Spring has sprung at the Y2-K Spitfire hangar

What a difference a change in the weather makes to visitors to our hangar, on a recent Saturday, it was standing room only and the donation box was filling up thanks to the generosity of many of our visitors. We had our first visitor for 2008 from England, Don Ford who hails from Essex came in with a Vancouver Island friend and spent about an hour in the hangar, Don has a Spitfire connection in his family, his Uncle Roy participated in the Battle of Britain and Don’s Father has a Canadian connection: his Father came to Victoria to teach the finer points of flying Handley Page Hampdens in the early 40’s. Don’s plans were to head over to the Langley Flight museum to see the only preserved Hampden in Canada. Don Ford is also slated to take a spin in Carolyn Grace’s 2 seat Spitfire back in England, looks as though the year 2008 is turning out to be a good year for this Spitfire supporter. To see Canada’s most significant aviation project and fly in a UK Spitfire the same year sounds pretty good to us. Good luck Don, we hope you contact us once you’ve had your ride and send us some pictures we can post here. We had over 200 visitors from the UK last year pass through our hangar; we thank them again for the generous donations they made towards our Spitfire restoration.

As a follow up to a report we made last month, we are extremely pleased that Kyler “Spud” Jones received an “A” for his presentation that he made to his social studies class in Nanaimo about Canadian heroes, as you may remember he selected former Wing Commander and Spitfire Ace Stocky Edwards. Stocky Edwards was very pleased to hear the news and so was the restoration team. It was a delight to have ‘Spud” and his family in the hangar. To see young Canadians get passionate about Canadian history is one of the reasons were restoring a Spitfire.

The team has started to roll and mount the leading edge skin to the elevator,” it has gone fairly well says Bonn Svensson” and based on what has happened theses past few weeks we should have it completed within 3 weeks. The next step would be to mount the elevator in place on the horizontal stabilizer for s test fit.

We have been inspecting one of our spare propeller hubs, contact has been made from a UK based static project and a trade is being considered for one of our hubs for some parts we need. We also have a spare hub for a Fairy Firefly if you’re interested as well as a complete retractable tail wheel unit for a retractable tail wheel version of the Spitfire; we would entertain offers on that rare piece or an outright sale.

Letters of invitation have gone out to a number of Spitfire pilots to attend out 8th annual open house and several have already committed, we shall be announcing the names of these participants in future updates.

Stocky Edwards was in the hangar on a recent Saturday to sign some CRM model kits, they have introduced a kit featuring this famous Canadian Spitfire ace and can be obtained through West Coasts Hobbies of Port Alberni, Rob Stevens informs us that his stock has arrived from the Czech Republic, we have had a sneak peek at the kit this month as Stocky signed some of the boxes and it is an exceptional kit, Rob will attend the open house with a booth to display the Y2-K Kit and the Stocky Edwards version.

Plan to attend this gala aviation event on May 18 and be prepared to be entertained and informed. Now in our 8th year the Y2-K Spitfire just keeps getting bigger and better, we have now attracted over 44,000 visitors to the hangar and have been described as one of then premier attractions to the lovely Comox Valley.

For our Canadian reader- we were pleased to see the recent 5 part series on the Discovery Channel “JETSTREAMS”paid tribute to former Squadron Leader Art Sager by dedicating the series to him at the conclusion of this program. Art was a good friend to the Y2-K Spitfire project having attended all but one of our open house events. We carried the story of Arts passing in our September 2007 update. Art helped in our fund raising and is one of the 12 Canadian Spitfire pilots that signed our limited edition print “Touché” details on how you can obtain one of these prints is available on another web-page of this site.

Thanks again for your support and interest.

Pat Murphy
And the Y2-K Spitfire restoration team.
(Email the Editor)

“The Y2-K Spitfire will Fly Again"