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To: yooling
The stormbirds are marvelous! And their new 109-project is wonderful too.

I think the problem with the restauration of the Me 109s are the motors. Those Daimler-Benz engines they found with the leftover of the planes somewere in Russia are junk. It will be impossible to restore them again. Therefore they have to look for other suitable Daimler motors which is quite a problem in the meantime :-). Other motors like a Rolls Royce Kestrels do not have hanging pistons. That means that the aerodynamic (and the look) of such a 109 is comletely different then. This is the reason that there are only that little flying Me 109s left. My uncle and his buddies had the luck that one of their friends preserved a brand new (!) DB 605 motor, which was not scrapped after the war. Their 109 was once used in the famous film "the battle of England" with a Royce Royce Kestrel, which gave the plane a really awful look then. When my uncle and his friends found the badly damaged cell of the aircraft in the mid-90ties they would not have restored it if they didn't have had a motor then.

The Focke-Wulf is easier to restore since there are quite simular motors to the BMW 801 available.

Unfortunately the "red 7" of my uncle and his friends had a crash-landing last summer. Thank God no really important parts (like the motor :-)) were damaged then and the plane is restored in the moment. Even the pilot survived (although he was nearly crucified after the landing as you can imagine). Anyway it will still take some time and a huge amount of money. We are not talking about peanuts here.

64 posted on 05/23/2006 2:32:52 PM PDT by Atlantic Bridge (De omnibus dubitandum.)
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To: Atlantic Bridge
Rolls Royce Kestrels do not have hanging pistons.

I thing you mean Rolls Royce Merlin the only Rolls Royce Kestrels to fly in a 109 was in the very first prototype because the intended German engine the then new Junkers Jumo 210 was not ready for the first flights

The Germen water cooled V12engines, Junkers Jumo 210,211,213 & Daimler-Benz DB601,605,603 were inverted vee crankcase on top, cylinder heads on bottom ...while the US and Brits water cooled V12 were "upright" vees...

The post war Spanish, built 109 airframes as Ha1112 with Rolls Royce Merlin... these were what was used in the Battle of Britain movie

Interesting 109 trivia is that a version of the 109 (post war Czech Republic build Avia S-199 using a germen water cooled V12 Junkers Jumo 211 engine) was the first Israeli Air Force fighter aircraft

70 posted on 05/23/2006 5:43:36 PM PDT by tophat9000 (If it was illegal French Canadians would La Raza back them? Racist back there race over country)
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