Of the numerous specifications for post-war civil aircraft floated by the British government, many were not built, and many that made it past the drawing board were failures. One or two, like the de Havilland Dove, went on to become aviation design classics.\rThe prototype Dove first flew on 25 September 1945, just six weeks after the end of World War Two. More than half a century later, an estimated fifty DH 104 Doves are still in service around the world, and a British entrepreneur is on the verge of resuscitating three more.\r Devonair is a JAR-145 certified maintenance facility based at Kemble Airfield, which has become something of a specialist in renovating Doves. Owner Martin Whale has been flying a fully operational and lovingly restored Dove of his own for some years. Three more DH 104s, in various states of disrepair, are resident at the company's workshop: Devonair recently purchased the third of these, serial number G-ARJB, once owned by construction machinery company JCB. Whale reckons that he owns close to 80 per cent of the world's existing parts for the aircraft, having bought an ex-military Dove when RAF Carlisle closed. He told EBAN about his big plans for the venerable twin:\r"We are planning to start up a fractional ownership scheme," he announced. "The problem with Doves is that you can pick them up at auction for between UK£15,000 and £35,000, but you are then looking at spending perhaps another £150,000 to get them into a really nice condition. That bothers people, who would rather spend the money on something like a new Golden Eagle. What we are looking to do is put three aircraft in the air and we will take the risk of high maintenance costs."\rWhale plans to get the programme off the ground by the end of this year. The project has been in consideration for two years, before Devonair was even established, but Whale admits that "a thousand things kept getting in the way". He has now begun research into the scheme, however, and believes the Dove fleet is viable.\r"There is a fair amount of work to do, but we've got the knowledge and the parts. The life of the wings is 16,000 hours and the most used Dove we have got has clocked up just over 10,000. You are probably not going to fly more than 300 hours per year even in fractional ownership," Whale said.\r"We are looking to set up an engine rebuilding facility anyway. There are quite a lot of Dove engines around, and rebuilding them is relatively cheap - they are not a complex engine to sort out. They have 1,600 hours in their normal form.\rAnother option, according to Whale, is to adopt a US conversion using two 400 bhp Lycoming engines - the Riley Turbo Executive 400. "They are a little bit noisy, but this is an established conversion in the US, so we would not have much trouble getting CAA approval," Whale concluded.\rSteve Carr, managing director and co-founder of Devonair, informed EBAN about the former JCB-owned aircraft, one of the three set to be part of Devonair's fractional ownership programme. An aviation company in Cumbernauld, Scotland, bought G-ARJB and two other Doves with the intention of running them as a sight-seeing mini-airline. However, they decided to operate Islanders instead, and the aircraft languished in a hangar for six years. It came up for auction last December and was snapped up by Devonair.\r"In theory it is quite a nice aeroplane," said Carr. "It's actually the next serial number from the one Martin (Whale) owns. It hasn't flown since 1973, and it has only done 4,000 hours. We have undertaken NDT testing just to make sure there are no major problems, and it has a fairly clean bill of health. \r"Fortunately it still has its doors. JCB took one of the wings off and put the thing on top of the office block in its research department, as a display. Mr John Bamford, founder of JCB, bought an HS 125 but didn't want to sell the Dove. He had good use out of it, he was in love with it," Carr laughed. "From a corrosion standpoint, it probably hasn't suffered at all. The engines would need a total rebuild, but the airframe is in good condition." \r"Ultimately, if you want a light twin which has people carrying capacity, but is a little bit more spacious, you get out of the Cessna 310 and Seneca market and start looking at Navajos. If you want to carry more people in relative comfort for less expense, the going rate for an up-and-running Dove is a damn sight less than any of its equivalents. We have one that was bought by an English company for running around its facilities in Britain and the occasional day trip to France. It probably cost them around £50,000. \r"The downside is that the maintenance can be expensive. The Dove was designed in an era when manpower was cheap, you could throw a lot of people at it to maintain it: It is a little labour intensive in some areas. However, our huge quantity of spares means we have not had any problems keeping them running. \r"It's also a relatively economical machine, using about 30 gallons of fuel an hour. Martin has a six-seat executive fitting, but they can carry anything up to 12 people if you take the rear toilet out. There's not much else that does that for this money."\rDevonair, not quite a year old, employs six people and owns its own hangar at Kemble airfield. Whale and Carr aim to look after light business twins and are also happy to take GA singles. \rBoth started their careers in the motor trade. Said Carr: "I have been flying for some time. We took the view that the motor maintenance trade looks after its customers much better than aviation maintenance. We felt we could do the job better. It's going very well."