Classic British Flight Sim

A most beautiful aeroplane and 2 great films. Thank you Pete

Wonderful photos and vids !

How many Hawker biplanes is that now flying in the UK ? There was a formation of four at last year's Flying Legends ( Demon, Hind and two Nimrods if I recall correctly )...so this one is the fifth ? I believe there are a number of Hawker biplanes in storage somewhere in the UK, privately owned. Anybody know ?

Enjoyed that,thanks for posting Pete. EricT

Better video than I was hoping for, only shame was the Robinson messing up the sound

Cheers for sharing

Allan

What a great aircraft and brilliant pictures / videos Pete, its great to see her flying again. It so easy to simply restore these as museum pieces, but when they take to the air again it great to watch, and must be fantastic for those more directly envolved. If only we could do the same with a Vanguard

Many thanks

As you mention the restoration to flying standard process, Ben, you might be interested in a couple of extracts from the info sheet handed out by HAC.

The restoration of this beautiful pre-war fighter aircraft, undertaken by Retrotec limited, of East Sussex, was the most
challenging restoration the company has ever undertaken, due to the paucity of surviving information and parts, the
complex nature of its construction and in re-engineering the exceedingly rare Rolls Royce Kestrel IlS engine.

Although the aircraft has been ready to fly for over a year, the increasingly stringent demands of the UK CAA have
meant some extremely expensive technical investigations of considerable depth have had to be undertaken by an
independent design engineer, even though the aircraft is as faithful a restoration as modern materials will allow. About
190 investigations in all, at an average cost of £2,000 each, meant an expensive and protracted exercise. Fortunately all
Retrotec's design interpretations were found to be sound.

Now I'm not going to bite the hand that still feeds me through its pension scheme but it does appear the CAA made them jump through a most incredible number of hoops. Having seen it flying, though, it certainly seems worth it. As we got back to the museum, it flew over several times - the first time it's been in the skies over Tangmere since January 1939! Unfortunately, that won't be a regular occurrence. It was only at Goodwood - the nearest active airfield to Tangmere they could find - for the first couple of flights and it's returning to be based permanently at Duxford.
Pete