Fe.2B in Flight

[Don Boose]

Another replica WWI aircraft in flight -- wonderful sound of the Beardmore engine and the ballet of rocker arms. Includes a gentle tussle with a [Pfalz D.III?]. Playing Fe.2b Flying at Masterton | The Vintage Aviator

A very attractive website page with a lot of information. These fellow have also built a replica of the Re.8 (the Dear Old Harry Tate -- one of those aeroplanes with fuselage, as well as wing, dihedral) but it appears not to be a flying replica. http://thevintageaviator.co.nz/proje...ge-aviator-re8



Please tell me that somewhere out there some enthusiasts are building or have built a replica of the DH.2!

Don

[redhorse]

Thanks Don. That's a wonderful site. The Fe2b is one of my favorites. I produced a resin kit of it in the early 90s. Just a beautiful plane.

[EricGoedkoop]

Originally Posted by boosed

Please tell me that somewhere out there some enthusiasts are building or have built a replica of the DH.2!

There's a flying replica in New Zealand and I believe the Great War Flying Museum in Canada have one in progress.

[shrike]

Don,
Pictures on the same site as you originally posted or here

[Don Boose]

Thanks, Mark. I completely missed it. I'd love to see films of the DH.2 in flight.

Aircraft aesthetics are entirely a matter of taste, but I personally have always found the DH.2 to be beautiful and the Fe.2B, the early Vickers Gunbus, and Voisin to be rather homely beasts, with the later Gunbus somewhere in between.

But the film of the Fe.2B is certainly beautiful to watch and it reminds me of a favorite and now much-faded tee-shirt that I picked up at Geneseo back in the days when my teaching schedule allowed me to participate in the annual Flying Aces Club meets.

It is a 3/4 front view painting of an Fe.2B in flight with the gunner standing up in the pulpit banging away with a Lewis gun over the top wing at a pair of incoming Albatross D.IIIs at six o'clock high.

The caption reads: "Another busy day at the office!"

Don

Correction to first post: With regard to the Re.8, I meant to say that it appears to be a non-flying replica.

[dansls1]

Very nice find - thanks for posting Don I also think the Fe.2B is somewhat homely - but in a 'cool ugly' kind of way

[redhorse]

Originally Posted by dansls1

but in a 'cool ugly' kind of way

Exactly! I like the A-10 a lot too. Dually's do the same thing for me in the truck world

[Don Boose]

Some day I will post a disquisition on the useful word "Fomby" invented by me and my friend Jim Reuter (JimR in this Forum) when we were teenagers in the 1950s to describe any piece of machinery that is ugly, but appealing -- A-10s, Russian tanks with more than five turrets, 1920s Mack and Scammell trucks, Victorian battleships and armored cruisers, Fairey Barracudas, many steam engines, and almost any Fleet Air Arm aircraft of the 1920s and 30s except the Fairey IIIF and the Hawker Nimrod.

It came from a side view in the Harleyford book on aircraft camouflage of an RAF Coastal Command Wellington with stickleback antennas, a chin radar, and Leigh light installation, and having the unit code "MBY" and the aircraft letter "F" so that, with the roundel, it spelled out "FOMBY."

"It certainly IS Fomby," said Jim.

And so it was.

Don

[dansls1]

I would consider my IH Scout II in Lexington Blue (think bright robin's egg blue) as 'Fomby' as well

Edit - but that's the way my grandfather bought it - so it'll never change.

[Don Boose]

Dan -- You may recall from a previous conversation that Lil, Don3, daughter Lydia (those two were little kidlets then) and I circumnavigated the Republic of Korea in 1974 in an ex-Eighth Army black IH Scout 810 belonging to the Embassy Defense Attache' Office and that we later acquired an ancient Toyota Land Cruiser of our own, red with a white top, gearshift on the steering column, jerry can rack on the back, and a winch on the front bumper, which we named "Matilda" (as in Waltzing) and in which we drove all over the mountains and valleys and dirt roads and trails of South Korea 1975-78. You should have seen 5' 0" tall Lil driving it through Seoul traffic. Now THAT was a Fomby vehicle.

Don