Spitfire Down

Walking past RAF Uxbridge today I noticed that the Spitfire that
was on display inside the gate up to a few weeks ago has now been removed.
Presumably because it's not going to be an RAF base much longer.

No doubt one of the WWII/aircraft anoraks will know where it's gone...

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I thought you had turned to Shepherd Neame's fine beverage to salve your
issues.

 

Whatever. It's only a German bomber.

 

I seem to recall reading somewhere that most of the presentation Spits
were fibre-glass (dunno if its true) so maybe osmossis and rot? H&S
issues?

 

There was something on the news a few months back that showed a company
that makes/restores display aircraft.

However this one was sent to the Lotus factory for an overhaul:
http://tinyurl.com/3ank945

--
Richard

XJ900S
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AIUI most gate guardians were 'real' but pretty much stripped out.
ICBW, of course.

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When I lived in Norwich I had to visit one of Persimmon Homes offices
on an industrial estate to fit a carphone in one of their cars, as I
turned in there I was faced with three or four Spitfire fuselages on
their undercarriages in the parking area. It turned out that a company
near Persimmons made fibreglass replicas of them. I've just googled and
they were called TDL Replicas.

--
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they churn out)

 

Fibreglass over a steel trellis frame, ityf

 

In fairness, I'm damned sure the ones that were on the bases that I
lived on in the 70s were real, decomissioned, airplanes. What they are
now, I have no idea.

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Wouldn't surprise me, but they don't last forever and there's gold in
them thar lumps of alloy.

I'm pretty sure Duxford's Hurricane is GRP.

 

Hidden graves?

 

Yeah, I can understand that. And of course when you start looking at
Lightnings and Harriers....

Yes, I am too.

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Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Grimly Curmudgeon

What's the problem?

 

'Tis but a giant Airfix kit.

 

I wondered that myself. Either 8 Browning machine guns or four 303s and two
20mm cannon.

Maybe it was the pluralising of "cannon" to "cannons"?

 

All you need to do is open up the aperture a bit.

 

That one.

 

We had a day at Duxford last summer: the day before their annual(?)
Spitfire Day. It was superb: not least watching all the Spitfires
flying in in prep for the following day, and certainly not in spite of
the sound of a pair of P-51s rehearsing their dual aerobatic display,
including many low-level airfield beat-ups. But to me a subtle
highlight was watching a couple of guys assembling a GRP Spitfire from
a crate on the back of a lorry.

Just, as you say, like a giant 1:1 Airfix kit, but without the giant
tube of polystyrene cement. By the time they knocked off for lunch
they'd got the fuselage and wing stubs together and it was up on its
gear, by 3 o'clock it was all in one piece and completely
indistinguishable from a Spit that had just flown in and was parked
next to it - from 50 feet away, anyway.

 

I bet getting the decals on was a huge task - I always seemed to get
them stuck to my finger...