Bill Frost

OK, well here we are! Interesting that until Allan just now, there'd been no other postings on this thread since my flight pictures from April 2014 - I was quite surprised when I saw that. A small claim to fame, perhaps? Anyway, the aircraft still flies, although not as often as I'd like, for relevant reasons I'll describe below. Hi Allan, good luck. In response to your queries. Nose-weight - I can't remember the details now, but - we are flying our electric on one half of an F3a 10 cell, ie a 5 cell pack because of availability. It was always planned that way. I've got that up as far forward as possible (ie just clearing the back end of the motor's shaft, so that doesn't drill into the battery). My building techniques were very basic, so I'm sure I built everything heavy, including the back end, hence still needing more nose weight. From memory and for redundancy, I used two separate receiver batteries one for radio/servos, the other for retracts and landing lights. Those two batteries are strapped to top and bottom of the motor mount (ie inside the cowl), so that helps. Think I still had to add a little lead. Result - its a heavy model, Because of the taper, the inside of the cowl isn't very spacious. Our airfield uses a tarmac runway (you can see it in one of the pix), not a square patch. Therefore you have to cope with whatever the wind direction is, ie crosswinds etc. Because of its weight, unless there's a stiff-ish headwind coming straight down the runway to land in, its a very fast landing event, with little margin for error. For that reason, if I was building again, yes I'd definitely go for flaps, so at least there's that option too, although obviously I don't know if they'd be effective and how much they'd reduce aileron authority etc. Yes, photos from Shuttleworth/Old Warden will show you the amount they can droop. For that combination of reasons (chiefly the need for stiffish breeze straight down the runway, combining with availability etc), it doesn't fly often. The fast landing speed tends to show up the lack of sturdiness of the landing gear due to the retracts - I'm always bothered that during landing, the struts could rotate in their sockets in the retract units, with cartwheel results on hard tarmac..... The other design mod that I would definitely do now, but didn't have the experience to do at the time, would be to make the main flight battery accessible without having to take the wing off - ie a fuselage hatch, but obviously extra strengthening would be needed as the hatch would be quite large in the Fus top. Enough for now, but feel free to ask. I'm currently slowly building a 72" wingspan Stuka - partly chosen because it has a longer nose, for balance! Kind Regards, Bill

I've now received the scanned pages from Ton - he's a real star!!!! So, I've now got the Plans, I've got the accompanying Article, I've read Andy's magnificent Build Thread above, so I'd better get on with it and order the wood..... However, at my usual slow rate of building progress (see the TN Hurricane which took me 5 years), don't expect me to build anything too quickly ....... Cheers, Bill

OK, the accompanying Build Articles are apparently in "RC Scale Quarterly" October/November 1990 (per a posting by Dave S on 12/1/09, confirmed by |Graham Ashby. I'm still looking for a copy, can anyone help me please???????? Thanks Bill

Right, here should be some photos:- Bill

I realize that I never posted a final update on my build of it (it was a really long project, on and off over several years!). Towards the end of my build, my earlier concerns about its weight resurfaced - sure enough, it needed a lot of nose weight added (I'd got the 5cell flight battery as far forward as possible, as well as a separate receiver battery and separate Retracts/lights battery also). It finally had its first flight at the end of last November - see photos below [I'll post them separately from this, once I've found them again], at least one of which does show that the retracts work! Interestingly, despite its weight, it didn't appear to have any really nasty tip-stall tendencies. At the time of writing this, its since been waiting for the right conditions to fly again, with working landing lights and a 3 blade prop that's nearer to scale. Then if that's successful I'll treat it to a spinner also! Overall, I'm really pleased with it, although I fully recognize that my version is only a simple version (no rivets or panel-lines, for example). Now, if only I could actually fly it myself - my thanks to my son Gordon for doing the honours! Bill

Can anyone point me to the magazine build articles please? I've seen them referred to in the thread above, but haven't managed to find them as yet. Thanks Bill

Hello All,   Its good to see that people are still quietly progressing (as am I) at their own rates. I'm approaching the covering stage, so would also be very interested to learn more generally what methods people have used for their covering, and whether they'd do it again!    Regards,   Bill 

Bill R Hi - what I did (rightly or wrongly) was to sheet the wing laying planks (from fus to wingtip), cutting the centre plank's width down so that my joints lay over the main front and rear spars. I used one sheet per wing half, and didn't enjoy trying to "conform" the sheet so that it stuck down onto all the ribs, both allowing for the curvature front to back and taking account of the dihedral joint as well. I used a mixture of water on the outer surface once in place and weights to hold the sheeting down while it set. I've not yet dared to see how much/many twists I've got in my wing as a result of this "technique"!!I'm sure that veteran builders will be shaking their heads, but that's how I did it. Brian L - interesting idea sticking the sheets together first, hadn't thought of that in time - as the Hurricane wing is a fairly thick section though, I suspect that I'd have had fun trying to then stick it down without breaking the joints I'd made? Regards,Bill

