Scratch Building a Mercury Marlin

That's encouraging Colin. I've spent a while wondering whether to carry on or abandon the Marlin project. It was a case of making the right decision. I think I was being too technical in trying to use tapered packing for the trailing edge of the wing. The answer was fairly simple. I re-built the wing upside down, dropped the spar into the slots in the ribs. Seems to have worked alright. If I can manage to avoid shopping/gardening and assorted chores, perhaps I'll build the other wing. Finally, I remember the words of an old flying chum. He reckoned that all models looked OK from a distance of thirty feet. So I'm aiming for a "thirty foot" finish.

Several attempts later and the wings are ready to sand. Formers gluing to the longerons. While the glue dries, I'll saw the front bulkhead , dihedral brace and bellcrank mount.
There isn't a prize for spotting my stupid mistake on the left wing. I'm sure there's a way round it. The stunt tank is about as old as the design of the model.

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.

I was going to say it looked very similar to the Long Ships that I vaguely remember seeing landing, invading, visiting the beaches of the North Eastern coast of the Shetlands a little while ago. I didn't as I thought that I might be stating the obvious.

Dry fitted the wing today. Should've checked earlier. The mounting strips are barely wide enough to allow decent contact with the fuselage. So, off with the original strips/rib caps and fitted wider ones. Planking is finished on the top half of the fuselage, seems that I'll have to assemble the bellcrank, pushrod and leadouts, glue the wing to the fuselage, then complete the planking.