Anyone watch his latest show on C4 where he helped restore a Spitfire? He's extremely northern but his enthusiasm for machines and history is infectious. A kind of heir to Fred Dibnah's throne.
Thought I'd start a thread on him as he is the kind of polar opposite of the Top Gear mob (who I don't really mind but are getting a bashing in the other thread) dicking around with spanners and hammers and smashing stuff up for the sake of it. There was a moment in the Spitfire show which made me LOL - he was about to test one of the guns on an old BMW and was saying how he wasn't very happy about it "it's got parking sensors! The tyres aren't bad either and the paintwork's alreet!". Can you imagine Clarkson saying such a thing when offered the chance to fire a machine gun?
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Love everything he does, proper bloke, a modern Fred Dibnah.
Unflappable, empathetic, considerate and un bon oeuf tout circulaire.
When I was at goodwood last month there was a company that had managed to get round the CAA regulations and will begin offering rides in two seater spitfires. The bad news is that prices start at £2.5k.
Has anyone done the fly with a spitfire when you go up in another plane and fly side by side?
It's an interesting place - it's not a museum all their planes fly and they have engineers on site who maintain their small fleet, plus they do work on other peoples' aircraft.
Men and women working 12 hour shifts seven days a week in awful conditions with the very real threat of being bombed...pilots risking their lives in daring manouvres and the engineers turning the planes around in under 5 minutes with german planes overhead...really makes you proud of those men and women that served during ww2
Check out his attempts to ride a bike accross a lake. Genius.
My mate has a neighbour that restores hurricanes. A couple of years ago he organised a trip to his factory (well more of an aircraft hanger at the bottom of his garden really) for a group of us. Unfortunately I couldn't go. :-( But, by all accounts, it was a very interesting day out. Here's an article about him - suffolkmag.co.uk/people/after_the_hurricane_1_1642618
I assume he's still in business - company is called Hawker Restorations - but his web site doesn't seem to be working.
Here's an example of his work: globalaviationresource.com/v2/2013/10/25/news-hawker-hurricane-mki-p3717-g-hitt-rebuild-update/
How much of that aircraft was original? Triggers broom had less new parts on it. The wreck had been attacked by salt water for 50 years, there is no way components from that could be used on a rebuild, maybe the bezel off the firing button was the exception.
The programme got a lot of the engineering terminology either wrong or made it out to be something magical eg, grinding eight thou off a pin, fitting the prop, inserting a split pin, riveting etc.
I'm not convinced Guy did that much apart from narrate making John Noakes noises.
That said it did look a very good Spitfire replica when finished.
As for the originality, well some of the rebuilds around are flying with just the manufacturers plate and can still be classed as originals. Personally I really don't care. Any relic still flying is ok by me.