Hi Blue Leader,
No, I came along just before the Manston accident & stayed with it until Dec 2000. I believe it was assembled at Cinque ports aviation at lydd Airport. I knew Mark had flown it & also know DG very well, It’s had quite a chequered career poor old thing! The seat to stick interface has not always been what it could be!
Cheers………:)
When I first worked with MK732 the fin flash was the wrong width, Later in 1999 when we changed to the post war RLNAF scheme of all silver with very dark blue spinner & top of the rudder we only had a black & white photo to work with but by using the known scale of the aircraft It was not difficult to work out size & position of the markings, problems we did have was working out what lettering should be along the top wing skin on the spar line like’ dont walk’ but with Harry Van de Meer we worked it out I think! I can post some pics if anyone is interested.
I believe this was the other one of the two in Holland, there was a toss up as to which airframe was re-built & MK732 won, Airframe Assemblies Ltd have built several components for It. I also believe It was owned by Jac Van Egmond & Rudi Krence (not sure of the spelling!) before being shipped to the US, I understand that the proceeds of the sale part funded the restoration of MK732 G-HVDM which Jac & Rudi still part owned when It made its first flights in 1993.
Sorry guys & gals, Just a small thing to some, but a big thing to me, A Spitfire is a Spitfire NOT a Spit, a spit is what you see on a pavement having had a nasty taste in your mouth!
(Geoff retires with a tin hat!) 😉
Originally posted by DIGBY a real designer the great immortal RJ Mitchell Designer of the greatest A/C ever built in case you had’nt guessed the SPITFIRE.:p :p :p :p
Blimey Digby, If I get to heaven the first thing I’ll do is find RJ & give him a slap! cos he didn’t design the Spitfire for ease of maintenance or repair that’s for sure! It might have been nice if he had made things interchangable too! 😉
Sign In
There’s more!
