Here is the September 07 report on the rebuild of BL628 the Spitfire V.

Very big month for us on the Spitfire this month with the work culminating in the first flight of the aircraft on Saturday the 29th.

The first job to tackle was the rectification of the propeller defect. We sent the prop to Safe Air Ltd. in Blenheim for assessment and to generate a repair scheme for the tight bearing problem. I elected to go down to the shop to assist with the job and help get it done as quick as possible. We found two blade shanks to be oversize. The machine shop turned them down to the correct dimension and we re-assembled the prop and carried out a proper balance. As luck would have it, Safes delivery truck was making a run up our way with another prop on board so we were able to put ours on also and had it back home almost before I was.

Numerous other items were completed this month such as the spinner, the lower cowlings and wing to fuselage fairings and the engine inlet scoop and rear fairing. The canopy release mechanism was also completed and the canopy finally installed. Final painting completed on the cowlings and fairings and all the remaining markings applied.

Landing gear retract tests all performed correctly on the ground rig. All controls rigged and travels checked and duplicate inspects carried out on all systems. We carried out fuel flow tests and filled the tanks up for the first time. This revealed a problem with the fuel level transmitter that began to leak from an unseen crack in the housing, so we have had to remove that unit. All the other systems have performed correctly.

We received another governor from V12’s and tested this on the rig here at Ardmore and set the max RPM and pressures. We had to remake the governor lines to alter the configuration as the samples we copied proved to be wrong for the governor that we were supplied.

We had the radio checks done and the pitot static tests carried out and performed the weight and balance and adjusted the ballast to put the C of G into the middle of the envelope.

Our team worked some big hours and all the weekend days during the month to complete everything in time for test flight window we had. The testing began on Saturday the 29th and again on Sunday, but the weather and pilot work commitments meant we had to wait until the following Thursday to continue, but by Sat the 8th of Sept we were all complete.