Ah yes, the “Mayfield Kestrel”…Always liked how the Poirot production team worked all the splendid period (or near-period) hardware into that show. Spit, Rapide, DC-3, Beech 18, Stampe…and all those nice old cars and locomotives, too…

One of the three or four GRP Spit pylon airframe replicas that came to Canada wore AH codes for a time–the one mounted atop the “Spitfire Emporium” aviation giftshop in Kitchener, Ontario. Later it was repainted as NH357 VZ:F of 412 Sqn RCAF to honour local vet, the late Charley Fox of CHAA who had flown Spits with 412 during the war. I think it’s still there, but was looking a little droopy last i saw it!

It strikes me that the Emporium, or the neighbouring K-W Surplus store, had a framed photo on show depicting an actual Mk.IX flying with AH codes…MH434?

S.

Hm, shipping of course might be an issue, but I wonder if NMRCAF at Trenton might be interested in this as an interactive exhibit…the C-119 being one RCAF type as yet unrepresented in their collection (and very Trenton-related, too, since Trenton was Transport Command HQ and remains the RCAF’s airlift hub)…

(…And then of course when you have several C-17s available, maybe shipping’s not that big of a deal either!)

S.

XL426 attended the London (Canada) airshow in 1982 and I have a shot of her with a small crowd sheltering under one of her wings in the teeming rain…pretty sure she was in wraparound camo. The grey looked pretty dark, but then the whole atmosphere was–a miserable day.

S.

DC–

If by Lefty Gardner’s Lightning you mean N25Y “White Litnin'”, she’s now with the Red Bull fleet in Austria in magnificent condition, highly polished bare metal finish and still fitted with the early-model shallow cowlings Lefty had on her for racing. Never knew Vultee built Lightnings!

S.

OHOPE–

Nope…the first pressing from Glyn Powell’s molds was in pine and not intended for use on a flyer…it did however go to Canada, specifically to the static display Mossie project at Windsor, Ontario, which is otherwise based on recovered remains from an Arctic survey B.35 (TA661/CF-HMQ?) that crashed in the fifties. Bob Jens’ airplane is a complete original airframe, also an Arctic survey B.35, VR796/CF-HML, that was a project for many years with Don Campbell in Ontario and then with CMFT in British Columbia.

I’ve been privileged to see two Mossies (RS709 and RS712) airborne in the past; looks like there’s at least the chance of seeing two more in the relatively near term…cool…

S.

Didn’t know about the Dec ’11 shots on WIX; how’d I miss that! Looks like the P-47 has moved a few yards from where I saw it beside the C-82 pod (visible in the background in the WIX shot), and that there’s what looks like a stripped F-86D/K/L nose on its side in front of the Thunderbolt. I don’t remember seeing that. There was an intact F-86D/L ex Georgia ANG out front.

I expect the site is slowly being cleared…but it’ll take years. Many of the “best” of Walt’s treasures have already found new homes, with two–the Mitchell “Wild Cargo” and the F2G racer–having flown again.

Love the Reinert T-bolt pic. Registration looks like N4477N, which if memory serves was either revived or reused on Charles Osborn’s restored P-47D in the early 90s. I think Reinert may also have had the YP-47M Bendix racer that ended up with Yanks Air Museum in California; my guess is he had more than one T-bolt and Walt got an incomplete spare…

S.

The three current Mossie projects in Canada are all based on British-built airframes; only two Canadian identities survive, FB.26 KA114 with AvSpecs/Yagen and B.20 KB336 at Rockcliffe in storage. The Bob Jens Mossie, B.35 VR796/CF-HML, is to fly eventually; the other two are to be restored to static display condition, being two other ex-Arctic survey B.35s, one at Windsor (based on the remains of TA661 plus the pine test pressing fuselage from AvSpecs) and one at Calgary.

No Mossie was lost in the CWH fire in February 1993; neither, despite persistent rumours, was the large cache of Bolingbroke components CWH had in storage at the time…but Hurricane 5377/C-GCWH and Spitfire MK297/N9BL of the CAF were lost. Both Mossie B.35s, RS709 and RS712, did stop over at CWH on their ferry flights from the UK, but that was in the 1980s. One of my favourite Warbird memories is of watching George Aird depart for Dayton in RS709/G-MOSI, blowing all the snow off the roof of Hgr#3 with the propwash as he made that last, diagonal, low pass over the line.

The Kermit Weeks confusion might have something to do with the fact Kermit has parts of two Lancasters to make one…?

I wonder: how about taking a page from the World War I aircraft enthusiasts’ playbook and aiming for a precise lookalike “Mosquito”, in modern composites instead of wood, and maybe Allison-powered? The same basic idea has already worked with Marcel Jurca’s fullscale Spit design (which was wood instead of metal)…just a thought. It’s the shape, and to some degree the sound, of an airborne Mossie everyone understandably longs to perceive again…

S.

Tom H–

Didn’t realize AAviaM was seeking a Cobra…an idea…might be worth checking the status of the P-63A hulk Walt Soplata had in Ohio. It really does look like a freshly-recovered airframe, and wears standard OD/grey paintwork; all you’d need would be to add Soviet stars and put it on “diorama” display!

Here’s the only pic I have showing that Kingcobra; it was taken in summer 1982, at which time the 63 was tucked inside the centre fuselage of a B-36, along with the remains of a P-82 Twin Mustang. What a place…

Redhill, got any pix of the B5N to post? I had no clue there was anything like that in the UK!

S.