Steve–

Try this…

http://act.mcmaster.ca/transit/hamilton-airport.htm

…You’ll already be downtown if you’ve come into Hamilton on GO Transit, so ignore the bit about “getting downtown”. BTW if you happen to be a railfan of any sort, the Hamilton GO station is a classic ’30s Art Moderne structure, built as the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Railway station and nicely restored for commuter use a few years ago. From Hunter Street where the station is you’d head a few blocks north to King Street (Gore Park) and get the Upper James HSR bus there…then link up with the cab-van service from the Upper James car barns to Munro Airport itself, in what used to be the village of Mt.Hope, southwest of the city.

Also worth thinking about, as you’ll be in Toronto already, might be a visit up Keele Street on the TTC system to Downsview Park (the old CFB Downsview) where the Toronto Aerospace Museum is, on Carl Hall Road; they too have a Lanc, the former pylon bird FM104, under longterm static rebuild.

And on Carlingview Road near the southeast corner of Pearson airport is the Aviation World shop, in which it is possible to drop an unseemly amount of money!

Late April is maybe a bit early for the “sharp end” stuff at CWH to be flying yet, but never say never. By then the Harvard and Stearman may well be doing (pre-arranged) pleasure flights, though, if the weather’s decent, especially on weekends.

Hm. Actually, if your free day happens to be a Saturday, PM me…maybe I can circumvent part or all of the transit issue with my car!

Cheers

Steve T

Lee–

Oh, that tears it…First we get the announcement of airline service from Mt.Hope to the UK for the first time in over 15 years (good fares too)…then you go and show me this. Geez. (Got to find a way to remove all this drool from the keyboard, too…):rolleyes:

Seriously, VR930 looks gorgeous (not that she didn’t already!), and the addition of “Dragon of Cymru” is not only splendid news for RNHF but for all of us Furyphiles keen not to see yet another Centaurus vanish in favour of a Cyclone. I couldn’t be more pleased. Hearty congrats…

S.

Great stuff! Thanx for both the museum post and the Spit link. Have just made one of those Black 57 A2A shots my new wallpaper. Any sign at the IDF/AF museum of their Avia C210? (Bit of a “bitsa”, including landing gear off a Dornier 27, but still a near-unique survivor).

S.

Wow, C-GZIC! Now I’m even more pleased to have seen this at Quebec City last summer. Thanks to a maintenance chap with a stepladder in the box of his truck, I got a few pix of ZIC at Lesage Airport (along with two disassembled Hunters, one of them ex-CWH). Had not heard ZIC was bound for France. Who’s the operator there?

S.

Hi all–

To clarify–though the info already brought forward here suggests this anyway–most of the wilderness crash sites involve postwar flying. BCATP activity was almost entirely in southern Canada, mostly in rural areas, so the crashes that occurred in training generally happened in places that were fairly accessible. (I have copies of most of a 6RD Salvage Section airman’s snapshot album from 1943-45, showing such wrecks being salvaged right after coming to grief; in one unsettling photo a small fire can be seen still glowing in a Harvard wreck…so yes, most such wrecks were promptly and efficiently salvaged).

Until the 1980s there were lots of BCATP hulks on farms, particularly on the Prairies. As has been mentioned many of those have since been recovered by private restorers or museum groups. Two examples: for their flyable Bolingbroke project, CWH gathered eight airframes plus parts of some others, initially at Hartney, Manitoba, then at Mt.Hope where a longterm composite rebuild is underway; and NLS in Nanton, Alberta, have (inter alia) gathered a spectacular assemblage of Anson hulks (over twenty) which will someday, I don’t doubt, provide the beginnings of several restorations in various places.

There are, of course, exceptions: Hurricanes down in the Quebec or New Brunswick woods; the Kittyhawk that may still be on the bottom of the St.Lawrence River, et cetera. Time, as always, will tell…

S.

TJ–

Actually, a Fury painted rather like a Tempest would look like Ormond Haydon-Baillie’s CF-CHB…which was gorgeous, even if a bit contrived. Better at any rate than some of the liveries inflicted on my favourite airplane in recent years.:eek:

An R3350 “Skyfury”, with its four-blader, would look even nearer a Tempest. An actual Tempest painted as a Tempest, of course, would be nicest of all…even if the restorer “cheated” and used an R3350 swinging the prop the wrong way about…:rolleyes:

Oh for $US650k…

S.

Hi all–

If the link works, here are a couple pix of my Victor souvenir…the first officer’s M-B “bang seat” from Victor K.2 XL191 that crashlanded at Mt.Hope in June 1986. (One of the cockpit sections Richard refers to comes from XL191; it’s in Walter Soplata’s collection in Ohio.)

http://rides.webshots.com/album/554189036JaaZej

S.

Cees–

Thanks for the vector. That’s a new one to me. Always wondered whether any of the Russian Hurricanes were CC&F-built. (After the CWH hangar fire I used to nurture the fantasy that the lamented Mk.XII could be replaced by an ex-Russia project, which if it were CC&F-built like this one, could have received Cultural Property status in Canada. Sadly the lost Hurricane was “replaced” only with a GRP facsimile.)

S.