…..and after flicking through a few spit books I came across page 37 of Alfred Price’s book on the spit. It shows the MKI spit, with a roughly applied black cross and what appears to be damage from the IFF set being blown up. There’s also a pic of the MKXI from the other side with a P-38 in the background (page 223) and I quote ” Luftwaffe personnel inspecting a PRXI flown by the Sonderstaffel Wanderzirkus, a special unit which flew demonstrations with captured enemy aircraft’, can’t find anything about the serial though.

Tom.

La-9! La-9! La-9!La-9! La-9! La-9!La-9! La-9! La-9!La-9! La-9!……. and hopefully TFC’s new Hurri if things go well at HRL. The TFC site is down at the moment though so I haven’t had a chance to see if there are any new surprises to marvel at. A couple of years and our Spit will be one of the stars hopefully 😀 Meet up with me anoraky mates, eat too many burgers, get burnt to a crisp on the Land warfare Museum ‘mound’ (or get soaked depending upon if I’m a soppy enough tart to go on the wetter day) hopefully see the originator of this post and his mate and see what progress has been made in all the hangars, can’t wait!!!!! All we need for next year is a 190 and 109 and I’ll be a very happy bunny 😉

Tom.

Wahey!!!

Thank gawd! was getting positively bored with Forumlessness, well done to the team for getting it back on line. LEGENDS IN A WEEK!!!!!! :D:D:D:D:D

Tom (minor Legends fan)

Ok, getting back to the subject matter. If this is a Lysander which arrived is it to do with a certain organisation near to the superhangar? as I heard that they were on the lookout for one and that Kermit was looking to offload the one he bought from Canada, any ideas?

Tom.

Tempest suspension

I had a chat with the team leader of the restoration and it turns out that the Tempest won’t have any huge great holes cut in the skins or re-inforcement plates, just small wire exit holes cut in the wing root fairings, which are new as they don’t want to compromise the original fairings (even though they’re from SN219), I know this as I was a link in the chain which got the new ones made and repaired the originals. I was dubious when I saw the start of the painting but upon seeing the whole thing I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome and as others have said Target tugs are a bit thin on the ground so it’s nice to see one represented though a camo scheme would look better, I’ll wait for EJ693 to be completed for that though 😉 On the B-25 matter, does it really matter that much? there are plenty more B-25s than Tempests and the example in the AAM isn’t exactly a Grand Champion winner or even a potential one at that as there’s better examples out there to base an airworthy rebuild upon.

Tom.

Sorry boys, should’ve checked G-Info beforehand, that’s both Flypast and Aeroplane who’ve got it wrong then, maybe I should send them the link? 😉

Tom.

There’s a vague possibility that the 190 could make it but I doubt that the test schedule will be complete by then as the first flight should happen at the end of this month so they say. As for the Tempest II that Gerry Cooper is restoring I have it from a good source that it will definitely not be flying before Legends so count that out. I’ll be happy just seeing the LA-9 myself.

Tom.

Ant, I’m certainly no expert on things Russian though I do have some friends who know a lot more than I and one told me a while back that things are actually beginning to get more legal, there was a YAK 7 illegally removed from a well known site in the Murmansk region and it ended up that the local equivalent of a mayor issued an arrest warrant for the leader of the ‘removal company’ as there had been many illegal wreck removals prior to this attempt and the local officials were either beginning to wise up to the efforts of the recoverers or their back pockets were getting too full of cash 😉 I really hope that the situation does change over in that part of the world but until they see that a wreck does not necessarily mean that it is worth as much as a flyer (as some seem to think) then we might not see as many projects leave the borders of Russia as more and more companies over there want to recover and then restore the airframes that they recover and get more for their efforts as U$D are worth lots to them.

Tom.