"Hi, is that Tony Harmsworth? Right, we've got the Avro that was flown by your latest 'Master of the Air'. Do you fancy coming up to see it?" The voice at the other end of the telephone was that of Tony Ditheridge, boss of restoration company AJD Engineering at Milden, Suffolk. The 'Master of the Air' in question was pioneering aviator Jimmy Youell, whose story was told in our two-part profile in the March and April issues of Aeroplane, and the Avro is 504L G-EASD, a picture of which appeared in the article (page 42, March issue) and which the highly industrious Tony Ditheridge now has in storage at his workshop.

I had only recently proofread the Jimmy Youell feature, so the story of his barnstorming flights in Avro 504s in Sweden was fresh in my mind as I arrived at the converted barns that house AJD at Moat Farm, in the middle of the flatlands of Suffolk. Tony ushered me past an Avro 504K reproduction recently completed for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Museum, past a bench staked with Hawker Nimrod wing ribs, and around a stash of Hurricane parts (that is three decades of British aeronautical history for starters) to a cabinet filled with parts from G-EASD. "I found the Avro in a boathouse near Stockholm in 1990", Tony enthused from behind a stack of Hurricane spar material. "It had been stored there since it was taken out of service in 1929, but before it went to Sweden the thing was used for joyriding down in your neck of the woods, at Eastbourne."

It was enough of a surprise to discover that parts of Youell's Avro were still surviving at all, but to find out that it even flew from the seafront at Eastbourne, not far from where I live in Sussex, topped it off. And they say that a story should never have more than one coincidence.

As he handed me a brimming box-file of Avro documentation, Tony chuckled, "That should keep you going for a while". It soon became apparent that G-EASD had actually been built in Eastbourne, as the second of six 504L seaplanes constructed by the Eastbourne Aviation Company during 1919-1920. The company had operated Farman floatplanes before the First World War, and had licence-built Avro 504As and 'Ks and Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2cs during the conflict, but, with the cancellation of war contracts after the Armistice, it decided to go back into the pleasure-flying business.

The Avro 504L training seaplane was the first post-war version of the immortal 504 design, the three-seater having a large curved fin to compensate for the extra keel surface provided by the floats. It was powered by a 130 h.p. Clerget rotary engine turning a four-bladed wooden propeller to help drag the single-step wooden floats into the air. Avro G-EASD gained its Certificate of Airworthiness on June 1, 1920, but spent only one summer flying on the South Coast. Accidents to three of its six stablemates culminated in the sinking of 504L G-EAJH during a seaplane race at the Hove Carnival and Regatta, just along the coast from Eastbourne, on August 19. This incident brought the company's pleasure-flying enterprise to an end.

On July 21 the following year Jimmy Youell, who had found work barnstorming in Sweden following demob from the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), travelled to Eastbourne to test-fly G-EASD on behalf of his new employer, Mr. R. Thornblad of Stockholm. Youell's entry in the aeroplane's logbook records his satisfaction with the 20min. flight, and the machine was then dismantled and transported to Stockholm where it was test flown by Youell on August 26, again for 20min. He flew the aeroplane, now registered S-AAP, almost every day over the following months, on skis or wheeled undercarriage, and took it on a tour of the provinces between December 19 and March 23, 1922, giving pleasure flights, dropping parachutists and appearing at numerous flying displays.

In 1923 the Avro was re-registered S-AHAA and began to operate on floats from Bergviken on the north-east coast of Sweden. After another six years' hard use on skis, floats and wheels, on a miscellany of duties including meteorological work, and after several forced landings, the Avro's final flight ended in a crash at Bergvik in 1929, an accident caused by oil starvation. The weatherbeaten old Avro was then put back in its boathouse hangar near Stockholm, where it was to remain until Tony Ditheridge arrived 60 years later.

Tony intends to restore G-EASD with a wheel undercarriage, and has located the correct 130 h.p. Clerget engine to power the machine. "We haven't got a four-bladed propeller," he says, "but we will have a reproduction made, which should look pretty when polished up."

