You grab the open cockpit canopy with your right hand as you face forwards, then stand with your right foot as near the cockpit as possible to avoid damaging the more fragile wing. The seat you then stand in is, surprisingly, merely bare metal. Cushioning for your backside is provided by your parachute which is hanging down your back, and you tuck under your bottom when you sit down. With your equipment on, the fit is snugger than a David Beckham underwear advertisement. Looking round is almost impossible so if you want to see what has sneaked up behind you there is a small round mirror in front of you that looks like someone has snaffled a wing mirror off a Morris Minor.

The first feeling is one of vulnerability. Your plane is mainly aluminium with the bullet-stopping capability one step up from cardboard. There is a steel plate behind your back which gives some protection, but that's about it.

The canopy opens manually. If it sticks, there is a small crowbar, painted red so that you can spot it in a hurry, down to your left. If you have to leave in a hurry there is no ejector seat. Standing up and climbing out at speed is tricky. Some pilots found the easiest way way to abandon it in the sky is to fly it upside down, open the canopy, and fall out head first before opening your parachute. Not for the first time I am in awe of the lads, some only teenagers, who flew into bullet-riddled skies during the Battle of Britain.

Last week was the first time in 10 years that I had the chance to get up close and personal with Spitfire LA198 that has been frozen in mid-flight for all those years inside Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum above the equally famous exhibit of Sir Roger the stuffed elephant. The Spitfire has been suspended on wires above the gallery's West Court so that visitors get the feeling of what it looks like in the air, and from the first floor gallery can look down on it as well.

But the health and safety ruling was that it should be taken down every 10 years for a detailed inspection of the wires and the plane itself to ensure it remains safe for the people walking below, and so on Armistice Day it was ceremoniously lowered to the ground, giving staff the opportunity to repair and spruce up LA198 before it takes to the skies, albeit just in the West Court, once again.

For Andi Howe, transport and technology conservator for Glasgow Life, the organisation that run's Glasgow's museums, it was a chance to reacquaint himself with an old friend. Andi served his engineering apprenticeship in the RAF and actually looked after LA198 while it was still with the air force.

So now some facts about the plane. It is a rare Mark 21 Spitfire - the design of the plane was always evolving - and the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that it has five propellers rather than the standard four. That's because it is fitted with the more powerful Rolls-Royce Griffon engine rather than the earlier, iconic, Rolls-Royce Merlin. "The roar of the Griffon," Andi reassures me, "is every bit as impressive as that of the Merlin."

It flew with the City of Glasgow 602 Squadron, but just after the war itself, and was not an actual Battle of Britain plane, although it did feature in a film about the battle. It suffered "a prang" as the official report states, on a runway and was retired from active service, only to be used for target practice, and afterwards as a "Gate Guardian" where it was put on a pole outside RAF stations. That, as you can imagine, is not the most ideal way of preserving a fragile aircraft, and it was later sent to the Museum of Flight at East Fortune in East Lothian where it underwent a five-year restoration. Sourcing parts was one of the difficulties, and great ingenuity was used in foraging them from stores around the world or manufacturing facsimiles. The original instruments, glowing in the dark with radioactive Radium-223, were wisely replaced.

Once finished, and painted in its original City of Glasgow Squadron camouflage colours, it was sent to Glasgow's Transport Museum because of the connection with the plane's Squadron, but when Kelvingrove reopened after a major refurbishment it was thought that LA198 would have a more eye-catching home there above the ground. Of course they had to take the front doors off the museum, and the wings off the plane, to get it in, but they managed.

Now back on the ground the two-and-one-third ton plane - most of the weight is in the engine - is being carefully investigated by Andi and his crew. "We are checking its structural stability, ensuring no cracks have appeared or that its rivets have become loose or corroded. And we will give it a thorough clean. It's in a better condition than I expected and is an absolute pleasure to be working on it," says Andi.

Beside it, Sir Roger the elephant has been covered with white dust sheets while the work is going on. "We tell the kids that ask," says Andi, "that he was dressing up for his Hallowe'en."

For a moment Andi and I just gaze in silence at the plane beside us. When he was in the RAF he was lucky enough to fly in a two-seater Spitfire. "It was such a successful plane," he said. "Look at its shape. It is so elegant, so manoeuvrable. Anyone who has any interest in the Second World War, this is the plane they want to see. Pilots who flew Spitfires come here to see it, and now the children of pilots.

"The pilots were 18, 19...I don't know how they did it. It is right that the plane is here so that younger generations understand what people went through in wartime."

Soon LA198 will be hoisted into the air again, and once again museum visitors can reflect on Churchill's words, "Never was so much owed by so many to so few" and realise how much we owe to the young men that clambered into those flimsy yet fearsome machines.