Cliff Bastow

I have been lucky enough to be gifted this by a member who damaged it on its maiden and could not be bothered to repair it! The white areas are where I have started repairs.

I wish I still had my constellation.

Lovely model, always one of my favourite aircraft.

I am also building one of these at the moment. Mine will be electric using the set up as advised by 4 max. here is progress to date.

Slightly off topic but I am practicing for my B at the min and though I am an experienced flyer I have noticed I have a definite one way itis. I am much happier flying any manoeuvre right to left rather than left to right including inverted.

A couple of pics of my Arrows T33 taken by clubmate Garry who is a professional photographer.

Test flew this on Saturday, Well it flew but it was very twitchy in pitch! I flew one very up and down circuit and managed to pull of a reasonable landing but did break one motor mounting. I think the cg needs to come more forward and I will maybe reduce elevator rates also. I am a bit concerned about adding any more nose weight as I do not want to make it too heavy but there is not much room inside to maove anything further forwards. Hopefully as it was designed for heavy brushed motors and Nicads it will stand a bit more weight.

I have several bellylanders, both tractor and pusher and have never had a problem. I think that unless the speedcontroller brake is on the prop just flicks the motor round a bit.

Had a great day today at my local club. Had the first flights with my new Arrows T33. What a sweet little flyer it turned out to be. Love it!

I will be there on the Saturday, hoping for good weather!

Here is progress to date. Not the easiest kit I have ever built but looks good when built. I am really struggling to get the cg right with lots of nose weight in the removable nose cone. As you can see I have everything as far forwards as possible including the receiver hanging half off the battery tray. Just hoping that as it was designed for heavy brushed motors and Nicads it will cope with the weight!

You are all correct, I should have posted up aileron, my mistake. Yes you do have to fly it fast, you can slow it down if straight and level into wind but power up before turning. It’s not as bad as it’s reputation, you just have to be careful.

This is looking amazing Dave, I can not wait to see this in the the flesh at the the field, Cheers Cliff.

After a good few flights now I have to say that its not half as bad as I expected, I have quite a bit of aileron differential set. Also I have both ailerons set a couple of degrees down when at neutral to try to help with tip stalling. As long as you do not slow it up too much and do not overbank it flies fine. It is a heavy bomber after all! If you do stall it the stall is nasty! I think for the money its good and looks great in the sky so overall I am more than happy.

Thanks for the warning Flying Squirel, I have checked and it looks like I have not signed up for prime. Many thanks.

I have just done a quick test on various servos I have and they seem fine, nice firm connection but not so much that they are too hard to disconnect. I put the plug of one of them in the vice and gave the cables a firm pull and the crimped connections were fine, no tendency to pull away with quite a firm steady pull.

I ordered a pack of these on Thursday with free postage as it was my first order from Amazon. They arrived Friday and on first inspection the quality looks good. I will post again when I have trial fitted them in my Whirlwind build.

Here is progress to date, Its not the easiest kit I have ever built. The Tailplane to fin mounting is quite fiddly to assemble and there is not much room to work. The elevator is worked by a snake which goes through quite a sharp bend which I did not like so I tried to fit a servo in the fin but there just was not enough room. Also I was worried about tail weight as the model has quite a long moment arm, so in the end I went with the snake and it seems to work fine. I found the plastic mouldings hard to get both sides aligned correctly on the nacelles but they worked out in the end with lots of trimming and sanding. The top of the fuselage is a one piece moulding and I could not get it aligned around the fin so I ended up cutting it just in front of the fin and then cutting the rear portion in half lengthwise and fitting each around the fin separately. Looking at it I think I should have thinned the fin halves more but it will have to do now!

First impressions on opening the kit today? Nicely cut and sheeted foam wings, Good mouldings for the cockpit, fuselage top and engine nacelles and the wood parts are nicely cut and seem accurate. On the down side the fuselage is slab sided and flat bottomed which is a real shame. Sport scale I would say. I think it looks a straightforward build and will look good in the air.

There are a couple of Whirlwind blogs on here at the moment. It has always been one of my favourite aircraft and for Xmas my wife bought me this.

Rip Johnny, What you and your comrades did was inspirational. The way Bomber command was treated after the war was shameful. Not many of this special generation left now but we must remember them.

Men never grow up Paul, they just get bigger and more expensive toys!

Relics from my childhood!

Trust me its only tidy because it has just been finished, it will not be like this in a couple of months!

Its a converted single garage Tim.