Scratch Building a Mercury Marlin

Finally, after a long and fiddly business cutting slots in the ribs for the control wires, and drilling the tips for leadout tubes, the wing is at last all in one piece. If there is a "next time", I'll slot the ribs before I build the wing! The tail plane and elevator went together without any trouble. I offered the wing up to the fuselage, fortunately it looks as though it'll fit without any adjustments

Here's the Elfin 1.8 just as it was in the box of "bits" I was given. The compression is good and it turns over freely. Unfortunately the exterior appearance is marred by assorted marks from plumbers wrenches and suchlike vandalism. The prop has a "frog" label on the back face, it claims to be a "nylon airscrew". I think it might have been intended to be crash proof, I remember nylon props, but I don't remember them being as flexible as this one. Perhaps its a function of age, if so, I wonder why I'm so stiff these days?

Planking gives the model a strong, light structure. I was surprised how easy it has turned out to be. Using aliphatic resin is clean, but I do miss the smell of Britfix 66. However, its nice to have clean fingers without sitting for ages and nibbling at bits of dried balsa cement.

Hull planking looking rather neat. Where does the mast go?

Phil, I can't tell you as there may be those of tender years reading this .

Control line circle? Boating lake? Mercury Marlin the model that has it all.
Viking theme by kind permission of Knudssen Thorssen Larssen.