eastman who put this together in the first place it would never have got off the ground. I think that this would be a good time to mention the rest of the project team who have put time and money into bringing this wonderful aircraft back from obscurity so here i go…..

Thanks to .. Gunnar Olsen, Stu Hawkins, Patrice Moreau, Jim Munro, Dave Gibbings, Colin Smithson, Matt Painter and all the members of the WFP who donated money.( word of warning I will around with the begging bowl again shortly).:highly_amused:

Any chance of some pics please? Great news and good luck to you all.

if only i didnt live half a world away…..si glad to hear this news…..to Mike and Mr Merry i hope you can get more help as it gains pace……best news this year guys.

This is wonderful news – I wish the team every success in this project.

Also, thanks must go to Chris Hayward, Merlin57, who won’t say it himself but who has volunteered to take on the Secretary’s role and has kept the whole thing together while some heckled from the sidelines.

Thanks for all the supportive posts, everyone.

It is, very early days! We are considering how it might be disassembled for travel, as from the beginning we planned to ‘tour’ it for a while upon completion, whenever that might be.. but already there has been interest from various museums/organisations. One thing is an absolute definite requirement – it is going indoors!

Will this be a travelling exhibit on completion or has a museum been earmarked? Early days I know but a great project that I’m sure a lot of us wish to succeed.

Building has now commenced

At long last after four years the team can announce that the building of P7056 “Pride of Yeovil” has begun. The first time in over 70 years that a part for a Westland Whirlwind Fighter has been fabricated. A lot of thanks must go to the research team who dug out all the photographs and data, AgustaWestland for letting us have what plans survived and their faith in this project, Gunnar Olsen for the many hours that he spent recreating the plans from scratch and then redoing them if they were one iota out and also to Matt Bearman and Mike Eastman who put this idea together from a simple email.
Mike who is our Chairman and who also runs the Aircraft Restoration Group at his workshop near Ripon has now, with his dedicated volunteer team, cut out 3 of the frames plus the doublers and wireless tray bearers which form part of the rear fuselage structure.
Also underway is construction of the unusual and challenging angled ‘Frame 10’ fuselage join – with thanks to Steve Vizard and the team at Airframe Assemblies for their technical help.

The newsletter for may is now online..http://whirlwindfighter.blogspot.co.uk/

Chris

Great news. Keep up the good work. You are going about things the right way. Can’t wait to see this airframe grow.

Hi All,
Congratulations to all the team involved that is bringing this much knocked fighter back from extinction keep it up gents. :applause:
Here is the Amazon page were you can by the kindle version of “Night Of The Whirlwind” as Beermat and the project site will confirm only available on kindle now, the amazon page has a couple of cracking reviews. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Night-Whirlwind-David-Bruce/dp/1846858623 😉

Geoff.

At the risk of being accused of thread drift, although still Whirlwind Fighter related, may I recommend a novel entitled Night Of The Whirlwind? As it’s a type I know very little of the story may be full of inaccuracies but it’s still a good read.

Understood! So, any volunteers in the Ripon/Thirsk area, or who can get there to put in a bit of metal-bashing?

Cheers Matt.

But the point I’m making is that Mike needs more help in order to make decent progress. I can only get up one or two Saturdays per month at the most.

Congratulations everyone! This is extremely good news, even from 10,000 miles away. Pictures please.

Steve

Hi Dave – yes, I added that bit to Chris’ release, apologies, I should have said ‘Dedicated volunteer (one man) team’…!

To quote “Mike, with his dedicated volunteer team” Isn’t quite accurate. When we cut the metal on Saturday it was only me and Mike, more help is needed please.

Great news, good luck and well done for all the hard work behind the scenes. Now you can start to see the physical results and be justly proud.

Thank you for bringing one of my favourites back from the grave

Steve