Aviation Tour - Maps on www.bankleft.com

There are a few interesting bonuses of having 'the plane' hereafter Oscar Lima, in a hangar on a private farm strip. The nissen hut next to the hangar turns out to house tanks, troop carriers, recovery vehicles. To be honest, I find them a little scary. Modern autonomous weapons must leave guys sitting in these things like total sitting ducks. I can try to imagine that at least they would be fun to drive but can't help dwelling on the number of people that must have been incinerated inside them. Maybe there was a magical tank golden era when their armour kept them untouchable and they could happily wreck and trash to the extent of their fuel and ammunition capacity. It is certainly a lot of steel, anyway. I don't think I've ever seen such a quantity of steel in one place. This one is powered by a variant of the Merlin engine that was in Spitfires.

Our build supervisor Gary, at left, is the premier Jabiru Engineer in the UK and has supplied a fair bit of development information to the Australian engine factory over the 10 year evolution of the power plants. He is a general all round champ. Murray, at right, is a plane painting guru. He paints war plane restorations and sponsored aerobatic planes but specialises in Jabirus. Being composite, there is a fair bit of work in the filling and finishing process - it is quite sculptural. I was amazed to see ours return from his workshop. He gets a bit cranky if you try to get him to work fast but he can certainly hang a final coat on an airframe flawlessly.