WIX Archives
Re: Right then....."waffle"
Posted by PeterA on Thu Oct 10, 2002 05:26:13 AM
In reply top Right then..... posted by James D on Fri Oct 04, 2002 07:40:39 PM
Gosh! I recognise some of my own "waffle" here. National Museums aside, the danger I see is that if you do not give your potential Warbird owner the glimmer of hope that his or her mighty investment will end on the positive side, his or her financial adviser will say "don't bother" and we and future generations will all be the losers. If you try to sharpen up 'what is' and 'what isn't', by percentages etc, you will threaten potential projects at the margin.
There is not an infinite stream of 'Grade A' restoration projects with reasonable investment security waiting in the wings (pun not intended). Sure there are some but we are scraping lower in the barrel by the year.
What we do need is honesty and clarity of provenance, however tenuos, for a potential investor to make a calculated judgement. For my part I have tried to provide that clarity to the Spitfire community.
: ....even though I inwardly cringe when this debate comes a
: round again and I am definitely one of the "don`t cares" w
: hen it comes to authenticity, I also kind of look forward
: to the coming arguements (sorry - that should of course re
: ad "informed debate"!) No-one has yet really suggested a w
: ay to categorise originality. I offer this suggestion up f
: or discussion - I realise it isn?t perfect but it could be
: a start. So, in the interests of burying this topic once
: and for all, what about this...
:
: First off - no more use of potentially prejudicial terms s
: uch as "replica" or "reconstruction". These are far too op
: en to interpretation to be of any use.
:
: What I would suggest is much simpler. A percentage number.
: To be calculated by weight(excluding the engine), that in
: dicates the amount of original metal in the aircraft. This
: should accurately reflect how much of the aircraft has be
: en replaced since the day it was struck off charge from mi
: litary service, or crashed, ditched, whatever. I feel that
: anything that was replaced whilst in service would count
: as military history and can therefore qualify as original.
:
:
: So the owner could say with pride, "This Spitfire is 60% o
: riginal". Of course once you get below 50% it would sound
: a bit daft, so we could substitute with "This Spitfire is
: 70% New Construction" or some such.
:
: There could be no more arguement(except for hybrid machine
: s from more than one donor - maybe someone can fathom that
: one out for me). It would either be original material or
: not. No getting into the "Grandads Broom" arguement and no
: pointless waffling about the "Spirit of the thing" or "Co
: ntinuous Historical threads". Only new metal or old metal.
: The ID number could come from whatever aircraft supplied
: the most original material to the project.(Hmmmm)
:
: The only slight problem of course, would be getting owners
: to agree to do this - but then most of them don`t seem to
: o bothered anyway. They just want to fly.
:
: So there you have it - just a dumb idea, but a fair one I
: think.
: Feel free to kick it to death, but lets settle this thing.
:
:
: Cheers
: James