Search the Community

This thread is intended to be a dumping ground for a few aeroplanes I want to build, capturing the shapes and colours and general nostalgia as best as I can from famous films I greatly enjoyed as a child. I'll welcome anyone else joining in on-theme too, but shall plod along myself. The first one I want to build is, I'm sorry to say, a Spitfire. In my mind's eye, Spitfires have long clean slender lines and are painted green and brown, except no Spitfires really were, were they? The stubby little baby Merlins in green & brown lacked the Mk.IX's general purposeful and balanced form, yet the Mk.IXs were painted the wrong colour and had big sticky-out cannon barrels. Why is my mental image askew? Simple really, I wore out VHS tapes of the 1969 Battle of Britain film as a young boy where Spitfires of various marks were rounded up, stripped of cannon barrels and painted green and brown to star in the film and what an utterly superb piece of cinematography it was too. In my opinion it's the finest air to air footage ever to make the big screen, before or since. I'm led to believe that's none other than Mk.IXc MH434 there, which is a fabulous candidate since like many boys I've sat in it! I was 17 years and a few months old. I had a provisional driving license and as a keen Air Training Corps cadet I benefited a great deal from our C/O, the late Flt Lt (VRT) Diane Elms who passed away from a brain tumour a few years ago making huge efforts to get me stuff. After plenty Chipmunk and Bulldog flying the rather brusque yet warm at heart "Mrs Elms" as we all fondly called her matter of factly informed me that I was applying for my RAF Flying Scholarship. You didn't have to be an air cadet, but it certainly didn't hurt. At 16 I was sent a travel warrant for a train ticket from Aberdeen to Grantham and I headed off south for half of the Officer & Air Crew Selection Centre assessment; a fairly modesty-shredding medical, aptitude testing and an interview, then I went home. After a period of time lost in the haze (this was late 1997 I think) I received a letter telling me I'd done it. Woo Hoo. As luck would have it, Mrs Elms had also decided I was top of the list for powered glider flying a weekend or two later at RAF Kinloss where, after a few circuits in the Grob 109B, the O/C (I think his name was Sandy - I've quite forgotten his surname but can still see his face) approached me to clarify that I'd just been awarded the Flying Scholarship. Somewhat unsure of why I was being asked, I dutifully answered anyway and was told that they'd had a last minute drop out from that weekend's Basic Glider Training courses, and since I'd got the Flying Scholarship paperwork through I'd passed all the medicals etc they'd have had to do for BGT, so would I like to stay for a few days and do 10 hours training to solo standard in the Grob 109B. Mum & Dad drove up with some clothes and toiletries that afternoon. Come July 1998 I went to Dundee for what simultaneously seems like 2 weeks and 8 weeks. I've quite forgotten how long the Flying Scholarship course was. We stayed in a fairly naff hotel everyone called Fawlty Towers, and I did my 20 hours in the Cessna 152. Having had the head start on the Grob I was ready for solo in 5 hours as opposed to the average of 10, but bad weather at Dundee resulted in my instructor having me fly him to Perth where it was more pleasant and give him 3 circuits and bumps to familiarise myself with my new surroundings. After the third Marjan, the instruction (who was widely rumoured to have won the lottery but kept instructing because he enjoyed it) disembarked and told me to go enjoy myself. I remember the first solo like it was yesterday - almost every detail. The time to solo in my logbook ended up being 6 hours and 5 minutes, which I was still quite proud of. My uncle Stewart was the chief engineer at Tayside Aviation and snapped a photograph of Marjan and myself after my first solo landing. The rest of the Flying Scholarship was a blast. Best time of my life I think. I did get an object lesson in collision avoidance on an extended solo whereby I noticed someone ahead of me banking steeply away from what been head on with me - I was disappointed in myself that I hadn't seen them until they'd already seen me. I don't profess to be an experienced pilot but whenever I see armchair experts musing about what kind of idiot can hit another plane in a big empty sky - well it would be much easier than you'd think is all I can say. Same goes for any sort of accident really. You have to work pretty hard to stop them happening all by themselves, it seems... Anyway, the end of the RAF Flying Scholarship course is (or at least was 22 years ago) a Final Handling Test which essentially is a one hour ghosted solo with another instructor, similar to a driving test really. Pass or fail I'd be