Warbird Information Exchange

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding but I read Peter and Bill’s comments as being that there were controls that had to remain accessible for systems/servicing purposes, so the cover was made to be removable purely because the controls were in there.

Nice to see the old girl recovering into Biggin this evening - sadly at four miles, just a bit too distant to see her new scheme and also hear the sound of the Merlin over the rather stiff breeze blowing through the trees behind me...

Oddly enough I was leafing through a 1972 copy of the UK magazine Pilot this morning; there is an item in the news about an engineering company at Shoreham Airport in Sussex refurbishing a Stearman to put on the UK register as G-AZLE. They'd apparently already done several Spitfires and a Hurricane from the Battle of Britain Film, one being TE308 which they sold on to Don Plumb.

While supervising reassembly after shipping the Spitfire to Ontario, one of the British engineers had a go in Don's Stearman CF-XRD. The engineer showed pics of the Stearman to a customer back at Shoreham, who decided that was just the aeroplane for him and eventually Don was persuaded to part with her. Hence the article about G-AZLE, which also stars in a later issue in a flight test article by the late Manx Kelly who flew her with new owner Neil Corner. She later lived on a farm strip near my school and was a familiar sight and sound locally. G-AZLE is still on the UK register with a pleasure flying company down at Compton Abbas, so at present we have two of Don's aeroplanes in the UK and can buy rides in both!

He is doing well, I have talked to him a couple of times this weekend.

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Matt Gunsch, A&P, IA, Warbird maint and restorations
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Thanks for the intel Matt.
Please give Bill my best.
I first met him at Oshkosh in 1984 when TE308 was pretty new to him.
I last saw him at Geneseo in 2007.
I have really missed him on this forum.
I was so sorry to hear about the mishap, that was no fault of his own, as well as His Spitfire leaving for England.
The first pic I saw of it in the U.K. was it coming out of the container.
The next post on the forum was something to the effect of "Oh great, another two seater......"

All best

Andy