Still working on the horizontal tail surfaces, takes a lot of steps, but all goes well. Got a fantastic tip from a fellow club member regarding sheeting: use Bison Tix! It’s a contact glue, applied on both sides and you can just press the sheets on after a 10 minute wait. No clamping, no curing time. It really works like a charm, way better than other glue types! Especially since it can be difficult to clamp the sheets in place to hold them while the glue cures when using Aliphatic Resin (my preferred glue for all other purposes when working with balsa). You could use CA, but I absolutely hate it.. doesn’t really grab well on the porous balsa sheets, while it does an excellent job gluing my fingers to my workpiece all the f***ing time.

Here’s the top of the stabilizer sheeted:

Prepared some more sheeting for the tail surfaces (including fin):

…and with the elevators sheeted too it’s starting to look pretty nice. Funny fact: with its 60 cm span it’s as big as the main wing of the smallest plane I’ve flown:

After a few more nights searching and labeling I’m ready with all 304 items that came out of the box. Having everything neatly organised, I do not have to search anymore while building:

Couldn’t resist making a little kick start on this project:

This weekend I converted my workshop so I could start building the Thunderbolt! I created a worktable from a completely flat interior door (easy, cheap and large), added extra light sources and cleaned up the mess from the Paradox build. This is my new worktable with the plans unfolded (still too large for my table):

Then, I unboxed all parts.. a pretty impressive stack of balsa I must say. The cowl (yes that’s only one half of it) also gives away the size of the plane:

I already spent one evening removing die-cut parts from the balsa and ply sheets, finding out where they go, marking them with the source sheet number and part names and finally removing them, sorting them in different stacks for the fuselage, stabilizer, fin, wings and cowl:

I think I need one or two nights more to figure everything out, before I’m ready to actually start building.

I did not post anything about this project lately, although I did receive the kit shortly after my last post. The reason for this is that I need to finish my current bass build first, before starting this project. I definitely want to start (and finish?) this winter, but if I leave my bass in the corner of the shop unfinished, I’ll probably never finish it… I’ll keep you posted!

Since I started flying radio controlled airplanes again this year, I couldn’t resist thinking about a new build project I’ve always dreamed of: a scale WWII fighter. I built several sport and sailplanes in the past, but never did anything near scale… so it’ll be a lot of first times (retracts, flaps, sheeting, scale details) and thus a bit of a challenge. But that’s a good thing!

The first problem I came across was selecting a scale subject. It seemed a lot harder than I thought, so I made a list of requirements:

• Of course, it should be a scale model. Not sport scale or stand off scale, but half to true scale (without getting carried away).
• It should be a propeller driven model.
• It could have multiple engines, but preferably no more than two.
• It should have slow flying capabilities (so no high speed model); moderately fast flying would be considered a bonus.
• It should have a span between 50″ and 70″, large enough for ease of flying and scale likeness, but reasonable to transport.
• It should have flaps. Rather plain or slotted flaps than split flaps (used a lot on WW II planes but less ideal). Fowler flaps would be great, but more difficult to construct.
• It should have retractable gear.
• A low or mid wing configuration would be prefered above a high wing configuration.
• The original aircraft has to be a succes in some way. It has to fly well in a certain envelope.
• And last but not least: it should be a less common subject. So this definitely rules out a Spitfire and a Mustang! Doesn’t have to be rare, but I just don’t like to have a plane everyone else has too.

So, this made things a little easier because I could narrow my selection. I spent a few months browsing the Internet, aviation sites and libraries and flew as much models as I could find for my simulator (RealFlight 6). I thought about scratch building for a while, but I’d rather stick to a kit since this takes considerably less time to construct, teaches me some common practices and construction techniques and produces proven flight characteristics; I consider scratch building my ultimate goal but a bridge to far as for now. Having to select a kit narrows the selection down further, because the kit market isn’t as large as it used to be.

There aren’t a lot of .60-size scale kits on the market. Most kits from the USA are AMA legal (80″+ wingspan) and too big for me. Other manufacturers only produce sport kits. It came down to either a Top Flite kit or a short kit from Tony Nijhuis. The Spitfire isn’t an easy flier with its elliptical wing, and too common too. Same goes more or less for the Mustang. I liked the Harvard best from Tony Nijhuis and the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt from Top Flite. Other options, but less attractive to me, were the TF Mentor (too big and heavy) or Corsair (not a personal favorite) and the Hurricane from Nijhuis.

After a long time of pondering, I decided to go for the Thunderbolt! Reviews call it a warbird that flies like a sport model, which is right up my alley, I guess. Experience experts say it builds and flies easier than the Mustang and its slow flying capabilities are great. I’m really looking forward to build this plane, so I placed my other today!