I think it's an insane endeavor that absolutely rocks!
I'm sure that a lot of the time spent wasn't scrounging parts so much as plans. Most of the fittings they'd have to make themselves out of mild steel; the panel and electrics is the real scrounging part.
One of the huge obstacles in making exact replicas of WWI aircraft is that they drew up the plans in one building and then took them over to the factory where the builders would make them work, often with the designer right there to tell them what he meant by them. This is before CAD-CAM, mind you, and the craftsmen that put these together were brilliant in their own right...they'd shave a bit here or leave more on there to make things fit. That's why whenever the few existing originals get stripped of their coverings there's an army of restorers pouring over the structures.
Plus the wartime exigencies of shortages and substitutions. Ash for spruce, spruce for ash, pine for ash, oak for spruce...it's a rainbow of plans versus production. No arc or TIG welding, either. Even the flying/landing wires may have to be hand made or special ordered, and every cable connection wound in a ferrule or even weaved back into the cable for a splice rather than swagged with a nicopress.
Ten years is right about on the money for a ground up replica* like this. Pity they couldn't dig up the dataplate - then it would be a restoration and they'd have the actual aircraft he flew!
* True replica versus the representational aircraft that one usually sees, like mine.
The opinions of this poster are largely based on facts and portray a possible version of the actual events.
More dumb stuff at
http://www.darts-page.comFrom Laser:
"The forum is the place where combat (real time) flight simulator fans come to play turn based strategy combat."
