Any timescale on ‘772’s eventual return to flight?

I don’t think there is yet as its got to be surveyed and some of the important items up front will need thorough and/or inspection overhaul as the aircraft has not flown in some time, not to mention systems and a myriad of other things. I would think the timetable will be clearer in the coming weeks – they are certainly keen to get her flying as soon as possible, that I know. Matthias will be update here as soon as more is known and perhaps put some more pictures on in the meantime too.

Oh dear. I had been lead to believe that print-on-demand from PDF files would be straight forward. Or at least more straight forward that just passing the text and photos all laid out to a printer.

Is that not the same thing! 😉

I hate to disappoint you, but the Tempest bit is more or less word for word his blog post from 20 June this year

Yes it did look somewhat familiar.

(PS – Not sure if the ‘call to Seattle’ was for me or the other Mark!)

There are lots of us 🙂

So are you taking a trip to Washington, then, Mark?

Havnt had the call – but would be happy to help in some way. I do have a very nice set of stencils for the 190A – although much of it would have been overpainted in service.

A Mk IX wing panel

This is actually the outer wing flap and and the starboard aileron of PT879. Both have original factory paint from Castle Bromwich on them – fascinating in its own right.

A word of caution: (although my frame of reference is the WWII Period) – the ‘standard’ fonts and setting out diagrams were interpreted by the manuafcturers in different ways – they all had their own distinctive styles and often there were differnces between individual factories and even production batches. Also some were applied as stencils (and therfor had ‘twigs’ breaking up each letter/number) such as later Castle Bromwich produced Spitfires and others were sign-written – in solid letters. Generally when creating artwork for a serial (if I don’t have a period photo of the aircraft in question) I look at other aircraft nearby in the serial range. For example there are differences in serial font style between different production batches of PR.XI Spitfires and so for PL965 (in the absence of a photo of the serial) we have found examples of aircraft that were produced near her manufacturing date and followed the style of those.