Hello Bill R,Not everyone has finished building, I'd just come in from starting to sand the outer leading edges on the wing when I thought I'd check this thread for developments, as I'd not looked for quite a while! My rate of progress is slow (even slower in the cold wet weather!). I'm building it following the sequence set out in the instructions. If you have a look back through this thread you'll see that I've made a few postings at various stages so far.I too am relatively inexperienced at building, never having built scale before. Many of the stages do seem to pose fresh challenges don't they?  Building the wing seems in particular to have taken longer than I expected, and subjectively I feel that its quite heavy already, that's before covering it!  I also find that, after a lot of stages, you look back at the result and think: "could have done that differently/better!". (Ironically, although I'd not been to Durham before this year, I was down at the end of November - I'm a little further North than you, out to the East of Edinburgh.) Now, back to sanding the leading edge again - a certain amount of balsa dust seems to be being generated! Regards, Bill

Hi Rob and Toni, Thanks for the info - just as well I checked before going ahead then!  Regards,  Bill

Hello All, Another question, as my building of the wing progresses - this demonstrates my ignorance of airframe design principles I'm sure! For the Shear Webbing, which direction should the grain run in, along the wing, or down through the wing from top to bottom surface? I think I've rationalised it to being the former, ie along the wing, but I thought I'd better check. In this half of the Hemisphere, the workshop is suddenly turning colder again!  Thanks, Bill

Hello All, I've another question please, to do with the outer wing sections. W8 is the last former before the inboard end of the aileron, but I seem to have two problems with my W8 (working from the CNC-cut parts):- 1) the precut slot into W8 for the top and bottom main middle spars is about 3mm out of alignment (not far back enough); and 2) there are no precut slots in W8 for the top and bottom rear spars (the 6mm x 3mm ones) - surely there needs to be, because these need to continue beyond W8 and are then locked into the trailing-edge of the aileron-recess (as shown in the small diagram inside the circle).   Or am I completely misunderstanding something here???   Thanks in advance,   Bill

Hi Bryan and Sandy,   Thank you both for your quick replies - so I wasn't imagining a difficulty that wasn't there, that's extremely reassuring to know!   I'm going to try the setup using a normal servo first, to see if its possible, as not having built anything with retracts in it before, funnily enough I don't have a spare retract servo lying around!   Regards from Scotland.   Bill

Hi All,   A question about the Retract servo setup, if I may. I understand that its not to be a Retract Servo (and understand why) But, having had a quick offering-up of a standard servo into the proposed arrangement, which is pointing down through a mounting plate on the top surface of the wing, it looks to me as though the back of the servo will be poking up so high that it will foul all of the bottom member of F3 (there's already a cut-out in it, but it doesn't look nearly big enough. Am I missing something here??   Thanks in advance.   Bill

Bryan,   Well done indeed, looked fantastic, glad to see it performed so well !   It's encouraging to get some evidence at last that the end result more-than justifies the hours involved!   I've nearly finished the construction of the centre wing (just contemplating what extra support to give the retract-bearers just now), so completion is several months away, but this is really good news.   Congratulations also to your cameraman - quite a long sequence to film!   Best wishes,   Bill

Hello All, I've two questions:- 1) I'm just about to start building the Wing - any tips, or suggested modifications e.g Washout, Flaps, ??? 2) Surely by now, several people must have flown them! Feedback please?   Thanks,   Bill

Hello All,   Bryan's last post reminded me of a thought I'd had a little while back now - there's not been many posts so far about how the thing actually flies - based on all the impressive pictures earlier on in this thread, surely there must be some at this stage by now?   Chris - how did you get it to an all up weight of 5lb 12oz  with the CofG in the right place - is yours full plan-sized, or scaled down at all??   Thanks,   Bill

I've two questions about the fin - instructions say "make from 12mm balsa." Firstly, I assume the grain should run vertically, with the full width of the plank used at the rear, with the added-on bit to the front? Secondly, does the drawing show a lightening-triangle removed from the fin near the bottom at the front, or am I misinterpreting this?   Thanks in advance,   Bill

Hi Bryan,   As I've not done so much of this type of stuff before, you might like to see my post on 20/2/09 re the stages of the fuselage that I found the hardest. Also, when starting off glueing the formers onto the side pieces, check accuracy of angles/alignment in every dimension several times (!) before the glue sets - I wished I'd marked the centre lines on the formers to help with that stage!   Hope that helps you.   Bill

Here's a pic of the tailplane under construction:-   Bill