Russ Harmuth's Spitfire, Builder #1
I Started this project just as many of you have expressed to me – “ I have always wanted a Spitfire…..” Now that all the real Spitfires are spoken for or in museums or being recovered from Russia at an unreal cost I decided to build my own. I contacted Clive du Cros who had built his own wooden Spitfire and because most of my restoration work in antique aircraft was in wood airframes the notion to make a wooden Spitfire appealed greatly.
His designer Ray Hilbourne made the airframe on the lighter side as Clive wanted to power it with a converted Jaguar V12 car engine that produced around 400hp. From the beginning I thought “why build a full size aeroplane if you are not going to use a full size engine?” I employed the services of Hi Lander Inc to completely redesign the structure for an Allison V1710 engine, a 1200hp unit (the original Rolls Royce Merlin fits in the same space but is a ton of money more to zero time). This indeed is not now the same aeroplane that Clive built. The wings are removable (his was a one piece aircraft) as per the original Spitfire. We use vertical grain balsa/ Birch ply as an easily fabricated composite for the aircraft skin and other high stress areas, and epoxy glue. This system was used in the construction of the DH 98 Mosquito and racing boats.
I had the plans drawn so they are almost self explanatory and highly detailed so I couldn’t get confused as to how things were to go together.
That done we started building and things progressed very quickly. I wanted to see if there were any other du Cros builders out there so I jumped on the internet to find out. I got a hit from a couple of people including a New Zealander, Bruce West who had built the tail feathers and was well on the way building his fuselage. He decided to convert to the Hi Lander drawings and so now there were two of us, we talked about issues and methods and became great friends. It was then I decided that there was an opportunity to build components and kits for other builders so I started up Spitfire Aircraft Company and put the plans on CD’s for sale. Progress on my own Spitfire got interrupted for a while but it sure looks like a Spitfire now, it’s like the old saying “ if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and flies like a duck it must be a duck”. It follows that: “if it looks like a Spit, sounds like a Spit and flies like a Spit……..then it must be a SPITFIRE”!!
Russ appeared on local TV, the interview is on You Tube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzy7EsYitEQ
Editors Note: Here are some detail shots I took of Russ's Spitfire at the early stages of the build. They are the details I was keen to know about for my Spitfire. The first photo is of frame 11, the one behind the pilot, a key feature in a Spitfire cockpit.
The windscreen and instrument panel mount to the same section of the fuselage
SAW Spitfires use electric actuators for trimming the aircraft, this is the rudder bellcrank to do this
The engine longeron runs from the firewall back to frame 13
The engine mount bolts to these fish plates bolted to either side of the engine longeron
The rudder trim tab before it gets covered in three layers: 1mm Birch ply, then 3/32" end grain balsa and finally 1mm Birch ply.
For Russ and Shirleys 40th wedding anniversary we converted his workshop into a party room, complete with a helecopter landing pad that was the dance floor. That's Russ, before he got changed for the party!