H
Hurricane
Guest
I had the privilege of seeing the restoration facility at Duxford once. I'm not sure exactly how far they go, but the aircraft that come out look like brand-spanking-new.
That would depend on which restoration facility it was. The main museum workshop is in hangar 5. All of the museum aircraft are for static display. Obviously I can't speak for them but I'd imagine they do similarly to what we do, where possible make the quality of their work as close to airworthy as possible but priority has to go to preserving originality where possible.
Hangar 2 has some of the airworthy stuff from TFC etc and has some workshop facilities. I've not been in Area 51 down at the east end but by all accounts its more like a spitfire factory, they can virtually manufacture anything they need.
That kind of brings me onto the second point, that the numbers of aircraft flying is increasing. Once the toolings for the various parts have been made it is fairly simple to make more parts at a later stage. Its therfore becoming easier to rebuild from less and less (original) parts.