Can't afford $5mm restored Spitfire - build one from scratch.

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Bob, a retired airline pilot from Prescott, Arizona had time on his hands and so he decided that if he could not buy a Spitfire he will build one. There are quite a few kits available but they are all at best 75% scale and not what he wanted. His Spitfire had to be to scale, look like the real thing and power was to be from a proper V12.

He purchased a set of plans from French homebuilder Marcel Jurca who had created plans, based on a display Spitfire Mk IX in the Air and Space Museum at Le Bourget, Paris for an 1-to-1 scale replica Spitfire powered by a 700-hp V12. Bob and his friend Vern started work on the welded steel tube fuselage with non-load-bearing aluminium covering and wooden wing warbird in 1996.

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Next on the list was the engine. Standard Merlin and Griffon Spitfire power plants are costly and expensive to maintain and Bob opted for the beefier Allison V-1710 engine capable of generating 1,400 hp on take-off. The Allison engine started life as a P-39 Airacobra powerplant. Mated to the engine is a Hamilton Standard DC-3 propeller on a standard shaft and an oil system for changing pitch on the propeller. The propeller was rebuilt for a total cost of $6,500 (R84, 500) as opposed to a $100,000 (1,300,000.00) original Spitfire prop. Just over 100 gallons of fuel in two fuselage tanks gives Bob's Spitfire an endurance of about an hour and a half.

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About three months ago before the replica's flight to Oshkosh they added replica 20-mm cannons to the wing, and faired the paint flawlessly.

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