A final farewell to my Me109e, it has been a long time since I put it together, in fact 15 years. It has done a few airshows in it's time, the first one was at Kingston Lacy House 2012. Then later on at Ferndown Fete on the Field. Originally it was powered by ASP120 FS and which pulled it well with the high torque of four strokes and quite reliable. The only problem was that the maker YT (Imported by CML) had decided or not bothered with fitting flaps. This made landing quite interesting as Jon Tappin found out a few times at the airshows. The fuselage was fibreglass and was designed to fit only glow engines. No top hatch for battery insertion. The flap-less, fully sheeted wing was lightly built which over the years gave me headaches when the retract mounts break/fall out. Then came a point when I was fed up of clean off glow fuel at the end of the day so decided to fit a DLE20.
This was a bit of project as I had to open up the firewall centre hole to allow for the carb to fit though. The one thing that was good though is that the engine mounts which I used are aluminium with long slots so the new DLE20 sat on the rails just like the ASP120 had. Therefore easy to set up for cowl and prop driver clearance. The second internal former had to be modified so a gas tank (the original glow tank but modified with petrol suitable bung and fuel lines) could sit further back and leave space to "squash" squeeze the ignition unit and a 2000 mah NiMh the latter for the ignition. The 109 flew in this set up for a few years but kept randomly dead-sticking which meant another belly in to the crop next door. Yet on recovery it restarted straight away. After had enough of this monkey business out came the DLE and fitted another 120 FS. So reverse order of the previous paragraph.
During the removal of the DLE I discovered that the ignition battery pins in the plug were loose which I can only come to the conclusion this was the problem of dead-sticking. Again the 109 flew reliably although only on suitable days where there was a head wind to help slower landing - uses all the runway! With weather deciding on flying or not and idle hands I decided early in 2025 to modify the wing and make up some flaps and mounts for flap servos. Not that simple as the wing frame was never built to take flaps so the trailing edge was very thin. However after beefing up edge and nearly a week passes it now had flaps operating. Now with some wing covering having been replaced which was gloss Oracover grey, I then wire-wooled the surfaces cleaned up with alcohol and primed wing with primer grey. Followed by a "battleship" grey matt spray and then matt lacquer. What Next? Everything I touched seemed oily. Now we have flaps lets go the whole hog and refit the DLE20.
So as per the earlier paragraph (No 2) reverse order again along with required mods. The me109 was flying again and no dead-sticks. It was fun again. Then on the most gentle landing one retract broke out of the wing. Grr! These are not fun to repair and is easier to remake a new mount but the worst thing to do is getting the angle right when it is fitted to the wing because the ME109 have an odd stance therefore I had to think of two angles, because if not correct the gear wheels will not drop into the bays and/or the wheels will be too far forward or too far back. Another week passes, weather looking good so up to the field for a few flights. Two excellent flights and then on the 2nd greased landing the other retract broke out. Bah! I give up. The model is tired and so am I....
Do I need another Axis aircraft. Yes. So now the Me109 has been stripped of all useful parts and end up at the recycling centre. The engine which is new will have a new home. In the FW190 that is presently in it's box in the hangar - just waiting for some space in the conservatory to start on it.
