Warbird Information Exchange

The Oscar wouldn't do great at Oshkosh. Being a pre-war design, it no doubt has a very fat airfoil. Same reason why the Wildcat and Hellcat can't be made to go fast enough to compete. It would be cool to see one rounding the pylons.
It wold be a hoot to fly and do an airshow routine on the circuit with a Wildcat or Corsair.

One problem with the warbird market is the ever changing wants of the customer. When the Yak 11's were first converted to Allison powered two seat fighters, they were a lot of bang for the buck and engines and props were plentiful and cheap. They kind of created their own market like the post war Sea Fury.

The Tischler/ Grumman F3F's were built after the Curtiss F11C replica fighter showed up at Oshkosh. The wealthy collectors raised the money and commissioned 4 or 5 to be built. The money was there before work began. With the ME-262's , one or two were pre-sold and the remaining ones were "speculative builds." WIth the ambition of selling them before completion.

Not sure with the Oscars but I think someone commissioned the project with the intention of selling the extra ones, for a profit. IN this case, they were trying to create a market for these aircraft from scratch. NO Oscars had ever been flown in the U.S, or sold. At least with the Yaks the trainer Yak 11's were around and they were pretty fast with their 800 hp. engines.

You can compare it to a custom homebuilder. There are plenty of them out there to build whatever you comission them to build but you have to have the ability to pay them or they stop work. Ask any builder if he would rather build a custom home under contract, or a "spec" or speculative home with buyer to be found in the near future. They would rather have the buyer arranged on the front end.

I predict there will be more replica projects taken up in the future as projects and parts disappear. No doubt Spitfires will be back in production someday. Right now you can buy replica Cubs, Champs, SuperCubs, Waco and Great Lakes biplanes as well as the Bucker Jungmann biplane.