Warbird Information Exchange

Justin: I suspect we come out of vastly different worlds when it comes to building airplanes, which is not a bad thing. The world that I come out of, I see all the engineering and design work that has to happen before the first piece of metal or wood is cut. Most homebuilders that start with a set of plans never see that or the test work that happens long before a first flight.

In Peter's case, I would bet that he has better than 5000 manhours in the project so far and has only built the upper wing ribs and has a tacked 70% fuselage, along with a test spar section. He has also completed the design work for all the fittings and produced some of them. I've cut and pasted his last post on the project from a biplane forum, tho I did remove his direct email. It appears that the photo embedded in the post will not come with the text.Should you be interested after all, I will point you directly to the full set of postings.

Peter's posting:

I started this project in 2005 with the ambition to replicate this aircraft as authentic as possible. In the following years I collected as much information as possible from all sorts of sources. So on paper we have reconstructed the wings and fuselage 100% accurately. I built the upper wingribs in 2007/08 and then started work on the fuselage. Only four tubes need to be attached to the nose before the tubulat framework is complete. Some of the fittings have been produced but they haven't been welded to the fuselage yet. All of the fittings have been designed however. The framework is only tacked together should some alterations needed to be carried out.
The wings of the He51 were made of pine which we also used for our ribs for which we used aerodux to glue them. Though we built a section of a spar for load testing, this hasn't been carried out yet. Like I said: the plans are there to build the complete wings and the fuselage framework.
The He 51 was powered with a 350 bhp BMW VI engine, but I guess an Allison would also do the job.
Due to health issues I have to give up my business and I won't have the financial means to continue on this.
Should anybody be interested in taking over this project drop me a line at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

The project has been supervised by an inspector from the German Civil Aviation authority and is located in Germany.

The nose area has progressed since this picture was taken:

Build whatever you want, but be prepared to start from the ground up if you're planning something that hasn't been done before. There HAVE been a few 3/4 scale Messerschmitt 109s over the years, with varying degrees of success (one stunner in Australia, for example) but no flying 100% scale examples. One was built, but it's never flown so far as I'm aware.

If you decide to go for something that exists (for argument's sake, a Spitfire), find out as much as you can from people that have built them. They'll be able to help you get around the various pitfalls.

The Jurca MJ10 (3/4 scale Spitfire) has a potted track record. Several have been built - most have crashed. Engines seem to be the big problem with this one, for obvious reasons. You don't have to go with an automotive engine conversion to power the thing - there will be an aero engine out there that will do the job. I think there are two on the go here in the UK, one with a LOM engine, which is an inline. A few Jurca Mustang replicas kicking about, too, and a fair few with inlines. (There's also a C-Model Mustang with a Lycoming. Looks OK, considering.)

So what if it doesn't have the power? So what if it's not as fast? YOU'VE built the bloody thing!! I'd buy you a beer for that alone!

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Cheers

Daz

Well, I finally remembered about this post when I was going through photos on my phone and saw older pics of Jack's spit that is being built in our hangar. f have conintuously been taking pics of it as it progresses, so I figure I would finally post them. The last pics are just from last week.

To start out, Jack's Spit is being made from plans by the Spitfire A/C Company. He however had the plans slightly modified by an aircraft engineer to add additional strength to the aircraft due to the engine of choice that he will be installing, an Allison V12. The aircraft is made of wood, though there is some metal plating in the fuselage by the cockpit to provide additional strength in the area. All of the control surfaces are made of metal as well, though the elevators and rudder were designed to be wood.
His cowling will be made of carbon fibre due to the curves of the cowling.

All of his cockpit instruments are actual Original NOS spitfire parts. Landing gear mains have been installed, but the last I was over there last week, he still had it on the jacks as he was not finished with the down lock system. I believe he said he is beginning on the firewall area forward and is hoping to get the engine mounted next.

Photos are in chronological order...






Left main spare

Right wing root



Landing gear is in. The landing gear on this spit was made from stearman landing gear that jack reconfigured to be able to be retracted. The wheel assemblies are off of a Cessna 340.



The metal plates that hold the spars to the fuselage... Not sure how many bolts are in there. The metal plating itself is .5-.75inches thick, not sure exactly what it is though.


You can see the elevator and the two radiators he had made up for the plane.

And a shot of some of the ribs

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Tyler Pinkerton
Active Member of Air Heritage Inc. of Beaver Falls, PA.
Aircraft: C47B, C-123K, Fairchild F-24, Funk Model B, L-21B, T-28B, T-34B
Static: F-4C Phantom II, F-15A, T-3 Provost