Before everyone starts frothing at the mouth, check out Articles 11 and 12 (from memory) which regulate the way the CAA can issue a Permit to Fly to non-EASA and EASA aircraft types.

I presume the original quoted clause refers to an individual aircraft being permitted to fly in UK rather than the type as whole.

Am I right in thinking, that a Spit/Mustang wreck only have an actual value, when you also have a competent restoration team?

No – the value is there once the wreck is successfully salvaged. Whether or not there is any restoration process in place does not affect its value at that stage.

I guess I’ll have to wait, untill one is for sale on courtesy aircraft, or some place like that.

One sold on Courtesy a few months ago. No secret at $2,000,000. Most consider it was very cheap sale considering the aircraft in question was a recent comprehensive re-build and done to a very high standard.

The Francis Mason book gives you a pretty good listing of each aircraft (its not 100% complete though) with some history on each one, details of orders, producion contracts etc. Find a copy of the later Aston Publications version if you can.

Oooh, it’s not going to be one of my favourite late-model Spit schemes, is it? Black and white stripes spring to mind….

At least one person will be happy with it then 🙂

Sorry i can’t help- but is it my imagination or has this project only taken abiout 6 months???

Its your imagination!

Simple version. Is it normal to paint before, during or after a major service?

Hello Brian – well certainly not usually before a service but whether during or after depends on the nature of the work and the type of aircraft, there is no rule as such. In this case any external skin rectification that may have been needed has been carried out and the basic fuselage has been painted, minus engine, cowlings, wings, root fairings etc. There is nothing to stop this being done prior to re-installation of engine, fuel tanks etc, in fact it will help to reduce the overall time the project will take as the critical path will be the re-sparring of the wings (which can only be re-painted when this work is finished). The tail can be painted prior to fitting. The team will need to decide whether or not to paint the wings prior to bolting them on the fuselage (it can and has been done both ways). They are helped a bit by the single colour finish as there will be no tricky camou lines to align and it does look like they are taking advantage of this up to now.

When a Spitfire (or any similar sized warbird) is painted it is nomal practice to remove a lot of the access panels and seal up the openings so that you only get paint on in the right places. If its a flying aircraft these all have to be removed and paint stripped, individually re-painted and then re-fitted. In the cases where an aircraft has been overhauled or re-built a key decision is when you paint it during the work programme. With, for example, AR213 the decision was made to fly the aircraft last year and then paint it this year. The operators were able to carry out the test flying programme without delay and then apply the paint in the winter months prior to the show season – all good sense. With the Kennet Seafire you may recall the decison was made to fully paint the aircraft prior to first flight. To the operator this made sound sense as the test flying programme was to take place near the start of the display season and down time to re-locate the aircraft, remove all the panels etc would have exteneded the overall programme and conflicted with the display season.

Our current project is a Yak-3 and this will be dismantled for painting in a spray booth (fuselage and wings seperately) as this makes sense for the operator to use a facilty available on site, albeit with the added inconvenience of seperating these components. So as you can see there are a lot of factors to consider, not least of which is programme and timing and whether or not the re-paint is being carried out in house.