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Priory Models Silhouette


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Mine sadly is no more.

Totalled it a few weks ago. My own fault. I was one mistake to low.

 

 

I shall miss it. I did my first low wing flight with this after the "trainer" phase.

 

As said before is a little on the heavy side and would go better with a .46 up front. I only had a .40.

 

Kev

 

PS The wing is basicly sound if wanted!

Edited By Kevin Fairgrieve on 08/06/2012 19:02:55

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I flew one until I crashed it about 6 years ago - I left spin recovery a yard too low. crook

Mine was initially powered with a ringed Irvine 40, when that wore out changed to the ABC version. I thought that power was about right. It's a pleasant sports areobatic but I thought the controls a tad stodgy. Only bad characteristic was that the nose dropped sharply when rudder was applied. This made stall turns "interesting". I currently have a Ripmax Druine Akrobat that has the same peculiarity. The reason for this was once explained to me as it's a known phenomenon with some full size a/c. Something to do with the rudder interfering with the airflow from the tailplane.

Priory Silhouette Priory Silhouette

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An older chap that I worked with briefly a few years ago gave me one of these. A one time r/c flyer, his eyesight had deteriorated and he'd moved on to trains and boats. When he asked me if I wanted a partially built Silhouette I had no idea what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised when I got it

silhouette

I agree with the other comments above re it being slightly heavy by modern standards. This one will be a flea's whisker under 21oz /sq ft with OS46LA

Original plan was to use a PAW 35

silhouette paw installation

not only does that allow the fully enclosed exhaust arrangement shown above, it gets the wing loading down to c20.4oz per sq / ft, and that wonderful piece of Brit engineering will have - correctly propped - more useable grunt than the OS

However, I don't have a great amount of diesel fuel left and there's no way on this planet I'm paying LMS prices for those small tins of Model Technics stuff. So, I'll fly it with the OS this summer then revert to the PAW when I next get the chance to pick up a couple of large cans of Southern Modelcraft's finest- probably at Much Marcle

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I bought one of these at a show in the early 90s. It built into a nice looking between the wars style plane like those above. My only regret is that I mounted the engine inverted to keep it all in the cowl with a dustbin silencer. The engine never ran reliably inverted and I bent the conrod due to flooding at least once. The end came when I was landing with the engine having gone sick again. A fellow club member with a couldn't care less attitude, baulked me and the engine died as I tried to open up to go round again. Crunch.

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If you turn the engine over a couple of times by hand before attaching the glow battery & applying the starter you would be aware if it's been over-primed.

By doing this an inverted 2 stroke is less likely to suffer hydraulic lock problems than an upright one.

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Funnily enough I just put my Silhouette fuselafe in the bin only yesterday. She originally flew on an Irvine 46, mounted inverted, and was my first low winger. Frightened the life out of me at the time. In later years I converted her to electric, with a Twister 60 and 16xCP2400s on a 12x6" APC-E and she went very well.

A couple of crashes down the line saw the fuselage wing seats damaged and getting heavier with each repair. Then, last week having not flown the model for a couple of years I took out all the gear, broke up the damaged fiselage and binned it.

I've got a new replacement cowl here somewhare if anyone is looking for one.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 10 months later...

Post for Leccyflyer, do you still have that spare cowl for the silhouette? I just stuffed mine into a stone wall, and the cowl ( amongst other things!) is totalled. I have loved this model and so want to bring it back. Woodwork now fixed, but am struggling to find a cowl.

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  • 10 months later...

I built and flew a couple of this model in the early nineties but with each of them, when landing on grass, there was problems with the wing mountings for the undercarriage ripping out.

Does anyone know if that problem has been improved on because I'm thinking of going along for yet another one.

The Silhouette has such a lovely shape and appearance.

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Having only recently returned to the hobby I've never seen these before. There maybe newer models better suited to electric flight but I doubt if any look as good. There's something about that cowl and tail feathers that make it look good. It's certainly inspired some great colour schemes!

Edited By David Pearce 4 on 04/05/2014 09:14:13

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  • 1 year later...

For my Silhouette I used a Twister 60 outrunner and Jeti Advance 40 ESC

on 16xRGP3300 Sub-C Nimh cells and a 13x8 MA wood prop

Performance was pretty good (for the day) and the model was rock solid in the air - not surprising given the weight of those 16 cells.weighing in on the north side of 7lbs. Sadly she succumbed some years later to a barbed wire fence. I do have a spare cowl lying around, but the mothballed damaged model never made the cut for transport up north a few years ago. With lipos you could save a good bit more than a pound from that AUW.

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