20K and he can’t even be bothered to remove the paper work from the top of the engine, and there’s no carbertooter….

I’ve got a Viscount prop hub as a door stop, and a trolley acc with a clay pigeon trap mounted on it; I believe that the original manufactures of both items, had intended this, looking at the space allocated on the mod plates…

Nice to see Web pilot’s been keeping himself busy….

Put a Merlin engine on top of it, problem solved

Cheers

Cees

If they do, I’ll have to nick it, won’t be able to stop myself!!

Neither the Spitfire, or the Hurricane, (or for that matter any other A/C or machine) would be right, in both the setting , and context; I don’t know how big the plinth is, but my suggestion would be a group of soldiers, in uniforms spanning several hundred years right up until present day,to remind people that like rust , war never sleeps.

Yet again the UK goverment and its transient glove puppets are out to tar all with a single brush.

While I don’t have any de-activated guns (or live ones for that matter) I can see this idea causing a lot of trouble.

We carry out licenced excavation (under the Protection of Military Remains Act) and often find guns in varying states of dis-repair from almost perfectly straight to banana like 20mm cannons. At present we have to declare them to the local police and then have them deactivated. This included welding a rod into the barrel and also welding the breach. I would like to know how you go about reactivating that as the distortion caused by heat from a welding torch is enough to mean it could never be fully cleared of weld and damaged steel.

But then we can trust our elect representatives to make a mess of everything.

You would be suprised at just how poorly many firearms are deactivated, I had a Webley service revolver that had a rod welded into the barrel, with little more than a piece of mild steel and an ordinary hammer it knocked out with about ten blows.

Subsequent investigation revealed that the rifling was still intact in the bore, and the only other item removed was the small firing pin from the hammer; it is shoddy jobs like this that cause all the problems, because of the ease of reactivation.

I would like to point out that I re welded the rod back into the barrel, before disposing of the pistol, and this time, I think it’s there to stay!

Further to the many words of wisdom above, I would like to add, that I do not believe that the “grandpa’s broom” analogy applies to in depth restoration , for that to be so, the replacement parts need to have been added over a period of years , whilst the broom/ A/C was in use, not all at once having found the broom/AC in an old rotten shed,neglected for 20 years or more.

I think the majority of “unusable” bits from restorations will stay locked up in containers for eternity, I don’t belive that the skins from TD248 would have seen light of day, if the owner new that they would eventually become a “sister “A/C!

Until the way in which new “rebuilds” are received by aviation journalists, and enthusiasts has changed, (for example the eager anticipation of the rebuild to fly of a famous BoB aces Spitfire, that piled into the ground at 400mph+, of which about an ordinary bucketfull of material survives),I will continue to view (with scepticism) any newly finished rebuild to fly.

I believe that the desire to recreate history (or at least personal ownership of) is the driving force, but also think that the CAA are almost equally to blame; I have had various conversations with a specialist engineer, who supplies a large part of the warbird world requirements, and his bottom line is safety, he will never use anything that cannot be shown to be 100% , and of course very little that is 60 years old is.

Maybe what is needed is a new clasification within the permit to fly, allowing for A/C previously aerobatic/high g rated, to be down rated, so that less strain is put on them , and more original structure could be re used.