Daren Cogdon

So, what I initially thought was gonna be a bit of a dog to fly has actually turned out really, really good. 85%-sized FT Spitfire, but fitted with the full-sized Spit's power setup (1100Kv motor, 40A ESC, 2200 3S and a 9x5 prop). This one is made entirely from 3mm foam board from Amazon, instead of the more usual 5mm stuff from HobbyCraft. The wing spars are made from balsa instead of folded foam. It's got a decent amount of speed compared to most of the others I've built. I got some video of it but there's no sound, sadly, and most of the time the Spit is a bit of a dot in the sky!

First flight for this one yesterday. After trimming out, she flew really well, and I was brave enough to throw in a couple of loops. This one is an 85%-sized FT Spitfire (36ins wingspan), built with 3mm foam board, with an 1100kv motor up front, a 40A ESC (which I probably didn't need!), and powered by a 2200mAh 3S. Prop is a 9x5 job. She had plenty of speed (most of the flight was done at around 75% throttle). Could only manage one flight, but will definitely look forward to flying it again. Might even build another to make sure it wasn't a fluke!

Well, it's just the usual FT Spitfire that I'm trying to do this with. Nothing spectacular.

So my intention was to build a whole airframe from the stuff. 5mm XPS for the fuselage, wings and tail. I plan on having a balsa spar and at least a bit of stiffening via coffee stirrers for the tailplane.

I purchased a few sheets of blue XPS foam from Amazon, just to see what it would be like to use. It's light but fairly flexible, so just wondering if some kind of covering might be in order to help stiffen it up? Paper or tape or something similar?

I'll give that a look.

NICE!! And very different.

Thanks for that, Martin. Never thought of the Tamiya stuff, so will look into that one.

Can anyone recommend any good spray paints for using with foam board? Ideally I'm looking for camouflage colours as near as you can get to the usual RAF camo colours (dark earth/dark green/sky/medium sea grey etc). I've had some luck with Plastikote for my pink Spitfires, but not sure that they have anything suitable for the other colours.

"Foamy Squadron" - three FT Spitfires (two 100%, one 85%), and a J-wings Spitfire. (There's a fifth out of shot!)

So I dug out this old project the other day - it's made from 5mm foam sheet, with 3ch (E/A/T) control, and was to be powered by a smaller motor I had lying around. The wing was originally a KFM-2. I was toying with make it from the 5mm West Foam board and using a flat-plate wing section instead. For power, I was thinking of using the setup for the Flite Test Mighty Mini Scout (https://www.flitetest.com/articles/ft-mini-scout-build-mighty-minis) Thoughts?

So, I flew FT Spitfire No.4 twice yesterday. A bit more fettling needed, but we got her flying pretty nicely.....

Finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with this one. It's not been a hard build, it's just taken a long time for me to finish it! Since I took these pics, I've added little exhaust stubs made from Depron!

Finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with this one. It's not been a hard build, it's just taken a long time for me to finish it! Since I took these pics, I've added little exhaust stubs made from Depron!

This one flew for the first time last night! Needs a good bit of nose weight (and the spinner might have helped if it hadn't needed to be removed!), but it flew pretty well....