going home that evening anyway so my parents and younger sister all drove to Dundee to collect me. As I was doing my pre-flight walkaround of my Cessna, a Spitfire dived onto an extended finals from the west of Dundee's runway and settled at around 30ft and 250kt (wink wink) for a hard break right in front of me. I had mixed feelings at this point you see. My dad was there to see my amazing flying skills and here I was like a bride upstaged on her wedding day by some geezer with a much better aeroplane. The Spitfire levelled off onto downwind leg and lowered his undercarriage to land, taxied in and shut down on the ramp right in front of both my spam can and anyone there to watch at the viewing area. My little sister had a Poleroid camera with her, which, strangely, had some of the obscenely expensive as I recall film in it. Brakes on, run up and cut the fuel, and the big Merlin goes quiet. The pilot clambered out with red lines on his face where his mask had been, and removes his helmet. It must be understood that this was pre-internet and pre-Youtube videos of course, but after the event my dad told me I did a double-take at recognising Mark Hanna who's picture I had seen in an Aeroplane Monthly or Flypast magazine once, as he strolled into towards the building and Lovatt Fraser, the boss of Tayside Aviation and, today, my assessor, greeted Mark and continued walking out towards me. Bugger. The Final Handling Test was passed. I got a "minor" or two for being a little sloppy at maintaining my heading or something like that, but in the end he told me I'd done well and he was happy to write up a good report for me. This was prior to landing, and as number 3 to land I got a little bit of drama in No.1 being tardy to vacate the runway for whatever reason and No.2, some private pilot not associated with the usual goings-on decided to orbit on short finals. I think Mr Fraser was more aghast than I at having someone come head-on at us on finals and his instinct kicked in and he announced he had control just as I was feeding in full power to climb and turn away with some sharp words over the R/T. Nothing was held against me after the eventual landing, I am happy to say. After landing, I had my third surprise of the day. The late Mark Hanna had fobbed off the ushering flying club owner-y sorts and he and Laura Wetton, then of the Old Flying Machine Company (now married to Red Bull air races pilot Paul Bonhomme) were sat at a little table with my family. I am told that on learning I'd love to have met him but had to do my final test, he decided to wait the hour or so and chat with mum, dad and my little sister. Folk say never meet your heroes and that's probably true in the main but Mark Hanna, his father Ray whom I met the following year and Capt. Eric Brown are people who were nicer, more encouraging, humble and downright gracious than I ever thought they'd be. Like most people who met Mark, both my sister and I were to try on MH434 for size. Mark Hanna died 13 months later at 40 years old from severe burns following a crash in Hispano Buchon G-BOML arriving for an airshow in Spain. It was a very calm evening and he did is usual arrival run in and break before landing in the reverse direction owing to no wind. According to the investigation report, he's thought to have flown through his own wake turbulence from pulling G over the end of the runway which hadn't drifted away owing to the same lack of wind. His Buchon apparently went out of control on late finals, crashed, and the rest is history... It seems fitting that MH434 be the film star I build here for this thread. I have a very nice yet slightly unwanted Eduard Spitfire IXe which I got from @Duncan B's BlackMike Models a while ago. I'm not particularly interested in the markings generally on offer for the IXe, so given that MH434's C-wing distinguishing features were mostly removed for the Battle of Britain film, I am happy to make the necessary modifications to this kit and get the use out of it. From what I've found so far, there should be no cannon bulges on the wings at all for its appearance in the film. The stubs on the leading edges need to go as well. My 2oz bottle of Zap Medium CA is almost done and starting to turn gloopy, so I used it to fill the cannon blisters from the inside thus: I do need to go brush up on my Spitfire C versus E wing rivet counting to see if there's anything else I really should do... In the mean time, I've started the cockpit although haven't assembled any further yet since I need to do some photo etch work, and my 2oz bottle of Zap Medium CA is almost done and starting to turn gloopy, but it was hosing down with rain at the time. It's stopped now, so I may go grab a bottle from the shop before bed. I did drill out the lightening holes in the fuselage frames. It's the law. Thanks for reading my lengthy introduction!