The construction of Avro 504s, for both museum display and private flying, has been one of the mainstays of AJD's business since the company was set up by Tony in 1987 on the premises of his company Exposem at Milden, producers of scanning electron microscopes. Four 504s have been built to original drawings by the team centred around carpenter/patternmaker Richard Watson and toolmaker Graham Self. The first Avro was part of a commission from the Chilean Air Force in 1989 to build three aeroplanes for its museum, the other two being a Bleriot XI and a Bristol M.1C. Following the completion of a follow-on order from the Chileans in 1990 for a Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a reproduction, another 504 was built for the Southampton Hall of Aviation in 1991, and a flying 504K, G-ECKE/'D8781', was constructed in 1994 for Nigel Hamlin-Wright (it is now based at Duxford with the Aircraft Restoration Company). A kit of Avro 504 parts was supplied to the Memorial Flight at La Ferte-Alais in France during 1995, in exchange for substantial parts from SPAD XIII S7571, including the wings, tail section, fuel tank and portions of fuselage. The SPAD was then restored by AJD to static display condition for Jack Erickson in Oregon, and is now on show at the Tillamook Museum near Portland on the Oregon coast.

Tony first became involved with the historic aeroplane movement in the mid-1970s. "It was an example of the symbiosis between the worlds of motor racing and flying", he says. "I started as a volunteer at Duxford, working with Robs Lamplough and Anthony Hutton, who I knew from our time racing with cars. We worked on Robs' Mustangs and Spits, and in 1978 I decided to learn to fly, got my Private Pilot's Licence, and began flying Stampes and Pitts from Little Gransden.

I asked Tony how, after working on the heavier metal at Duxford, he got into the First World War scene and started building early types. "The most satisfying aspect of building the early stuff," he replies, "is to put the assorted piles of wooden parts and the drawings and blue-prints on the hangar floor at the start of the project, imagine what the thing is going to look like and stand on the same spot a year or so later looking at the real thing. It's a great feeling. It's a bit different from the Second World War stuff I have got involved with later" (to be described in the second part of this article in next month's Aeroplane).

During the 1990s Tony was constantly on the lookout for rotary engines and First World War instruments to help resurrect the remains of early fighters or to incorporate into replicas, and in so doing has developed AJD into one of the world's most prolific suppliers of museum-quality First World War aeroplanes. The two most recent completed airframes, built over a two-year period, are an S.E.5a fitted with original guns and the 504K for the RAAF Museum. The latter will soon be dismantled for transportation to Point Cook near Melbourne.

"The Australians sent us an Australian-built 80 h.p. le Rhone engine to build a 504 on to, and the aeroplane will be kept in flying condition at their Museum at Point Cook", says Tony. In the years between the Chilean and Australian 504s, other First World War projects have included putting Sopwith Camel G-ASOP (see News,March 2001 Aeroplane) back into the air in 1994, building a Camel replica for the US Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker, Alabama, and assisting with the restoration of original F.1 Camel B7280 for the Polish Air Museum at Krakow.

Work was also undertaken for, among others, the Aviodome Museum in Holland, Kermit Weeks in Florida, Sir Tim Wallis in New Zealand, the Swedish Air Force Museum at Linkoping, and the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden.

The latest project at Milden is an original Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2e reconnaissance biplane, A1325, which is being rebuilt to fly for its owner, Peter Jackson, a film director from New Zealand. The B.E.2e was the most numerous variant of the Royal Aircraft Factory B.E. family, and A1325 is one of nine ex-RFC machines transferred to the Norwegian Army Air Force in 1917. The machine was donated to the Mosquito Aircraft Museum (now the de Havilland Heritage Collection) by the Norwegian Air Force in 1982, but since its acquisition by Peter Jackson its restoration has proceeded, a full set of wing panels having recently been completed and a correct Royal Aircraft Factory R.A.F.1a engine having been acquired. "After that," says Tony, heading up a narrow staircase to a dark loft full of stored components, "we have the beginnings of a two-seat Sopwith Camel, and some genuine bits from a Sopwith Pup that we should really do something with, and .."

Before Tony disappears into the rafters with his torch to pinpoint yet more aeronautical treasure, I ask him what his ultimate project would be. "It's funny you should ask," he replies from the darkness of the loft, the torch beam playing on some ancient spruce wing ribs in the far corner. "I've just managed to get a full set of drawings from the USA for the Travel Air Mystery Ship racer from the early Thirties. It's one aeroplane I've always had a bit of a thing about, and is just about the horniest civil aeroplane ever built. Now we've finally got all that we need to make a start on building one."

First World War fighters, reconnaissance and training aeroplanes, an inter-war floatplane, a Golden Age Racer; part of the fabric of our everyday daydreams, but all in a day's work at AJD.