Hi Phil
Well this is an interesting project from begining to end.
The Firefly was purchased from where you played on it by Mike Wansey at that time a resident of Newcastle and restored by Eurakea Aviation in Victoria (Ballarat? or Bendigo? can’t remember which) and from there was flown for a period of time as a Warbird as “Mickeys Mouse”
Following work done on the engine it was test flown at Camden and the engine malfunctioned in a big way and the aircraft crash landed causing considerable damage. Following settlement of insurance the machine was repaired at Bankstown utilising major portions of the machine which had been on a pole in Griffith NSW.
In my opinion following this rebuild the majority of the crashed machine was “restored ” and put back up on the pole in Griffith and effectively swapped identities with the previous Griffith machine. The machine did not fly again in Australia and was sold to the USA going through a few hands before being restored to it’s current flying state in the US.
I am told that despite the very thorough imaculate restoration in the states it has been very heavily “Americanised ” and would take a lot of work to return to “stock” condition.
A lot of my Firefly photos are of this machine in it’s various guises.
If I can help any more email me
Kind regards
John Parker
[email]parkerj@launch.net.au[/email]
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