LowtimerDoes anyone know if any full size J-3s are still being produced?
These people do, in effect, but they don’t call it a J-3, it’s a “Sport Trainer”. You can have some not very J-3-like options, like up to 150hp, but then adding power is what people like to do in the USA.
LowtimerBlimey, sorry about all those typing errors, that’s what happens when in a hurry 🙂
LowtimerAre you really allowed to fly light aircraft in and out of any field you like? :confused:
Why on earth not? We should be grateful that we live in a country where the starting point if still that people are free do do things except where prohibited. This is greatly preferable to the concept operated by certain other countries which work on the basis that everything is prohibited except for what the state specifically permits.
You may land in, and depart from, any field with the landowners permission, providing that you can do so in accordance with the various provisions of Rule 5 (the low-flying rule). Rule 5 is being updates at the moment: you can find the revised proposals here if you’re interested. The existing Rule 5 is undoubtedly lurking somewhere on the CAA’s website.
If a great deal of flying takes place in and out of the same field, of course, it would be reasonable for people to regard this as a change of primary use of the land, from e.g. agricultural to airfield. So planning permissions would be needed. At preent planning permission can be avoided by the use of the 28 day rule, which basically says that if you do activity x in a given location fewer than 28 days a year, then that does not count as change of use for planning purposes.
Many a nice airfield e.g. Little Gransden, got started under the 28 day rule.
LowtimerDan J,
Nice artwork, which puts me in mind to get a Tamiya kit out of the cupboard. If it wore squadron codes, though, surely by that date it would have been coded KC , not AJ . By that time AJ belonged to the USAAF’s 356th Fighter Squadron (of Richard E Turner & Short Fuse Sallee fame). However, it may have carried only carried the individual letter.
On the basis of logic rather than evidence, I think I would go with red for the code, simply because the code would have been done at unit level and that’s the colour they would be accustomed to use. As for the undersides, I doubt they would go to the trouble of repaining the underside of the aeroplane, and late-war night-fighters used greys and greens with no evident problems so I’d speculate that the Medium Sea Grey is most defensible unless someone comes up with a well founded memory or a photo.
LowtimerI’m 6’4″ and it’s hard for me to get in a Cub…
John, Is that the J-3 / L-4 you’re talking about? If so try the PA-18-95, the low powered flapless Super Cub… it’s much roomier and is soloed from the front seat, but still has a lot of the lightweight old-world charm of the older types. I’m 6’4″ and fit in that just fine.
LowtimerOh for a decent 1/72nd scale Blenheim MkIV.
The Airfix kit’s a total
Try the rather nice MPM one.
Built-up review here
LowtimerQuite a few of these are available in either 1/72 or 1/48 in reasonable quality injection-moulded kits – we are in fact living in a golden age for the availability of such things. The MB.5, Seafang / Spiteful and P-59 are available in 1/48 injection moulded kits for sure. I don’t want to break any rules about posting commercial links or giving plugs to commercial companies, but I’m sure you can use Google to find the international mail order web site that begins with H and operates out of Lowestoft, and do a search there. (If not, PM me!)
The Valiant has I think only been done as a vac-form.
LowtimerCrazymainer,
Homebuilt regulation is far tighter here than in the USA. We’re not allowed to bring in US-constructed homebuilts and fly them on their Experimental US tickets or their N registrations. Importing a US-constructed homebuilt is possible (though discouraged) by the PFA as there is no guarantee that the importer will ever be able to fly it. In practice, if it’s a well built, standard example of a homebuilt which is on the PFA’s approved list (e.g. a Vans RV4), it can given a very thorough inspection, maywell be issued with a list of required modifications to bring it up to UK approved status, amnd can then be re-registered as G-XXXX and flown on a Permit to Fly under PFA rules (the PFA is the homebuilders’ body here which recommends homebuilt types as suitable or unsuitable for issue of a Permit as a type.) The PFA has strict weight and power limits so a homebuilt can only get a permit if it is relatively light and low-powered. Incidentally, we are not allowed to fly in IMC or at night in homebuilts, nor are we allowed to overfly any settlement or town, and many types which are legally aerobatic in their country of origin are not permitted to do aerobatics here.
