Former Mosquito pilot Herbert Pond has some advice for the pilots flying the rebuilt Mosquito WWII fighter-bomber at Ardmore this weekend - watch the take-offs.

'They are a very nice plane to fly, they had two big engines,” says Bert. 'But they are a bit hot taking off.

The ‘wooden wonder' in flight. Photo: Avspecs

'They would try to take off to the left. You had to be ready to keep them straight. But otherwise they were alright. Once you got up in the air they were beautiful planes.”

Bert's among the many aviation enthusiasts driving to Ardmore airfield today Saturday to see the world's only flying mosquito, which has been restored and rebuilt by Avspecs, a warbird and vintage aircraft restoration and repair company. The last flying Mosquito crashed at an air show in England in the 90s.

The Mosquito was the world's first truly multi-role aircraft, proving itself as a fighter, bomber, and reconnaissance aircraft. Powered by twin Rolls Royce Merlin engines driving a plywood body they had a huge power to weight advantage over adversaries.

The Ardmore mosquito flew for the first time this week, and is on show to the public on Saturday before it is shipped to owner Jerry Yagen's Fighter Factory, an aircraft museum at Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Like the Mosquitoes Bert Pond flew across the Atlantic in the later stages of the war, the Ardmore mosquito was built in Canada.

'From Montreal we used to go to New Foundland, and Azores and then up from there,” says Bert.

'We found it better to go the northern route to Greenland, then to Reykjavik, and then down to where we left them in the north of England.

'It wasn't too bad only about three hour hops if you were going the northern route. Going the other way it was five hour hops, that was too much. We would take them over and leave them there. Someone else would pick them up. I did that for the last couple of years of the war. I used to take everything. I used to fly Liberators, Lancasters, and those things. We would take whatever there was.”

The Ardmore Mosquito KA114 is a de Havilland Mosquito FB.26 built in de Havilland's Downsview factory in Toronto, Ontario and delivered directly to storage in early 1945.

The aircraft never saw combat and was passed around from storage facility to storage facility. It ended up in Alberta and was bought by a farmer through a public sale of war assets in 1948. KA114 decayed on that farm until 1978 when it was transferred to the Canadian Museum of Flight and Transport.

Moving the Mosquito broke it. The forward section of the fuselage disintegrated while the rest of it broke in two as it was being loaded for transport. The aircraft was also missing both engines and parts of the landing gear. Most of the wing and many other parts fared much better.

Jerry Yagen bought it from the CMFT, using a chainsaw to rim the wings so they would fit in the container for the journey to New Zealand.

Aucklander Glyn Powell created a new fuselage, wings, and tail sections from scratch, and used modern epoxy glue and a boat builder.

The new hull and spars were moved to Ardmore Airfield where AvSpecs has completed the construction, which is recorded on Avspecs' Facebook page.