Warbird Information Exchange

I wanted this to be a parallel thread to go along with Nathan's "Reproduction Aircraft" thread.

Nathan posed a question, what would you build? There are a multitude of different answers out there and yet some recent reproductions seem to have fallen flat on thier face's.

The Russian repro's seem to have caught on, Yak-3's, Yak-9's, A6M Zero's, the New Zealand I-16's & I-153's.

Here's a few that sounded great when announced, yet haven't gone very far, the FW-190's, ME-262's, KI-43's. Why do you think that is???

Regards,
Mike

I think the Fw190 and Me262 suffer from a lack of visibility. There isn't an example of either that is making the rounds as an air show regular yet. The Me262 is still very new and very expensive, and progress on the Fw190 seems to be slow. The first production run of the FlugWerk Fw190 is sold out and they are increasing the production examples. So it's not that they aren't selling them, it's just that only one has yet to fly.

To the contrary, the Yak examples have been around for awhile and production seems to have been completed quickly--aided by the surviving factory jigs and tooling. (It could also be that Allison engines are less expensive and easier to maintain.)

Just my $0.02.

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"They done it, they done it, damned if they ain't flew." December 17, 1903

I agree, the Flugwerk 190s have been far too slow to get "out there", the 1st one should have been put on the airshow circuit a while back...
... surely they could have had one on the UK scene this summer just gone? I know there was a death @ Flugwerk and these aeroplanes are very expensive, but...

Definitely a visibility and viability issue. If the fabricators of these planes were avidly showcasing them on the airshow circuit, they could drum up the interest. Very few million-dollar-plus items will sell themselves! Some of the biggest news to date surrounding the Me-262 and the Ki-43 were the rash of accidents they suffered during their testing phase. You have to get out and overcome that kind of press and shift the status quo of perspective back in the other direction if you want the business.

On the other hand, I believe the FlugWerk FW-190 will do quite well once the sole flying example finally makes it onto the North American air show circuit. Of all the repro-warbirds around today, that's reaslly the only one I've truly been salivating over since the project was announced. The fabricators have to prove that they can consistently deliver a viable operational product to the market before people are going to line up to buy. Very few millionaires became what they are by foolishly throwing money at experimental projects (toys) that don't have a solid track record...yet.

The Collings Foundation might deliver that much needed shot in the arm to the Stormbird Foundation once their example is kicking butt on the air show circuit. People have to hear it, smell it, see it, and be physically moved by it before their purse strings are going to loosen! These are toys after all, and with no real historical provenance to speak of, the motivating factor behind the value of these "repros" is the hard core vicereal appeal they offer.

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Rob Mears
'Surviving Corsairs' Historian
robcmears@yahoo.com
http://www.robmears.com

There are reasons that the Flug werk 190s out there havent flown besides the factory test example. Yes, they should have flown a long time ago as previoulsy stated, but there are issues with them. Just because they look like a 190 doesnt mean it is even close on the inside. The parts are not interchangable to original 190 parts at all. Tom Blair's is the only one ready to fly but it will have to be done in the US.

I think the new KI-61s under restoration will really add the appeal of rare warbirds once they get flown and start showing up in magazines and at airshows. The 262s would sell better if they would tour one around on the airshow circuit for a year and prove their worth as a reliable airplane to own.

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Live to fly, Fly to live.....

How many viable engines (and props?) are out there for these?

From what I've read on another forum regarding Tom Blairs 190 is that they will try and fly in the UK first, just that there is a mountain of paper work to go with getting it certified. This came from Cliff Spink who looks after Tom Blairs operations over here I think.

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showth ... =tom+blair

I was lucky enough to see it taxi at this years Flying Legends

Chuck...I'm not asking this to be a smart-ass.
I'm curious as to why you'd mention that the new Fw190 parts are not interchangeable with the originals.
There aren't enough/any "originals" flying to make that "problem" a problem are there?
Since the parts for the new 190s are all made by the same people, I would think that would make them interchangeable. Right?

Mudge the curious

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Land of the free because of the brave

Riddle me this, riddle me that.........
How many Flug Werk 190s have been built so far and are in their owners possesion? How long have they had them?
How long since the first one left the assembly line in Germany?

I am not posting here to slam anyone or a company that I had real interest in building airplanes that needed to be reproduced after all these years. Obviously German and Japanese warbirds are rare and there is a great need to restore the few originals or build new replicas. I have no problem with replicas or new build aircraft at all, especially when that is almost the only way to seem them fly.
There is an original FW-190 being restored to fly with all authentic parts and many new parts made from exacting measurements taken from crashed peices and reverse engineering. There are no blueprints for the type. Parts were ordered from Flugwerk thinking it would help speed up the restoration process and then none of the parts matched or fit. Original parts from WWII are not the same as what is being built in Germany now. It was very dissapointing and money was lost. There are two orignal FW-190s being restored to fly right now with original BMW engines. These fighters will be amazing to see, hear, and watch when completed.

