Geoff Thomas
One of the aircraft with the highest nostalgia ratings at Farnborough '98 nearly failed to make it at all.
A mere two months ago, Avro Avian VH-UFZ lay rolled into a ball in a cornfield in the picturesque eastern English county of Suffolk- but yesterday it arrived in Farnborough ready for its scheduled departure on a record-recreating flight to Australia on Sunday.
With a great deal of help from British specialists including Skysport Engineering, Vintech, AJD Engineering and Vintage Fabrics, the Avian was put back together so that pilot Lang Kidby could re-create Australian Bert Hinkler's epic pioneering flight of 1928.
It was on 7 July that Kidby - who claims that it's the first aircraft he's so much as scratched in a 30-year career - attempted a cross-wind landing on a grass strip at Milden and the aircraft cartwheeled.
Kidby was relatively uninjured in the accident which virtually destroyed the Avian, leaving him and his major sponsors, Cox Insurance, the task of rebuilding it from scratch in less than eight weeks. That they achieved their aim with only a couple of days to spare is nothing short of a minor miracle.
Source: Flight Daily News