This one was built in France by Gerrit Titecal - somewhere around 1985.
Powered by a 100 HP Continental 0-200 flat-four.
Maximum speed of 195 mph at 3,500 ft...
What Mark Spitfire is this?
- Thread starter MIflyer
- Start date
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This one was built in France by Gerrit Titecal - somewhere around 1985.
Powered by a 100 HP Continental 0-200 flat-four.
Maximum speed of 195 mph at 3,500 ft...
Airframes
Benevolens Magister
They were / are nice little aircraft. I had a look in the cockpit of the one I posted, and even that looked very like the real thing in it's arrangement.
When airborne, especially at an angle where the pilot couldn't be seen, they looked just like the real thing - very impressive, especially for that era, long before "new build" full-size warbirds started appearing.
When airborne, especially at an angle where the pilot couldn't be seen, they looked just like the real thing - very impressive, especially for that era, long before "new build" full-size warbirds started appearing.
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
New build full sized warbirds? That's great! Any info on that? It sounds like a childhood fantasy.
Airframes
Benevolens Magister
Mosquitos built in New Zealand, and a number of Spitfires and Hurricanes re-built from wrecks - not replicas.
- Thread starter
- #25
MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
And there was a P-51B rebuilt from a wreck found in a lake in Florida. There was almost nothing left of it, but they made a flying airplane.
- Thread starter
- #27
MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
Yes, you may be able to build a perfect scale airplane but you won't be able to find any scale air molecules to fly it in, nor scale down the force of gravity accordingly.
Richard Bach wrote that the scaled down SE5A's they used in one movie he flew in looked really neat but did not fly well at all. They had to run the horizontally opposed light aircraft engines that powered them wide open the whole time, which did not make the piloting experience very pleasant nor lead to high reliability for the powerplants.
One gentleman built a beautiful scale P-6E Hawk, and to power it he used the scale equivalent of a Curtiss V-12, a truck engine, and just accepted the "scale" horsepower it provided.
Deleted member 68059
Staff Sergeant
- 1,058
- Dec 28, 2015
Is there some "reason" people build 7/8 scale and 80% scale planes ?
I mean it looks such a huge project to do, that surely making it all a smidge bigger isnt really adding THAT much to the already gigantic task, but IS
making it look rather odd and probably fly very strangely. Is there a legislative reason ? (getting around some rules for
licensing etc ?)
Even at the simplest level, a scale propeller may have the scale length of the original blades but then it doesn't have the scale effective area. Any equation that has Pi or square and cubic functions just doesn't scale up or down. The attraction is to make a plane that looks like a WW2 aircraft with a modern auto engine, how many modern auto engines produce over 1,000 BHP?
I would think you are more qualified than me to answer. Maybe it starts at the power available from a car engine and goes from there. A full sized replica is bigger and heavier just because of its size, but doesn't actually need to be that big or heavy because the engine is actually small and doesn't use much fuel and there is no need to carry guns and ammunition. I think if they were full size they would perform like a powered glider.
- Thread starter
- #31
MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
Not from the regulatory standpoint, although someone with a Light Sport License will not be legally able to fly it. But when you go that extra 20 or 25%, things like landing gear get a whole lot harder. You are not going to be able to build it out of standard steel tubing but probably will need custom made forgings.
In the same movie where they flew the little SE5's, they had a "real" full sized Fokker DVII. And it flew horribly. As one pilot put it, "I have to keep telling myself 'You're flying a DVII, you're flying a DVII' because if I don't I I feel like I'm flying a bloody great pig." The size and type of steel tubing used by the Germans in WWI was not available, so they used what they could get. The result was that it was heavier and the CG was out of whack. And as Frank Tallman often observed, people who thought they were going to put a 100 HP O-200 and matching prop in a WWI replica and have the same HP as in WWI were in for a rude shock. A modern engine, even with the same HP, and a modern prop, produces far less thrust than one of those WWI LeRhones or Mercedes with a huge wooden prop, making1700 RPM at full throttle. A big prop turning slower produces far more thrust than a smaller one turning twice as fast. The V-1710 and V-1650 had reduction gearing of 50%.
special ed
2nd Lieutenant
- 5,712
- May 13, 2018
That's the way I feel about R/C models which are 1/4 or 1/3 scale. Why waste all the wood and time on something you have to disassemble after flying just to take it home. It seems with just a little more effort an actual homebuilt aircraft could be completed.