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Live to fly, Fly to live.....

Money may be the biggest issue here. You can get the Yaks, even if not the in line version, or CJs pretty cheaply, I think they are $100 or $200k range and the Yak 52s are good acro planes. What is an assembled replica fighter going to cost? I'd guess over a $million easily, and no matter how well it is engineered, built, and how much marketing it is never going to be an original FW. So a buyer or collector can spend a lot of money on the replica or get a genuine P-51, Fury etc, for the same amount of money. The replica comes with some doubts, such as future market value, parts and service support, and flying quality. The next factor is pilot ability required? It is likely high in the FW190 and very high in the Me262, just my uneducated guess. If I owned the Me 262 I'd definitley wand to have some experienced pilots like Bud Granley and Skip Holm fly it and give their opinion; but the the opinion could be negative. The 262 is ceraitanly fascinating, but for much less you can buy a top F86. Perhaps some of the jet WIXers have some info; Paul, Rick etc.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

Thanks Bill, Thats definitely my issue,
I would also agree that there are not as many entry level "Test Pilots" that have an extra $1-2m that they could toss into something that may or may not return their investment as a proven restored airplane.

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"Hindsight is usually 20% off!"

As far as repro vs. restored goes, aren't there people buying new build P-51 & P-40 fuselage/wings that are basically repro's?

I can see that the ME-262 will be more of a technical/maintenance issue, but the Ki-43 "should" be a fairly simple machine to get up and flying.
I'm guessing $1 mil should be more than enough to get an operational Ki-43.

Let's face it, there are some people in this hobby where money just doesn't matter. Thats why I'm surprised that some of the above mentioned aircraft haven't flown much yet.


Regards,
Mike

There are two major problems with reproducing these aircraft. First and foremost is needing cubic dollars to even think about a serious production run. If you are going to do a major production run, it is going to take a considerable amount of people, equipment and space to be able to do it in a reasonable amount of time. It will matter some if you plan on doing all the work inhouse or having some of it done by contract shops. Should you choose to do it all inhouse, you are talking about several million dollars of equipment and tens of thousands of square feet of building space that is able to support the equipment requirements. You can't just go into any shop building and install the required machinery without severe modifications to the slab and foundation. Once you are set up, it is going to take a while to get operators trained and familiar with the installed equipment and at the same time help work out the bugs in the CAM code to actually make correct parts. The big reason that the Yaks were produced in the numbers that they were, was that enough of the old tooling still existed that those costs were minimal compared to ramping up from scratch. Also, the Soviet design and fabrication philosophy catered to having a totally unkilled workforce and the ability to produce in bulk to get acceptable numbers of parts.

Once you plan on production of more than 5 or 6 aircraft, you now have to start looking at hard tooling. Even building a relatively simple a/c like a C-150, there are hundreds of hard tools used in the production. It takes time to design, build and proof each tool. You have to build enough of the tools so that proof componets can be built and tools completely verified before you begin to produce production parts.

The other problem is building up a skilled workforce that you can afford. Until you have idiot proof hard tooling for all of your componets, it will take people with decent skills to start with, to be able to reliably build parts in a timely manner. These days, skilled fabrication people are not as readily available as they were in the past. When you do find them and can convince them to come to work for you, it is going to cost you prevailing wage and benifit rates at a minimum. You can train up people, but that involves time and already having skilled people on staff to do the training. I've been a lead man in production before and even though I had a bunch of newhires that had good skills ( average of 10 years in aircraft production ), it still took about 45 work days to get them fully up to speed on our blueprints, inspection requirements and fab methods and procedures.

The problem with the 262's, the F3F's and the Ki's was they were done with the knowledge and intent to build a very limited number and use as little hard tooling as possible and with a very limited budget. From what I've seen and heard, none of the projects have made much, if any, profit for the lead companies. You can't do that and stay in business for very long when you are a small to medium sized business.

If one could set up a company with enough of the right CNC equipment, it would be reasonably easy to manufacture kits like Van's does, that require minimal tooling to assemble. With the use of matched hole design and fabrication, parts become self-jigging and considerable less expensive to produce. A FW-190 kit, less engine, prop and instruments could probably be produced possibly for around 300K$. Careful kit planning and arrangement could also cut the time needed to do the assembly work.

Food for thought......

Those Ki-43's arn't finished, yet?


Gee, a couple years ago I saw an article on them and they looked almost complete.

I promise if I ever hit my 100 million+ loto I will open up my own repro shop(with all the ness. equipment too).

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Nathan, here are a few words of wisdom;

How to make a small fortune in the aviation business,...start with a large fortune !!