Two seat Spitfires seem to be ten a penny these days. The ability to make some decent money providing rides for people is a good way of supporting more airframes which isn’t a bad thing, even if they don’t look quite as elegant as the original design. There was one at Compton Abbas on the day of our visit that was doing a pretty good business taking people up for a ride. A blast down to the south coast and back seemed to be the norm.

You had plenty of notice when it was going up. The process of strapping in the passenger was not speedy and, while the pilot might not yet have come out to pre-flight, the activity loading up let you know that a flight was not far off.

Conditions were pretty blowy which, given the location on a hilltop, didn’t seem so surprising. I wondered whether this would limit flying but it didn’t seem to be much of an issue. Besides, the wind was quite close to being down the runway so not much of a challenge. When firing up the Merlin, the crowds outside the restaurant were treated to a blast of wind from the prop. A few hats would be dislodged but no one seemed to mind!

There were quite a few flights during the course of the time that we were there. The return at the end of each flight included a high-level flyby but no beating up the field I’m afraid. That would have been a nice way to round things off but maybe that would not go down well with either the CAA or the neighbours.