This is a pretty cool video. For those of you that don't follow motorcycle road Racing, Guy Martin is a bit of a legend in England, Lots of Isle Of Man TT wins, probably more crashes and nearly killed himself a couple of times racing. He's know as a real down to earth bloke, works on his own race bikes, and I think works on trucks during the week. He's from Northern England so most of you wont understand a word he says. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7Zebpu2nS4 My question when I see aircraft like this is, as its not really a restoration , is it a new Spitfire or a recreation ? Pretty special either way.
A hero of mine. Old school type-a-guy who has immense talent and is just himself to his credit or detriment. No apologies.
Great video and what a cool show. For fun, here are a pair of Spitfire cufflinks, made from Duralumin (one of the alloys used to construct the Spit) from a Mk I Spitfire made in August 1940 Image Unavailable, Please Login
A recreation. The Brits also recreate old lolas, Chevrons Gt40s and latterly E- types. Question when does any old vehicle become a recreation, so many old cars are recreations rolled under a data plate. I think its all great, we get to enjoy these old machines for centuries, and the old builds can rest peacefully in museums.
I believe it's called a dataplate rebuild. You refresh/replace everything that needs it in order to meet airworthiness standards (which is everything), keeping the original dataplate. Once everything is signed off, you put on a shiny new dataplate so it matches the rest of plane Regards, Art S.
I'd never have anything to do with this myself but I have heard stories of people with data plates and matching log books.
That's what we started with when we rebuilt an L-3 but we did have good Junque. I'm always amazed at the early generations of British and their propensity for basket weaving projects. Not knocking it ! Just recognizing the trait. Details, Details Details. Look at the structure of the Hurricane, bolted "aluminium" tubing and hard wire bracing, frantically fretted plywood fuselage formers with a multitude of stringers, Warren truss ribs and bolted main spar. Then on the more modern Spitfire, hand formed rib chords and, again, truss work. The ME-109 was a masterpiece of lean, simple, and rapidly produced structures that could be, and were, assembled in wide spread civilian locations.. I recall seeing the low number (I can't recall exactly) of quick disconnects when an engine had to be replaced. They had complete power packs in boxes that took a matter of minutes to install and hook up.
Cool project..... A lawyer at our local airport (Boundary Bay) has a Spitfire. He flies it often. The Victoria airport on the island was a training base in WWII. They closed it in the 1950's and put a bunch of stuff in the hangars, including this Spitfire and spare engines. They opened the hangars in the 1970's and auctioned most of the stuff off. The lawyer bought it back then. It didn't need much to be airworthy.
I don't know anything about Guy Martin and his exploits but I have never seen anything so disconcerting as his outbursts of unintelligible jabbering. I'm sure that he is a fine man and has done many outstanding things and did a fine thing in getting this Spitfire rebuilt but his interjections were absolutely disruptive. I don't know anything about Northern England. Is this type of speech typical of that region?
Maybe it's the way it was filmed, but it didn't look like he did any of the work on the plane to speak of. Just a token amount here and there. V. difficult to understand... subtitles would have helped.. or actually maybe not. Not sure he was saying much. Loved the plane story, though. Great to see it go together.
That's why I don't watch British movies or TV. I do better watching German productions. Ich spreche schiese Duetsche.
Yeah I'd like to have seen much more about the technical aspects (and HD resolution), but the show was what is was. Still pretty entertaining and the in-air shots with the ME109 were great. Thanks for posting. Bob - I work with guys that have pretty thick northern Birtish accents and just spent 12 days in the UK, and could still only understand about 80% of what Guy said. Nevertheless his enthusiasm and obvious respect for machines and men that built and flew them fit the tone of the show. I think our difficulty in understanding him is a combination of a "typical" North England accent and his rather fast, rambling style of speech. Most brits would have a hard time perfectly understanding my father in law with his thick Southern/Texas accent. I could only watch a few minutes of this before getting dizzy but here's what Guy can do on a motorcycle. Crazy stuff... [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmNXCJt7K3Q[/ame]
when I see aircraft like this is, as its not really a restoration , is it a new Spitfire or a recreation ? Pretty special either way.[/QUOTE] I've spent most of my life in aviation, and have been involved in restoring classics and building aircraft. Currently, I'm building an F1 Rocket. As to the question, if the gentleman has the original data plate, the aircraft is considered a restoration. Even if he had only a few scraps of a destroyed original...or even none at all...the data plate makes all the difference in it being a restoration vs. a recreation.
If I remember correctly the British used magnesium rivets so each and every one needs to be replaced even on a flying aircraft. They don't use nyloc's but instead beat over the protruding screw to keep it form coming out. So all of the existing Spitfires have been extensively restored. I have been involved with Warbirds for over 30 years and I have yet to see a new owner who would pay more for a completely historic airframe. On the contrary the brand new airframes sell for more. I have noticed a huge difference in value from a data plate rebuild verses a new low production factory build aircraft. For example the new Flugwerk 190's Zero's and Yak's built in small numbers have not commanded the higher numbers in value compared to all others. There are quite a few P-38's and P-40's being built now and several of them looked in worse shape then this Spitfire. Not positive but I believe the last MK 1 spit sold in the 5.5 million range
Thanks for the input. When I was watching Guy setting the rivets in the fuselage fuel tank I couldn't help thinking of all the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots that were badly burned when those tanks, being mounted just ahead of the cockpit, were hit with an incendiary.
Thanks for the video! I loved every bit of it. Guy's enthusiasm is great and the seeing the intricacies of the Spitfire like they showed was fantastic. Seems like American billionaire Thomas Kaplan owned that plane, which he donated to the Imperial War Museum Duxford (the only museum with an SR-71 outside of the US) this past summer. http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Prince-William-arrives-Imperial-War-Museum/story-26870558-detail/story.html
HAHA... Told you.. the further north you go in England the more the dialect changes, not similar to going to the south of the US. Glasgow has its own language. He is just a good old boy really, just a big kid at heart, throws all of himself into everything he does, works on heavy trucks as a mechanic during the week, and rides bikes on the week end, very low key, doesn't enjoy the lime light, and has nearly killed himself more times than he can remember (he just had a big one last week), but just gets up and brushes himself off. He just turned down an offer from the BBC to host Top Gear, said he might be making a ton of money but he wouldn't be able to do the other things he enjoys. I think the interjections and disruptiveness of which you speak, are just youthful enthusiasm.
So, they're still out there awaiting discovery. Great! We need these stories to keep us intrigued. But, how can we not recognize and appreciate the painstaking effort to save N3200. It was a nice thing for his daughters to be able to see it fly again. Good on everyone involved. CW
