Djay

I have one I built many years ago and still fly. Powered by a Thunder Tiger 90 four stroke it is overpowered and flies around on less than half throttle all day. So easy to fly and very stable. You do have to mix rudder in with the ailerons or use the rudder as the primary turn control, but this is normal for this type of machine. Takes off and lands so easily and very controllable. I balanced mine with quite a bit of nose down attitude and it flies fine. Tank is under the front engine cowl just behind the engine, I use the rectangle SLEC tanks for convenience. I did have the upper wing leading edge break one time as it is only soft round balsa, and one wing half decided to fold up in mid air one day, all I could do was cut the engine and wait patiently for the plane to slowly spiral down and collect the mainly intact plane to take home for repairs. Darryl

Looking for a set of plans for the Hannibal as I have lost mine and need to carry out a few repairs.

painted using spray cans as that is all I can get here. took it for a test flight today whilst awaiting the decals but unfortunately I left the batteries at home so hopefully next week. Front turret is removable and batteries slide in from the front and it balances perfectly.

seem to have lost quite a few pics, so fuse covered in solartex and the wing and tail glassed.

seemed to have lost the pics of wing construction, but being foam had to have access holes in them for the wiring so the foam was cut out and 10mm internal diameter drinking straws recessed in with polyurethane foam and balsa skin.

work progresses on the fuse and the wings

I acquired a Complete a pac kit of the Handley Page Harrow which took my eye on ebay. So as I am still working from home in my workshop / office and have finished the other builds including my Avenger, DH2 and Stuka (awaiting paint) I decided to make a start on this. When it arrived unfortunately it had no wings which were supposed to be in the kit. As they are foam wings Bill Manley from Billkits kindly cut me a set of wings and tailplane parts after I sent him a set of the plans which are still available from the RCME plans suppler. The plans leave a lot to be desired especially as these were drawn up in the 70's and were basically an outline of what is required and took a lot of head scratching to work out how things actually went, especially when it came to the fuselage stringers. Each one had to be individually cut from 3/32 sheet as they are all different depths. Power comes from 2 x tomcat 32 size electric motors with 10x7 3 blade props and 2 4 cell lipo batteries. Wingspan 70 inch. The U/C took some working out as it is fixed gear and attaches to the wing and fuselage so needed to be removable to enable the wing to be taken off. first the fuse, then more will follow Darryl

Hi Cuban8. Just regular spray can paint for cars. I use Rustoleum or Ace Hardwares own brands as that is all I can get so I have to plan my colour schemes to what paint is available to me. There used to be one at North Weald which is where I used to fly. You are right, it is an enormous machine for a single engine. the bottom of the prop was at least 3 meters up from the ground.

you will get frustrated, it starts off with step by step build instructions for the cockpit, then it seems like the build manual author got bored and just skipped bits and just shows the basic build for the rest of the aircraft. The wood will break, the formers will break and especially the wing rib trailing edges as they are all so delicate. So plenty of superglue needed. Plan the tailwheel retract rod in advance before sheeting the fuse, along with pull pull cables for the steering and pushrod outer snakes for the rudder and rudder. I put the flap pushrod to the inners only, not inner and outer, and joined them with a couple of pieces of tubing with wire inside, works well. Plan the fuel tank install in advance as well, I used a SLEC orange tank. Another pain area was the wing bolts, I used T nuts and have hiols in the cockpit floor for them to pass through, with the bottom of the wing belly fairing removable it is easy to install the front and rear bolts. If you need photos or help, just drop me a line.

91 CD is perfect. It is such a light plane with massive wing area even a 60 fs would power it. If you use a 1.20 it will stick out of the cowl, the RCV is mounted upright completely hidden. I have the spring air retracts and Shindin oleos as well, work very well. Glassed it with .75oz cloth as I have an abundance of this, used ploycrilic not epoxy. Poly C over in UK though I get it as Polycrilic floor varnish in our local hardware store. I could only get spray paints and not quite the colours I wanted, no fuel proofer needed if you let it dry for a couple of weeks. All my planes are spray canned and some are over 15 years old with no paint problems from the fuel. It is a difficult build, do you have the white or green box ? Green box is the later kits which are a bit easier to build, the plans are useless as they are only line drawings and do not show where items go. Best thing to do is get bags or small boxes and pop out all the wood bits and label them, then put them in the bags or boxes, as there are a lot of little wood bits all lazer cut and they fall out of the wood sheet so you loose the ID number. Take your time and just improvise if you are struggling, so long as the end result is correct

David. Plan the servo installation carefully, you will have to ignore the plans as the servos are positioned in the fuse wing seat area which has about 5mm clearance between the cockpit floor and the wing skin, so big holes cut in the center section to clear the servos. Also make the belly fairing removable to put the electrics inside, so much easier. So much thinking required, but do not worry about weight, and reinforce everywhere.

decided to test fly it before painting and detailing it, so with a 22x10 2 blade test prop the engine was fired up and it was taxied out, so much thrust from the engine. It took off in about 3 meters at 25% throttle setting and just flew like a big slow trainer, only easier At 25% flap it floated in for landing at walking pace. So now all stripped down ready to paint. VID-20210312-WA0013.mp4 VID-20210312-WA0012.mp4

build continues

more pics

more pics

wing starting

One build I started right at the beginning of lock down a year ago was the Ziroli Stuka. This was going to be a retirement build but decided to do it now. I brought the plans, laser cut short kit, all mouldings, cockpit gear, and engine when I was on holiday in the States in 2006. Wingspan is 100 inch and is a 1 piece wing so converted it to 3 piece for convenience. Stab is 1 meter long. Power is a Zenoha 62 magneto petrol engine with 22 x 10 prop, let the build begin. 3 ft rule on the plan in first pic.

test flight VID-20210312-WA0031.mp4 VID-20210312-WA0030.mp4

more building. Flew beautifully on the test flight.

continuing the build, unfortunately the web site does not let me move the pictures around into the correct order

I am still working from home after a year now, and as my office is in my modelling room I have plenty of time to build. So after building the Baby Boomer, DH2 Airco, Spook 96, and repaired a load of other models I have completed build number 4 out of 6. It is a Skyshark Grumman Avenger. 72 inch span, RCV 91 powered. Unfortunately this was a very early kit and many parts did not fit or were the wrong size. Everything was laser cut but so much wood was cut away that the remaining shapes left were extremely fragile and just kept breaking, especially the ribs and formers. Luckily I had built one of these before so knew what to do to overcome this. Starts with the cockpit.

No view latest threads button. Do not have the patience or time to go through the instructions others have pasted to create one. why not just put one on the site for everyone to use. New look does nothing for me, everything looks to large to get on a page so you have no inclination to scroll through it all. The one thing with the old site was it was different to the others so looked better, Liked the fact you could see most of the content on the opening page of the old site but not this one. Just my say, but going forward we will have to live with it. Darryl

I built one from a plan downloaded from the internet a couple of years ago. Power is an OS 26 four stroke and it flies around on tick over all day. On take off give it full power and it goes up 90 degrees just like the original free flight version. If it is windy it will hover and even fly backwards. I flew it last weekend and one person walking along the runway was moving faster than my plane. I fly it on an old 35mhz set and it is mostly free flight, make turns just using the trim and let it fly by itself. A most enjoyable model. Some build pics in my albums, Darryl

for some reason posted one post 3 times

Ready for test flight here with another lockdown build an ARTF Firebird turbine trainer. Both flew beautifully.