Personally there are three levels restoration,reproduction, and replica aircraft.
Trouble is with most modern warbirds its impossable to tell what catagory they fall in to. What is the most original flying warbird in the uk?
Restoration- includes at least 60% of the original airframe from when it was last in service. Or at least that much of other airframes of the same mk.
Reproduction- built to original design and standards, includes Spits built up from data plates in my eyes.
Replica- built to modern standards, with deffinate diffrences from the original design. This covers everything from those GRP gate guards, the scale WAR replicas, to the current ME262’s and FW190’s.
Just what is historic is another matter. Very few of the historic aircraft flying and in museums are really historic. Most spent their days with training units , flying the worlds air routes, ‘fighting’ the cold war or doing circuits and bumps. Most of the real historic machines ended up in little pieces 6ft under. We like to make them historic but thankfull most in recient history have not had to do much historic.
Personally I have no problem with any of these(well except the GRP’s), they are all ‘aircraft’ in their own right. I personally have no ‘historic snobery’ a scale replica spit is just as interesting as the real thing to me. Its a case of each to their own. I find propliners and vintage light aircraft more interesting than P-51’s etc. There is surely room for all of us on here?
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