XN923–

I concur with that. Further to it (though it likely doesn’t apply in the case of a B-17), such study affords the opportunity of “xeroxing” the design in great detail, enabling the building of replicas–viz that glorious-looking Me262 whose flying debut is making the rounds of the fora at the moment…I’d love to see something like that happen with the NMNA Brewster 339. At least, at last word anyway, that aircraft was slated to be conserved, rather than restored. Might be an emergent trend…NASM P-38 and P-61; FAAM Corsair…hope so.

S.

Hi–

Apparently (see further up the thread) that password is “voltage”, but nevertheless I can’t get at the trailer either.

Re the “droopy” Nieuports, saw a photo of those in one of the mags recently and they’re not drooping, they have swept wings. Presumably a CG thing; not sure whether the Nie 11/16/17 or any variants thereof actually had swept wings. There were five of those replicas IIRC and they were built very quickly for the film.

I’ll probably go see this one, but I sense this could be another of those missed opportunities…you know, since I became keen on old aircraft some three decades ago, it seems a shame that over that whole time my favourite aviation-related film would be an unrepentant fantasy, Spielberg’s “Always”! The more historically-sound stuff all dates earlier…much of it before I was even born.

S.

Hi all–

Seneca airfield, Haldimand County, Ontario, 1972 or so; two Bensen gyros and the Red Cap Pitts Special team, all parked on the grass in the pouring rain!

First one where I actually saw anything in the air? Hamilton, June 1975; the first of about two dozen Hamilton shows. Mustangs, Firefly, and Joe Hughes’ Stearman with wingwalker. (Soberingly, the wingwalker would have been Gordon McCollum, who was killed at Reno that fall. The Firefly would also be lost, along with CWH co-founder Alan Ness, at the 1977 CNE waterfront show at Toronto.)

S.

7A2–

I’ve got the first officer’s seat from a Victor K2 in my loft among the memorabilia; the Victor in question was the one that crashlanded on arrival for the 1986 Hamilton airshow, XL191 of 55 Sqn. Exchanged some books to CWH’s library for the seat after the RAF left some bits of XL191 to the museum. (CWH didn’t want “modern” artifacts back then. The other bang seat from XL191 ended up as an office chair in Burlington; the shell of the nose section from the Victor is now in the Walter Soplata collection in Ohio).

Cheers

S.

Hi–

Not sure whether the Trenton Auster ever had a British serial or c/r; it is one of the batch of AOP.6s operated in the fifties by the RCAF. This one was on the Canadian civil register, also, as C-FLWK. The livery is that of a British Army Auster, VF582, flown in a medal-winning action in Korea by Canadian Captain Peter Tees. Very confusingly there are three Auster 6s, all ex-RCAF and Canadian civil, in Canada painted as “VF582″…Trenton’s, the one recently on display at CWH in Hamilton (ex CF-KLD) until replacement by another Auster, and the one stored at CAvM in Ottawa (ex CF-KBV and RCAF 16652).

The ex-USN Hornet is intriguing. Is this BuNo 160778, which had gone to CFB Borden as a battle-damage repair trainer? If so it’s one of the earliest F-18s built, and spent most of its career at McDonnell Douglas as a test bird…

S.

Lukeylad–

Air tankers as in firefighting…converted military bombers dropping retardant in the path of wildfires to “cut them off” so as to allow firefighters on the ground to put them out. (Flying-boat types equipped for “scooping” off lakes, et cetera, are also used in a related technique, but the water is usually dumped directly onto the fire). Not too many Mitchells were used for tanking. The A-26, the PB4Y, and some of the classic prop transports (C-54; DC-6) were much more commonly employed this way. Emerson–many thanx for posting these shots, I’ve rarely seen photos of the Canadian Mitchell tankers and never managed to see the aircraft themselves…

S.

Hi Camlobe–

Not to pop your bubble…but CAvM does not fly its aircraft; RD867 will not fly again (unless CAvM decides to part with it, which is very unlikely indeed).

I had another idea for making an interim display of that Beau while Hercules of the correct variant were sought: quite a few times I floated the admittedly offbeat notion of molding two mockup Merlin cowls from CAvM’s Lancaster and making RD867 a “temporary Mk.II”. Those cowlings were very similar if not nearly identical. But of course CAvM has much else awaiting attention (and scarce enough funding), so that the Beau has yet to make the top of the list…though she’d be top of many FP forumites’ list, I don’t doubt.

None of which takes away from my absolute delight that RD867 is at long last out of the weather! Splendid news.

Cheers

S.