The 'DogFighters' Club

[M.]

Greetings, noble members of this fine forum!

My name is Martin and I have been given the exciting opportunity of working together with Richard Hughes on a new range of warbirds- the DogFighters. You may know Richard from his presence on the show scene and may even have seen some of our prototypes hanging up in the tent! You may even have seen a beardy fellow in his 20’s excitedly showing off prototypes (that would be me). As a younger aeromodeller who has been building and flying under his father for close to 16 years now, this is such an exciting opportunity to see a side of our hobby not often seen and an opportunity keep improving my own skills when it comes to building and flying.

So, what are these DogFighters, you may ask? Well, I believe Richard puts it best:

“I first had the idea about 16 years ago. As an 84” sport model, my Eurobats, have always been very popular and I have to say that they are still, in my opinion, one of the very best flying models I have ever come across; they are aerobatic, yet forgiving and could be used from training and learning to flying right the way through to show performances.

Everyone who has flown them seems to love them and the only remotely negative comment we had about them was that they didn’t look like any particular “real” aircraft. This gave me the idea of doing a “scale” looking version that would look like a war bird but would fly with the same characteristics of a brilliant sport model like the Eurobat. The first one I created was an ME109 which fulfilled all my hopes – looked great and flew superbly. After that I got really busy with the business and had to put the project on the back burner.

Right now I believe it’s is an idea whose time has come. Several factors seem to have come together at once. The foamy craze seems to have reached a peak, with a lot of real modellers hankering after real planes to build. Don't get me wrong, I think foamies are great fun and they do have their place in this Hobby, but for me, building the models was always half the enjoyment of this wonderful hobby of ours.
Many people talk to me about the sadness they feel that so many younger modellers nowadays have never experienced the joy of building a plane, of creating your very own masterpiece from bits of wood, and the tremendous sense of fulfilment that that brings.

This is also one of the prime objectives of this project. It may sound very grandiose, but I see a large part of this mission is to get more people building, show them how easy it is to build a model rather than just opening the box and pulling out a ready to fly plane. I want to work with organisations such as the BMFA and the LMA and also with clubs to try and encourage people back to the building board!

The easy to build format has been one of the main driving factors in the design of the dogfighters. The structure has been created to be super easy to build, without the need for any special tools or jigs or other accessories. I wanted to create a kit that can be built by literally anybody, and I mean anybody!! So to prove this we intend to give a kit to somebody who has never even seen a model being built, and with just the instructions as supplied to see if they can build it from start to finish. Talk about setting your sights high! I like a challenge though.”

We have been active on our Facebook group, ‘The DogFighters Club’, showing how the prototypes were developing, building and flying. We are very proud to be able to tell you that the first aircraft in our range is ready for kit production. Yes, it is the nation’s dearly beloved- the Spitfire. The two available sizes are 68” wingspan (for engines up to 20cc) and 84” wingspan (for engines 30-50cc). Having built and flown the prototypes personally, I am incredibly pleased by our results. We have ended up with a quick and relatively easy build that behaves impeccably in the air and on the ground.

For more info on the project please send us an email on: [email protected] or find us on our Facebook group, ‘The DogFighters Club’. We fully appreciate that not everybody will be on social media, so I thought we would introduce ourselves on this forum!

We also have a YouTube channel where we try to upload as much as we can- feel free to check it out for build time lapses and videos of prototypes flying!

I firmly believe in this project and the vision that Richard has for it. His kit cutting and designing is second to none and I have seen for myself the effort that he puts into EVERY one of his kits. Who says that the future of aeromodelling can’t touch upon its roots?

Many happy landings,

Martin

[Tom Major]

Nice project, gonna follow with interest.

Good luck!

 

Edited By Tom Major on 15/12/2017 22:28:07

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Interesting Martin. had a browse on f/b site.

[Ian Moody]

Excellent idea. Look forward to seeing the Me109.

[Ace]

"WoW" skeleton airframe in 3 hours- even if it took a day is quick - like it

[AndyD]

looking forward to these

[Ron Gray]

I saw these and spoke to the guys at the Nats, they do look really good and well thought out. I’m waiting for them to bring out a Tigercat or Whirlwind.

[Jon Laughton]

Look great - is there another group other than on Facebook?

[M.]

Morning all!

@Ian Moody: The 109 is already drawn up- it's currently in the prototyping process, so keep your eyes peeled for more info on that soon. Not too long now for that kit to get released! We're actually quite looking forward to chasing our Spit across our flying field!

@Ace: I agree! Think of the kit like a big laserply jigsaw puzzle. The red Spit you see in the videos took a week of work to get in the air! Really the most time-consuming part of the build is the sheeting.

@Ron Gray: The Tigercat is high up on our list (to be honest, we're big fans of the Tigercat too), so you're likely to see one sooner rather than later!

@Jon Laughton: Not yet, I'm afraid! We're working on getting a seperate website set up at the moment, but I'll be sure to let this forum know of any developments from our end!

All the best,

Martin

[Ron Gray]

Great news, thanks.

[Bob H]

Sounds great. Cannot see a plan on the build video. Will there be any build instructions ?

[M.]

@Bob H: Yes, there will be a step-by-step instruction manual with pictures. As the entire build is self-jigging, there’s no plan needed!

[Bob H]

Thanks Martin, will look forward to the kit. Regards. Bob

[Christopher Long 1]

I couldn't help noticing that there seems to be a change in the wing design, in the build part of the video the rear of the inner wing ribs show a taper down to the trailing edge (circled in red in the first photo),

but in the 'finished' skeleton view below (again circled in red) the tapered ends of the ribs seem to have disappeared and a vertical strip added instead. I assume that a 'shaped' trailing edge will be added to this before the wing is sheeted?

I am just curious as to which solution will be the final one.

[David P Williams]

Probably got fed up of knocking those fine points off, as I always do on that type of thing.

[M.]

@Christopher Long 1: The sweeping shot on the table is actually a seperate prototype (the one we had hanging up in the show tent) to the one being built in the other video.This was done because by the time it came to shooting some sweeping shots, I had already been busy sheeting! The tapered ends of the ribs stay in the final version. The vertical strip for the back of the flap, simply slots in underneath the tapered ends- there should be fairly little chance of knocking these off as the next step directly after adding the vertical flap strip is sheeting the top of the wing.

In the same vein of pointing out prototype differences, you will notice that the retract position has changed too, to the one you will see in the flight video, as we weren't happy with the initial position. The final position is actually incredibly near to scale, but with a tiny bit of widening to ensure good ground handling.