I think that not having a funeral when an R/C plane crashes is a big plus.
CHAD VEICH
Airman
- 16
- Jun 6, 2020
Not a sub scale homebuilt but rather a 1/3 scale r/c model. Models were used in the movie of the Mustangs and "Tora" Zeros as well as a massive B-29 model.
CHAD VEICH
Airman
- 16
- Jun 6, 2020
No, that would be the Flugwerk replicas which are full size. WAR replicas are half scale and generally powered by converted auto engines, at least they were back then anyway.
GreenKnight121
Staff Sergeant
- 753
- Mar 16, 2014
Commonly called a "data-plate restoration".
As in "you take the data plate that has the aircraft manufacturer's serial number and built an airplane around it, fabricating everything other than the data plate". The fact that there is at least one original part traceable to the airframe whose identity you are claiming for registration purposes allows you to call it a "restoration" and not a "replica".
The work is usually not that extensive, but ALL aircraft "restored from a recovered wreck" are less than 50% original parts (usually much less) and mostly new-build parts from either original blueprints or from blueprints made using relatively intact parts from many different wrecks as patterns.
Every "common" warbird flying in numbers can be duplicated completely using the available blueprints etc from all of the restorations - but getting airworthiness certificates requires following "new airframe" regulations rather than the much less restrictive and stringent "restoration" standards - hence the data plate.
- Thread starter
- #38
MIflyer
1st Lieutenant
Back in the early 60's a guy came up with what he thought was a great idea. The airlines were introducing jet aircraft but there were no civilian jet trainers. So he went around and collected parts for Lockheed T-33A's until he was able to build one. Trouble was, it did not exist, had no serial number, and Lockheed refused to issue a new one. But then the USAF sold a wrecked T-33 and sold it not as scrap metal but as an airplane. He bought that one and transferred the serial number to his.
In the 80's someone duplicated that experience with a T-38; it appeared in a "Top Gun" Pepsi commercial. He said that by the time he had enough parts to build one he actually had collected enough to build two.
In the 80's someone duplicated that experience with a T-38; it appeared in a "Top Gun" Pepsi commercial. He said that by the time he had enough parts to build one he actually had collected enough to build two.
bdefen
Senior Airman
In the 1990s. a successful newly-semi-retired Boise-area landscaping contractor, "Sterling", were in the process of restorin a Mitsubishi Zero in the fashion described above. He and his wife/business partner gave a nice presentation about the project at a business gathering I attended.
The plane was part of a squadron based in the Marshall Islands (not sure which) There were about a half dozen aircraft hulks residing in the trees at the remnants of their airfield. Seems it was a base that was bypassed by the Allies as they advanced toward Japan. Isolated and cutoff from all supplies, the base and the planes were abandoned.
There was much negotiation and red tape in dealing with the Marshalls government, as well as a substantial amount of cash being paid to the government for what was left of the airplane. And as described above most of the plane was unusable. (the landscaper had a big piece of the original fuselage skin with the "meatball" still very visible hanging on a wall at his home) They had secured the services of a great fabrication and restoration firm. and basically fabricated and rebuilt the lions share of the airframe, and were looking to obtain spares and other components, like the engine, etc. It took a couple years, and the Sterlings were not not finished at the time of the presentation.
I found a site that describes the project and it subsequent work:
The Tale of a Zero Fighter (warbirdsnews.com)
Escuadrilla Azul
Tech Sergeant
- 1,857
- Feb 27, 2020
There are also Polikarpov I-16 replics in NZ
