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Roving ML417 and others (longish)

Posted by Graham Orphan on Tue Dec 11, 2001 08:00:32 AM

Just a few comments on some recent threads. This is the first of three.
The import export issue will always be with us and I'm fortunate, I think, to have had a long term view of this. In fact I've dealt with this subject all my life. In the late 1960's, growing up in South Australia when my age was counted in single digits, my dad offered his Tiger Moth for sale. An enthusiast from Sydney bought it saying he was going to restore it, then promptly sold it in California. That drew my attention to the distinct one-way traffic of old aircraft out of Australia. By the 1970's I was a keen supporter of the export embargo. All these years later I consider this to be redundant and in fact embarrassing legislation. At that time the rapid growth in interest in these aircraft was largely in the US and the UK. Australia was well behind in this regard. The aircraft travelled to where the interested folks were who'd spend money on them and look after them.
Thirty-odd years later we've seen brisk traffic of aircraft of all types in all directions. One or two get lost occassionally in accidents, museum/hangar fires etc., but the interest has grown consistently so that folks travel further to acquire wrecks and rebuild them. The net number of survivors grows each year, and the variety provided by roving aircraft only serves to spark further interest.
I learnt long ago that the key to retaining (or growing) the number of old aircraft in your neighbourhood is dependant purely on the number of people willing ot put their time, money and energies into acquiring, restoring and operating the aircraft. That is actually what led to the creation of Classic Wings magazine. It is a tool for growing enthusiasm, for sparking sufficient interest among enthusiasts to make them want to commit to making homes for these aircraft. The alternative is legislating to keep aircraft in one place and that is the wrong thing to do in my view. Imagine for example if all Mustangs were forbidden from leaving Australia, and that at a given time, several examples came up for sale. One owner, in a less secure financial position to hold out for a long time accepts a low offer, then another does the same. It could trigger a price spiral and before you knew it, the achievable sales values of the aircraft would diminish to the point at which it would be considerably more expensive to have an aircraft restored than to buy one 'off the shelf'. Your restoration shops would close and the movement would decline irreversably. A free market as big as possible is the best thing for the aircraft.
After monitoring this issue for 30 odd years I've come to the conclusion that as long as we do our jobs correctly, these aircraft will outlive all of us and they'll travel the world for decades to come, giving pleasure to owners and airshow spectators all over the planet, back and forth across the Atlantic, and the Pacific too. A case in point is a Fox Moth that spent most of its working life in New Zealand, then went to live in the USA for about a decade, then to the UK briefly before returning to New Zealand. Where it chooses to live 60 years from now, or another 20 years after that, only it will live to find out - we won't. This aeronautical cultural exchange programme is, in my view, a healthy thing and will continue indefinitely whether we like it or not.
Hope you don't this lengthy missive, but as I've had much to do with this subject I thought I'd put in my several cents worth. Cheers, Graham

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