Fokker D8 (oz3648)

 

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Another beautiful plan by the maestro, Bill Galloway. This one is a delight to build, and a wonderful flyer [main pic, 003-006]. The only things I changed were the wings and nose cone. I chose to build the wings using my preferred truss-style construction, and carved the nose from blue foam rather than build it from balsa. I've made a short video detailing the construction which includes some flight footage, see: https://youtu.be/W7JsaZmsw6g. The spray-painted lozenge camouflage is, perhaps, an aeromodeller's rite of passage, and not to be undertaken lightly! I cut out all the stencils for the five-colour version camo, before discovering that the ship I had chosen to replicate - Stefan Stec's EV - used the four-colour variety... Blue words were heard across the vale, that day! I think I counted about 7,000 cuts - at 0.3mm accuracy - achieved over a couple of weeks. I maintained my concentration by imagining that I was a surgeon, and each cut was a life-threatening action... About fifteen of my patients died. Initial flights were not promising: the plan's three and a half degrees of tailplane incidence proved too much, resulting in uncontrollable upthrust. I carefully unglued the main and axle wings and reduced them to about one degree. The model is now a great flyer. It has a reliable right hand ascent, and exceeds fifty seconds every flight. Thus far, its longest flight is just over a minute, however, it has yet to catch some good air, so there's a much longer flight in its future. The undercarriage is fragile, so this is not a ship for short grass.
Justin Baldwin - 14/08/2022
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