I hope the new owner takes her to Oshkosh as she would almost certainly be in line for an award. Its about time a major restoration not carried out exclusivley in the US was recognised at Airventure.

I wonder if there is a little BBMF mischief making going on here.:)

Anybody else share my view? 🙂

I agree I think there is more to this than meets the eye 🙂 Fluffy is a man with sense of humour so who knows what. Water soluble matt paint that reveals the ‘black’ scheme underneath?:p

BTW – what happened to the blue painted rectangles in the cowling photo in post #25?

Nice piece of history there – thanks for posting 🙂

Has anyone ever recovered the top of one of these?

See PM!

The most confusing for me was closer look to the photographs. Roundel yellow on both aircraft photographs was very dark and shiny – similarly to the fuselage band.

Gretza, the appearance of roundel yellow as a very dark colour in WWII photos is quite common, its something to do with the kind of film that was used and it gives this strange appearance to yellow edged roundels and leading adges. Its possible that the fuselage bands may have been in that colour too and came out dark on the photos. I would be quicker to suggest local over-painting of the band in the camou colour rather than red or yellow but it is possible. If its the same shade as the dark rendered fuselage roundel yellow then quite possibley it is the same colour.

The only ones I can think of are Charles Church’s EE606 and also AB910

Yes Tom, I had forgotten about 606 ‘The Ultimate Spitfire’ 🙁

Also EP120 has no Merlin 55 engine fitted at present,its in several pieces in the workshop having the supercharger looked at!!

True 😀

IIRC most Baby spits are fitted with a Merlin 35 which has a very high Mod.state.

Also true, thats why I put that in by mistake 🙂

I heard that MH434 is in for an engine change. Will they fit a new 66 or wil it be another one?

I have another question to:
Is there any high performance spits flying today, more power, lighter than stock??

I have heard Spit V EP120, but i dont know.

Welcome Treadstone, I find the wording of your post a bit confusing but I think I get the basic idea of the question. As far as I am aware the only Spitfire currently flying that has modifications fitted with the intent of increasing its performance is PR 19 PS890. When it was re-built at Chino an ex-Shackleton Griffon was installed driving a contra-rotating prop, the idea being that a shot at the ‘time to climb’ record may be made. The aircraft also had flush clipped wings at that time. As far as all the other flying Spitfires are concerned, almost all of them are lighter than a 100% stock Spitfire on Squadron strength in WWII, this has been achieved by not fitting heavy stock equipment such as armour plate and guns, but this is usually done to save airframe strain, extend range and simplify construction rather than principally to gain additional speed performance. Similarly many Spitfires today are flying with Merlin or Griffon variants not precisely as the original wartime specification but this is done more on the basis of availability and reliability rather than increasing performance.

You mentioned EP120, this aircraft is one of the more ‘stock’ examples of a Spitfire and flies with a Merlin 55. When she was restored in 1995 a lot of effort was made to keep her as original as possible. I am not sure what Merlin is going in to MH434 though.