WIX Archives

Re: No one wants to talk about it.

Posted by Dan Jones on Sun Jun 16, 2002 05:19:25 AM

In reply top No one wants to talk about it. posted by David M Jameson on Sun Jun 16, 2002 12:43:24 AM

Greetings all:

Although this topic gets tossed around here about every two weeks and people have even come on and said "I hate dataplate restorations!" or "It's not really a Mustang you know, it just has an original tailwheel tube in it" ad nauseum, (as it taxis by with that glorious, tactile rumble) I just don't see what the stink is all about unless you're a collector who's putting hard cash down on the table for George Preddy's coffee cup or Erich Hartmann's Revi gunsight.

So I'll phrase my question this way:

If Legends was composed solely of dataplate restorations, would you not still go?!

If someone dug a Stirling's dataplate out of their shed and built, true to design, a Stirling to fly it around with, would that not be just an awesome sight, and truly a wild expression of alot of good people's pure talent and perserverance, or would you bitch about it and turn your backs?


I used to make my living flying a DH Twin Otter that at one time got slung off the side of a mountain top in South America, having everything forward of the cockpit bulkhead completely destroyed. When our engineers rebuilt it, they hand-built the rest of the fuselage from that bulkhead forward using another of our machines for the pattern - FROM SCRATCH! Now was that a replica? Was that no longer an original Twin Otter, because I'll tell you, once I started flying it, it was the most awesome performing Twin Otter that I ever got my hands on, and I used to jealously hoard it for my own assigned machine. It was fabulous, and it was indestinguishable from the pattern machine it was repaired from. So what was it, 'cause nothing in that cockpit save the dataplate was original.

In my opinion, (humble it's not, but it's mine) a replica is one of those 3/4 scale jobs with a Datsun engine in it, made out of plwood and fibreglass. But if someone rolls an F4U out of their hangar that is an all new, dead on, original techniques, faithful reproduction of the real McCoy, but fitted with an original dataplate, I have news for you; you may not be looking at "F4U-1A serial number blah, blah, blah, once the mount of Pappy Boyington", but you are very much standing in the presence of an F4U Corsair.

Show some respect - and for the dedicated and talented people who put it there for you to drool on.

Dan Jones
warbirds@shaw.ca

Follow Ups: