45" Wingspan Wakefield (FF08)

Christmas present this year was a 45" Wingspan "Easy Built Models" Wakefield. This rubber powered plane apparently has achieved 28 minute flights, so I think I may need to find a larger field to fly it in once I've constructed it.

Can't wait to get building..

Unknown Vintage Model Plane

While rummaging through my parent's old photo box we stumbled on a photograph of a vintage model aircraft made by my mother's late brother. We believe he made this some time in the late 1930's. We have no idea of the size, but it does look rather large.

Miss Canada Senior, now completed

Covering the Miss Canada Senior took me a little longer than I anticipated. The kit supplied enough red tissue for me to cover the wing and tail surfaces and I chose to cover the fuselage in white.

I used a very watered down mix of PVA wood glue to attach the tissue and when dried, I shrunk the tissue with a fine water spray. I left this to dry overnight and then I applied two coats of a 50/50 mix of cellulose thinners and cellulose dope to shrink and tissue further. Now all I need to do is wait until the Spring to give this a test flight!

Miss Canada Senior, Ready for Covering

Nearly 7 months since I started on this kit, I have now completed the construction phase and I'm now ready to cover the plane. This week I managed to find a spare couple of hours to shape the nose block, glue in the undercarriage wire and do some final sanding..

Miss Canada Senior, Fuselage Part 2

I was able to grab several hours of free time this weekend to finish the construction phase of the fuselage of the Miss Canada Senior.    All I need to do now sand the fuselage down and add in the undercarriage and shape the nose block, then it will be time to cover it.

 The 3/32" sheet balsa fillets to the nose were surprisingly accurately printed and they fitted perfectly first go.  Normally I need to tweak these with a small amount of sanding, but this kit was spot on.

To ensure I had a rigid box fuselage, I constructed rectangular frames in the under-wing sections to give me a near perfect square frame to start with. The rest of the frame was constructed with carefully cut 1/8" cross pieces and some temporary scaffolding to hold the frame square during the drying process.  The final box frame turned out warp free, which was a relief.