May I refer you to the facebook group called "de Havilland Aircraft".

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If you can correct your first post in this thread, I promise you will not be mentioned on that website group! :)

Here are some pics of Art Scholl's Chipmunks:

At the Smithsonian, Washington Dulles Airport:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...8/RIMG0545.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...8/RIMG0547.jpg

At the utterly fabulous EAA Museum, Oshkosh:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...erChipmunk.jpg

Stunning pics :ok:

One Chipmunk which proved not so aerobatic was the one featured in the film 'The Great Waldo Pepper'! :eek:

FOK :)

If you look at your Chipmunk when it is "up on Jacks" at leg x-ray time. You will see it does look good.

Appearance, practicality and maintenance aside I just wonder if a retractable gear could cope with groundloops.

Here's one I prepared earlier.....tyre tracks cross just off to the right. Had to play with my Airfix Chipmunk afterwards to figure that out.

I don't think retractable gear could take much of that.

http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/l...NK21-03004.jpg

I think you lot are a load of wussies! Of course it would't be pratical to fit retract to a Chippy... but. It's a very impractical aeroplane:

No luggage space

Not much fuel capacity

No heater

Noisy

Draughty (see: no heater)

Covers you in oil during pre and post flight stuff

Expensive to maintain

.....BUT

It is absolutely LOVELY to fly! (So I forgive it all the above, hence my 30-year love affair with one. I was unfaithful once - left her for a Yak 52 - but since returned to my first love).

And yes. It wouldn't half look good in flight with the mains retracted. They don't call it the poor man's Spitfire for nothing!

SSD

Yes, it really is a delightful aeroplane to fly.

But, as has been said, not the type you can roll up to fly in your best designer jeans and expect not to get dirty. One of the few aeroplanes where it is de rigueur to wear a flying suit (or two!) in order to be fully integrated into the spirit of the machine.

No chance either of just going for a 'quick spin'. The flying experience is a half day undertaking by the time it has been prepared, flown and put to bed.

Those were the days - Austers, Chipmunks and Tiger Moths. I wonder if we'll look back through rose-tinted spectacles with the same affection for the current Cessna and Piper types. Probably!?

KR

FOK :)

You might as well ask will we look back on Mondeos, Vectras, and Accords with rose-tinted affection? I doubt it, capable vehicles though they are. There's a vital ingredient missing - Character!

SSD

SSD

I absolutely agree with you on all counts. A wonderful aircraft. I've had the opportunity to fly both the RAF and the RCAF versions. The Canadian one has that wonderful bubble canopy, which makes it even more the "poor man's Spitfire" and of more practical use, it has a HEATER. It also has a throttle with a large horizontal handgrip that looks like it came out of a Mustang, rather than the wussie little throttle in the T10 - see here http://www.courtesyaircraft.com/imag...ockpit_lrg.jpg

I have to say that I don't like the lack of "trousers" on the gear legs - makes it look quite naked.

Speaking of Art Scholl, I had an opportunity to see his retractable Super Chipmunk up-close at Springbank in the 1970s, when he was performing at the Calgary Stampede. Certainly the change in the fin caused a loss of the "dh" character, but still a very impressive aircraft. He flew it from what would have been the back seat, presumably for Cof G considerations and it had full-span ailerons (no flaps).

[Edited to say, after looking at the pictures in Post 22, that the flaps had been removed and the aileron span increased.]

His performance at the Stampede consisted of a low-level night aerobatic display up and down the finishing stretch of the Stampede horse-race track (half a mile from the centre of the city), in pitch darkness, with flares on the wingtips, synchronized with the performance on the stage in front of the grandstand! The lights on the backstretch of the track were illuminated to provide a 400 yard long emergency strip. I cannot imagine trying to get permission to do that these days, even in Canada, never mind the UK!