Last year in late Summer I had the opportunity to buy a second-hand Nexus Twin Otter. I love these aircraft. As they were out of stock everywhere I grabbed the chance to acquire one. It had been already built by the first owner. I did not look it over too much when I picked it up as I was excited to get hold of one. After getting it home and looking it over, it was a mash up. The motors EDF in runners (flipping heavy too) had been mounted on to the cowls along with some ply wood. The original motor mounts had been hacked to bits to give clearance for the In-runners. The two Turnigy 80amp ESCs were stuck on the underside of the wings and the servo were old Futaba 3003s. The wings had a few cuts and holes and not necessarily hangar rash. The fin and stabiliser had been modded to take apart for transit (I assume). What have I bought? Can I rebuild it and make it flyable?
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- Written by: Phillip Ford
- Category: Projects
Length 1120mm, Wingspan 1800mm,Engine – Saito FA-40a, 4 function RC
The full-size Cub was apparently ‘the 1st light plane ever to have been built literally by the thousands’. An interesting snippet – the American military used it as a trainer and in its green livery it was known as the grasshopper.
In selecting a subject to model, I was looking for something a bit different to my usual ‘sport’ models, something interesting, with easy flying characteristics and hopefully it’d keep me occupied on and off for a while. I alighted on the Cub and started looking for a kit or plans. It seems that virtually every major manufacturer makes an ARTF version and there’s quite a few kits as well but I was drawn to building from plans.
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- Written by: Andrew McWhirter
- Category: Projects
Wots Wot once an electric then a four stroke glow and now - electric again? I have flown this Wot Wot for years after I first acquired it when the model was released. It was then powered and built as per the instructions using an Emax GT 3526 motor which quickly got replaced by a SK3 5045. Running on five cells it was a joy to fly although you had to power it all the way to touchdown, it did not glide and too little airspeed and it would drop like a brick. Two of us found that out quite quickly. Way back though in the last decade I decided it boring as it made virtually no noise.
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- Written by: Phillip Ford
- Category: Projects
When I moved house last year, the old loft needed to be cleared of 32 years of accumulated stuff including of course a hoard of models that had had one too many crashes but at the time seemed too good to throw away and the thought was - who knows, one day I might get round to repairing them. They say you’ve got to be ruthless when a loft is to be cleared and so in short order it all went into the skip. Well I say ‘all’; in amongst the bits I found a tail plane and fin assembly plus a very broken mono wing, two ailerons and the rudiments of a wire undercarriage from a Flair Magnattila.
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- Written by: Andrew McWhirter
- Category: Projects
Scrap Box Challenge
A Lockdown Project. Hopefully by the time this is published, ‘lockdowns’ will be a fading memory. In mid-2020 like a lot of us, I was stuck at home (we weren’t allowed out) and everywhere was shut, including our flying field (I was a member at Sevenoaks & District MAC then) and the model shops. To pass the time, I decided to build a plane from my box of spare and offcut balsa and plywood, plus other bits and pieces I’ve accumulated over the years.
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- Written by: Phillip Ford
- Category: Projects