WIX Archives
Re: Rebuild of Mossies - New Zealand progress - etc inc Hornet
Posted by Harold Mulder on Sun Jul 20, 2003 10:18:03 PM
In reply top Rebuild of Mossies - New Zealand progress - etc inc Hornet posted by John Parker on Sun Jul 20, 2003 08:40:52 PM
An interesting question.
Now I'm no expert and am fairly late to the restoration venue and only a volunteer at that. However from what I have seen so far I think that the answer might be in the amount of time to setup for these wooden wonders. I seem to recall that the fellow in New Zealand who was going to make new build fuselages spent over a year just building the forms. Then the first fuselage was a prototype that could not be used for flight. Now granted once's he's proved it can work he could build a few more fuselages to be sold but the lead time was enourmous. Now for those working in metal the "jigs" seem to be much easier to make and in the same time it took to build the Mossie jig a fellow could have a lot of fuselage built in metal. If the wooden airplane had wooden ribs that where built seperately and then inserted in a frame jig and then skin applied to it may be then we would see some more wooden airplanes.
However I do agree it will be nice to see a few Mossie's flying about in a few years.
Regards HHM