[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by Bewolf

Sorry, but that is nonsense. Even static aircraft get repaints and maintance. You also have to constantly work on them to keep them in the condition they are for unless you put them into an airtight room and elimiate any sources of corrosion. Ultimately they decay the same way an active aircraft does, just at a much slower pace and with less work attached, but that's it.

well that depends on what sort of treatments they're given. Most of the primers given to aluminium in the 30s were of such good quality that they wouldn't come off easily, not even today unless using really aggressive paint strippers. The heating of metal under the sun further "soldered" the primers to the aluminium, so much that sometimes when the paintwork came off you could see the primers under.
Preservative restoration has reached incredible standards nowadays, and an alloy treated against defoliation and corrosion will last forever. Heck, we have wood frames that are 100 years plus old and still keep their original size!

And are you actually trying to say that when you restore an aircraft, you are not doing a vast documention of the parts involved and the restoriation process in general? So that each generation will have to assemble and disassamble the aircraft anew when they want to know what's in it? Or that the viewer in a museum will apreciate these details when looking at the aircraft?

Ha! Man, again, no offence, but it's evident that you've never been around a restoration workshop. I have witnessed with my eyes horror stuff done to these poor machines: the wing of the aforementioned Spad received a "restoration" in 1968, you know how we found out? Because we found a paper wrap from a newspaper of the time in the wing. Not to mention replacement spars made of solid, thick plywood..

The work done by more or less competent people can alter the originality forever, and if not recovered and corrected, it can cause a lot of damage on the long run.

Congrats to that work and nice to see you having worked on that. However, I never heared of that original Spad, which should be telling you something. And I can just imagine the original mechaincs, when working on that one, thinking to themselves "oh yeah, great, lets make this a marvel so that future generations can appreciate our work". I am sure they did not have in mind to get the plane into the air to fight the germans, did not see it as a mere tool for a purpose and they were really looking forward to see it on static display one day.

with all due respect, the fact that you never heard of it doesn't mean that it's not an important piece of aviation history.

here's how it was when the restoration was started (wings and prop were in place):


The plane was rumoured to be the original mount of Italian Ace Fulco Ruffo di Calabria, but because of the aforementioned "restoration" it received a spurious "Baracca style" paint job.

During the restoration we found the original serial numbers on the airframe and other components, which were registered as Fulco's aircraft, so we could finally determine the true identity of the machine, which was subsequently restored and given its actual looks of the time.



so restorations can indeed be a vital part of aviation history.

You are making a girl friend the reference here? So she was more exited to go to museums and see those aircraft on static display? Or what do you want to prove with that example? An interest in aviation is a prequisite, but awakening this interest is the key in the first place. Saying that flying aircraft are the joy of only aviation philanthropists while static aircraft get the attention is.....bold, to say the least. That's like saying a Ferrari will only get attention when it is taken from the road and put into a museum. I doubt, however, that ole Enzo build his cars for display.

I think we need to make a defining differentiation here:
One thing is being an aviation enthusiast, another is being an aviation history enthusiast.

One can be either or both, but whichever the case, different rules apply. For aviation enthusiasts, keeping a historical plane "alive", flying it at airshows etc.. is a good thing if:

1) it's a safe plane to operate (Go229? No thank you..)
2) there are an adequate number of spare parts available
3) it's not an "endangered species".

The world of warbird operators changed dramatically in the last 20 years: there are way less Wild Bills out there, tumbling about in the sky while hollering "check this out guys!" on the radio. This is good, because when this sort of people are airborne we lose precious machines (see what happened to the P-38 in Duxford or the Bf109 G-2 "Red 7", whose pilot almost killed himself several times..).
Nowadays there are different standards and above all more serious training, still, we do have the random accidents (see what happened at Legends this year), mostly again not because of faulty machines, but because of pilot's error.

Shall we keep these planes in the sky? Hell yeah! Shall we allow for rare or unique machines to fly, especially "time capsule" ones? Mmmh not so sure it's a good idea, mainly cos they need extensive rework and alteration of the original layout (CoG reworking just to name one), rewiring, substitution/inspection of moving parts (bearings, actuators, landing gears etc..). But above all, under a piloting point of view, these beasties can be a leap in the dark, hiding performance and behaviour quirks that can show up at the most unexpected or critical situations (whilst coming down for landing for instance). Bending a prop on a Hurricane is a costly job to fix, which can bear catastrophic damage to the engine as well, having the same thing happening on a wooden VDM prop could probably cause enough of an imbalance to tear the engine off its mount.. not nice.. (see what happened to the Spit in New Zealand lately..).

Bottom line? Keep em airborne if they already are, or rebuild them to be airborne, but don't confuse them with original wartime salvaged machines.

uhm....you may want to do a little google search and then come back.
just as an example:



That said, the Go229 has no future as a flyable simply because even if fully restored, it would never fullfill safety standarts and thus is bound to stick to the ground anyways.

All in all, listening to you makes the impression of you having a typical collectors mindset, rather preferring to see a closed box with a toy on the shelf instead of playing with it. This is a philosophical debate that won't find a solution as it is putting practical minded folks against those putting an artificial worth to an object that was created with an entirely different purpose in mind.

So? There's nothing wrong with that Go229. It's dirty, it has some plywood damage (one would expect so after so many years!), but it's solid and it's sitting on its undercarriage, which means the spar is sound.

Again, I think we need to differentiate between warbirds circuit and aviation history, just because they have wings they're not the same thing.