Brownhills Scrapyard…

One of the Typhoon Cockpit sections currently owned by Peter Smith came out of Brownhills…I seem to remember him telling me this was the early 80s (I can’t believe that I missed out on that one…unfortunately it was slightly before I was into Typhoons). The cockpit included a rear fuselage until just before he went to collect it…during this interim period they had smelted it!!!! The wings can’t have been too long before this.

Re: Relightflynn9’s post on 20th Jan…I am attempting to rebuild a Typhoon cockpit section and you mentioned that a Typhoon control column was ‘liberated’. What happened to this? Do you still have it? Was it liberated out of a complete cockpit section?

As for Aylesbury….wasn’t this also the final home of many MKV Tempests?

Black Magic…

I am part of the group responsible for getting Black Magic back into the air. Is she original? Well as with all flying aircraft then the major parts have to be new….I certainly wouldn’t fly in a 70 year old plane made of wood that had spent almost 40 years languishing outside in Portugal!!!

Unfortunately Ken doesn’t have an interest in the Comet anymore (last I spoke to him he had moved off P-47 to Harvards) so Martin Jones is currently the sole owner (which may well change as the project moves on somewhat). I haven’t had the chance to update the website recently but the vertical fin has now been fitted to the fuselage and the workshop has been completed. Work continues on the aerodynamic tests to try and remove the problems that Grosvenor House has/had. The tail plane main spar is currently being cut and the main wing spars are due to be selected and inspected in the very near future. All the wing ribs have been completed and are waiting for the main spar. We have the engines ready to be worked on.

Our aim is for the first flight in 2006 (Commonwealth Games in Melbourne)…although time is marching on and I am not sure this will be the case!! We all have to have a date to work to otherwise it carries on forever!!!

Hope this helps….

Dave Robinson