Permits may be had for certain vintage and ex military aeroplanes outside the homebuilt limits, but they have to be accepted by the CAA as genuinely vintage or ex military.
Chapter and verse on the issue of Permits and the operation of aircraft on Permits can be found here (CAA CAP 733)
Say if I register the 190 in the States and got a FAA Permit to Fly under Limited Cat. can I then bring it to the UK and fly it.
The reason I ask is how some of the Home Builds IE StarDuster, Long EZ, new Waco UPFs ect. can get a permit to fly from the CAA but they will not let the new build FW190.
LowtimerHi, TN,
All quite correct and fair comment – my point was simply that on other engines such as the Merlin, R-2800, R-3350 etc. the development work did continue for a long time, not only in military service but also in post-war civil aviation, with the result that today’s vintage aeroplane operators can benefit from all of that expensive experience and development work – which surely makes running one of those more fully developed engines today a very much more practical proposition as a result, both operationally and financially.
The Sabre was a remarkable engine in many ways but its short operational career and lack of post war civilian applications denied it the opportunity to grow to full maturity.
if you look at the development time line you will see that all the other high powered piston engines had problems equal to if not greater than those of the Sabre. Think Vulture, or the Wright R3350, development of which started in 1936 and it was still unable to produce any sort of reliability in 1942/43.
LowtimerIf that provided a way to get it signed off, I’d be well up the front of the queue to see, and especially hear such a thing as a flying Typhoon. I’ve always been fascinated in that high-revving H-24. There’s a sound file I once found on the Internet of a Sabre Tempest taking off and perhaps it’s imagination but to me it is a bit like two flat-12 Ferrari Boxers in close formation perhaps?? quite extraordinary.
LowtimerHi, DaveR,
I was making those comments in the context of a new-build Typhoon replica with a new-build Sabre replica engine. I agree that if you owned an aeroplane and engine with historical provenance you would be in with a shout. Although not capable of getting a C of A, a rebuilt Typhoon would in principle be eligible for a CAA Permit to Fly in the ex-military category. But completely new one would not, because of not being an ex-military aeroplane. Nor would it be eligible for a PFA Permit to Fly because of being way outside the PFA criteria.
This may seem peculiar but it is analagous to the situation with Yaks,for example. I am allowed to fly a fairly elderly Yak-52 on a CAA Permit because it is an ex military aeroplane. I am not allowed to run a newly manufactured Aerostar Yak-52TW on a CAA permit because it has no military service. However, if I have my old 52 subjected to a major mod by Yak UK / Termikas to convert it to a similar tailwheel configuration, I can have it on a CAA Permit because it’s still regarded as an ex military aeroplane. May not make a lot of sense, but that’s the way they run things.
Back to a Sabre powered aircraft…why would it not be allowed to fly? Many people I have spoken to have said that as long as you do things correctly then they will have no reason to stop you flying it.
LowtimerHello everyone, I’ve been lurking for a while and hope it’s OK if I join in.
It is highly unlikely that anyone will ever put a new-build sleeve valve engine into production. Even Napier, who designed the Sabre in the first place, never really got the hang of building them. The TBO that they were set for squadron entry was only 25 hours, and the sleeves very often failed even below that minimal life, until manufacture of the sleeves was switched to Bristol, the only company who ever started to come to terms with this technology. Even then, Sabre lives were short though spectacular, and the only sleeve valve engine to be truly fit for aviation, in the post-war era, in terms of reliability and serviceability, was the Centaurus. But in the end, overhead-valve radials became the dominant and most-evolved form of high powered piston aero engine. (The R-2800 family and the Vedeneyev / Ivchenko M14 family are arguably the most succesful of their type.)
I can’t imagine the CAA ever being happy for a new Sabre-engined aircraft to fly in the UK, such is the engine type’s reputation for unreliability. And it’s hard to see what could substitute for it while still enabling the aeroplane to look reasonably original. The FW-190 and Me 262 reproductions use modern engines of appropriate configuration, in the case of the 262 they are encased to make them resemble the originals.
However, if someone becomes extremely rich and wants a new warbird with a difference, all is not lost. Building a series of new Tempests II or Furies would be a lot easier, because even if it upsets some purists, you could use a known quantity like the R-2800.
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