A retired engineer has satisfied a boyhood desire for having a Spitfire plane by spending 16 years building his own.
Hampshire pilot Steve Markham lost twice on getting WW2 aircrafts to wealthier prospective buyers, so rather bought a kit from Australia.
After 32 examination flights, the aircraft has just been proclaimed fit to zip the Civil Air Travel Authority.
Mr Markham claimed: “I just enjoy it, it’s lovely.”
The attraction with flying started when Mr Markham was eight and also viewed a movie about the aviator Douglas Bader.
” Life would have been very various had the RAF not won the Fight of Britain,” the WW2 fanatic from Odiham noted.
” As my job went by I shopped components for a spitfire yet was outbid. 10 years later another chap was marketing shares in a Spitfire yet a male with a huge briefcase of money from Belgium outbid me,” he said.
In 2005, he located the 80% scale-sized kit of the reconnaissance spitfire in Australia, and acquired it for an unrevealed amount.
” These were the spy airplanes of their day, they really did not have guns or cannon and were repainted blue so you couldn’t see them in the sky,” he said.
” I believe there has to do with 100 of them world-wide, 15-20 of them are flying as well as only three of 4 in the UK.
” There were a number of significant hurdles in the process, things about Spitfires is there are no straight lines, whatever is curved.
” It resembles a 3 dimensional jigsaw problem.”
The airplane was housed in three workshops and also the first build took 11,250 “consistently logged” hrs.
An additional 3,000 hrs were invested in it “but I didn’t count them”, he added.
Designers at the Light Aircraft Organization (LAA) analysed data from the 32 examination trips before the Civil Aviation Authority provided its permit to fly.
“Much to my enjoyment the LAA awarded me the prize of best UK kit constructed airplane of 2022,” Mr Markham stated.
The plane has a maximum speed of 266mph (428 km/h) but also for fuel efficiency and at a cruising speed of 140mph (225 km/h), Mr Markham can obtain 23mpg.
“At that speed I can reach Rome as well as back, if there’s no wind blowing,” he stated.
Hello! My name is Jarod P. Macdonald. I’ve been a journalist at the Hampshire Daily News, in Southampton, England, UK, for 12 years. I’m originally from New York, but I moved to England to pursue my journalism career. I love writing stories that make a difference in people’s lives, and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to do what I love for a living.
