What constitutes an Aircraft's Identity?

[Digger]

This has probably been discussed many times before and I could get hounded for raising it again, but there seems to be an aweful lot of identities out there and I was wondering what you actually need to rebuild an aircraft. For example, I recently read in a magazine about the total rebuild of a particular warbird, its about 70% complete, but I know where the wreck is and not one nut or bolt has been used from it???. Does this mean the project under construction is a replica? and does that mean we can simply apply what ever identities we like to our projects. I personally believe that to say something is a 'rebuild' or restoration it must contain a minimum percentage of the original aircraft, what that % is I guess, is again a debatable subject but I would at least say it has something of the original aircraft in it. I would be very interested to hear a constructive debate on this.

Over to you

Digger

Last edited by Digger on Tue Jan 11, 2005 7:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[bdk]

This has probably been discussed many times before and I could get hounded for raising it again, but there seems to be an aweful lot of identities out there and I was wondering what you actually need to rebuild an aircraft.

The answer (in the US at least) is the aircraft registration. Without that you don't have an identity and nothing to do a title search on. Data plates can be replaced just like any other part of the airplane can as far as the FAA is concerned, so you don't even need to have those. No emotion there, just the facts!

[DaveM2]

This has been done to death on this and just about every other board on the web. Do a search on WIX and I am sure you will find long threads about it.

Dave

[Digger]

Thanks bdk for your feedback and Dave2, yes I can read however, some of these archives etc are getting old and obviously the opinions of some wixers may have changed with the introduction of new technologies, businesses etc that are now involved in the warbird restoration industry. For example, I could imagine that here in Australia, 5 years ago people would have held a point of view that reflected the availability of parts, but now, with the advent of people and places like wangarratta, it is now possible to rebuild an entire aircraft from basically nothing. I am curious to hear if anyone has changed their opinions about this, OK its old and has been discussed before but for the sake of newcomers can we have some accomadation for this subject. After all we are trying to encourage up todate discussions that could bring in more enthusiasts to this area.

cheers

Digger