Spitfire MK923

[Dave Cheeseman]

Was down to visit family and freins over the holidays and stopped in to see Bob Swaddling. He had just got in a order of 1:32 die cast of MK923.
Of course being that I grew up watching this Spitfire I had to have one. Later that day stopped in to see Jerry Billing and showed him the plane, he thought it was pretty neat to see the plane he spent so much time in as a die cast.

Anyone interested in one get intouch with Bob @ http://www.actionhobbieskingsville.com/index.html






Ok time for another sortie through the house LOL

Cheers Dave C

[Rhino-9-3]

Very nice!

[Holedigger]

Cool! Is is just me or are the rivets on the fuselage a little on the huge side, I know metal isn't as precise as plastic moulding, but at 1/32nd, could be a little tighter. Still very nice. Too bad Santa has already been here this year!

[Bill Greenwood]

Yes on a real Spit the rivets are flush in the wings and the rest are barely noticeable. Also the door is ajar with the canopy closed. And most of the MK IXs, I have seen have fish tail type exhaust stacks rather than the Mustang round types. But other than that she looks fine.The pilot in the cockpit really looks good and the correct size. Makes my hands itch.

[b29flteng]

In regards to the rivets, maybe the model was built by the Grumman Aircraft and Locomotive Works....

[ZRX61]

Cool! Is is just me or are the rivets on the fuselage a little on the huge side,

Obviously some little known variant put together with coach bolts

[Bill Greenwood]

I wanted to find out how accurate the model was so I put that name and serial no in Google. I did not find the original, but found the plane post war when Cliff Robertson owned it and kept it near Chicago, I think. It had the fluted exhaust stacks like most MKIXs. There are some good shots and a video of Jerry Billings flying it.

I had my first Spitfire flight about 1983 with Jerry as the pilot. It was more exciting than I wanted. The mechanic who worked for that owner had hooked up the pneumatic ram for the radiator doors reversed, so that after takeoff when the engine heated up and the therostat called for the rad doors to go full open( which they already were) then the backwards ram actually closed the doors and the engine got real hot. Jerry was very skiilful and would have no real trouble landing even on the fairly small strip at Carefree, but he overheard the unicom frequency from another airport nearby and thought there was other traffic in front of us. So he did one more circuit then landed ok, but it was a tense moment for me as a 400 gen av pilot.

Ray Middleton figured out the proper way to hook up the pipes, after much thought, and we had no more overheating problems in the air. The previous owner was stunned when I told him what Ray had found. Ray has serviced my plane for the 25 years that I have owned it, and this is one of the reasons I go back, and not seek out some of the cheaper and perhaps quicker repair shops.

Before, I flew with Jerry he did a solo demo flight in my plane. He came in on a high speed low pass and pulled up steeply and did several climbing rolls. Beautiful and a lot harder to do than just one roll. When he came into land he was a little too fast and did not hesitate to open up and go around for another landing. Here was a guy who was not too proud to go around when it was not right, even if he was a combat vet and a real top acro pilot in the Spit.

[k5083]

Bill, Cliff based that plane at Windsor Ont., starting in the 70s shortly after your plane left (many residents were unaware that we had changed Spitfires), through the 80s, until the last few years of his ownership when did stints at Oshkosh (static) and Kalamazoo Mich. The reason was to keep it close to Jerry who, as far as I know, was the only one allowed to fly it. The plane was a regular at local shows; Jerry flew it to salute the Queen when she visited, doing an unauthorized victory roll if I recall correctly. If you knew the right people at the airport, you could talk your way into the hangar and just sit by yourself and gaze at the plane now and then, which was like a private viewing of a great work of art.

[Dave Cheeseman]

The Queen story is a classic Billing tale. He told me he came in under 10 feet off the water behind the stage were the opening of celebrations for the queen were along the river front. He had a small radio on his lap and timed his pass on the final note of " God save the Queen " He pulled up over the Queen and cut the throtle, needless to say the Merlin would just crackle when he did this. He said on the news he saw the pass later that night and said she grabbed her heart with a big smile.

Jerry got a nice letter from the Queen and has been intouch with her over the years. Here are a few of the letters he has gotten.

http://www.jerrybilling.com/Queen/Queen.htm

He also did a Sabre display for her back in the 50's when he was based in the UK.

Lots of good stories with the Billing family, they are a one of a kind.

Cheers Dave C

[John Dupre]

One of my favorite Spitfire vignettes is the story of Douglas Bader sitting our with some of his pilots at an airfield when a Spitfire flies overhead and pulls up into a series of vertical rolls. Bader begins to comment that a Spit can only do three rolls in the vertical before running out of energy. As he is opining the pilot involves finishes his fourth roll and pushes over into level flight. (That particular pilot got shot up pretty bad over France and only escaped being blown out of the sky by deliberately spinning out of the fight and flying inverted almost to the ground and then rolling upright for a forced landing.) Also I may have the number of rolls wrong but you get the idea

[PeterA]

I have flown with Jerry a number of times. On one occasion Don Plumb and I were out at Jerry's home/strip and he was 'showing me the ropes' on the Aeronca. He would regularly take off in time to fly alongside a train that passed the property for respective passengers to wave to each other. Tootling back over the house at little more than 50' Jerry suddenly shut the throttle on me, opened the side window and shouted down to Karen - " Put the chicken on the BBQ". Crazy man.

PeterA

[Dave Cheeseman]

LOL Peter Jerry told me that story too. He also said Don and yourself would fly out in TE308 and beat up the strip from time to time. Sounds like they were good times.

Cheers Dave C