Seen at Biggin Hill on January 11, Rearwin Sportster c/n 462 carries mid-1930s period registration G-AEOF, issued by theCAAin December 1981. The practice of allocating unused “vintage” registrations has since been stopped.AT BIGGIN HILL, Kent, the first-ever flight of a British-registered Rearwin Sportster is approaching as the restoration of G-AEOF, owned by Shipping and Airlines (SA), nears completion.

The wings were fitted just before Christmas, and the 85 h.p. Le Blond engine is installed and running, following a rebuild by Vintech at Little Gransden Airfield, Cambridgeshire. The Sportster was one of several vintage light aeroplanes imported from the USA in 1979/80 by Philip Mann.

” The prototype Sportster first flew in April 1935 at Fairfax Airport, Kansas City, and over the next few years more than 330 were built in several different versions. The chief engineer at SA, Tony Habgood, says: “We had another Sportster, registered as G-BGAU in 1978 alongside a Rearwin Cloudster, G-BGAV. The Cloudster (a side-by-side two-seater design dating from 1939) was rebuilt and flew in Pan Am colours from Biggin until it returned to the USA in 1985. The Sportster was never restored, the project spending some time on the Isle of Wight before going to France.”