Spitfire Maiden flight in Sweden

[TomasS]

100% successful maiden flight, good flight characteristics and an incredibly soft first landing.

[WangoTango]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKAY................... Ya wanna enlighten us and let us know what kind of Spit this is, motor, size?
WT

[Flyfalcons]

Nice-looking plane, Tomas. I think this Fall is going to be the time for me to finally get to work on recreating my grandfather's plane. Researching available kits right now.

[WangoTango]

I wrote an article about one of our club members making a Spitfire model to honor a RAF pilot his mother was involved with during WWII. I'll see if I can copy and paste..... Here ya go:


Mike Walker's 1/4 scale Spitfire
by Terry Foote
(From the Tri-County Barnstormer's newsletter, May 2009)
Greetings from the secret Mike Walker airplane dungeon! I'm going to attempt to relay this story from memory.... I'll probably get it wrong and if I do, my apologies to Mike's Mom!

She's a lovely lady and like a lot of folks that lived through WWII, probably has a bunch of stories to tell about that part of her life. Apparently, as most people do, she had a "love of her life" type person back during the war. It's my understanding that his name was Frank Waller. We'll spice this up a tad.... Frank was this dashing RAF fighter pilot that went out on a daily basis and did battle with the Luftwaffe in his early MK I Spitfire. (That alone makes him dashing.) Think about it..... Let's go into a four hundred mile per hour dive on the tail of a FW-190, guns blazing, in a tiny, high powered crate made of tube steel and plywood. See. I told you Frank was dashing! Well, day after day can take a toll on a Spitfire jock. There were lots of great German aces during WWII and these young Brits really took the battle to the Germans in their Spitfires. Somewhere in my archives I have a picture of Frank standing in front of his trusty mount. The plane seemed to look old and patched but make no mistake, it was battle worthy and had the bullet patches to prove it.
As I said before, the Germans made raid after raid on England and on December 14, 1939 about 80 miles North of London Frank met his demise at the hands of a German pilot. Over the years Mike had it in his mind that he would re-create the old Mk I Spit to honor Frank as well as his Mom.

It started a couple of years ago when Mike ordered a Mick Reeves 1/4 scale Spitfire kit. One thing lead to another and stuff like 500 dollar retracts, high dollar servos, hundreds of square feet of balsa, high dollar wheels, etc. started making their way to final assembly in the man cave Mike likes to call his airplane dungeon. (Not a really bad place, what with the TV, fridge, vast assortment of tools, etc.)

Oh yeah....... It ain't exactly a Spit unless you have gobs of horsepower so he brandished his credit card one more time and thrilled the guys out at Desert Aircraft by getting a new DA-85 to power the beast. The cast of Barnstormer characters that worked on the Spitfire was long and distinguished. Mike, Doug Cockerham, Gordon Putnam, Hugh Brown, Terry and Kyle Foote, Ronnie Rushing and legions of others fought bad weather, wives that needed stuff done around the house and a whole host of adversity to get it where it is today.

The airframe is nearly ready for glassing and painting. The DA-85 has a custom made exhaust that Mike welded up for it out of aluminum. The moveable surfaces are covered in Coverite fabric. It's projected weight is somewhere in the neighborhood of 38-40 pounds. Real light considering there are nearly a trillion square inches of wing area! It measures 111 inches in the wingspan department and stretches 95 inches from the front of the spinner to the rear of the rudder. There are nine Hitec digital servos on board, ensuring that Mike and his family will be able to afford to eat regularly sometime after Labor Day. We found his missing pet cat tangled in a box of fiberglass cloth yesterday...... I guess after we feed it, we'll start a glassing party to cover the acres of well sanded balsa sheeting. The pictures don't do it justice folks..... It's just plain huge! Mike hopes to display it unfinished at our Big Bird event.

I'm sure once the Spit is finished, we'll all retire to the airplane dungeon to sign our names under the tail and talk of the wonderful maiden flight we had with it...... Spitfire to Tower,
Over and Out!
(Fair Skies and a good tailwind, Frank)

(Guys........ I'll have to dig up the pictures and do a separate attachment here in a bit. I'm having a computer issue right now...... It doesn't seem to want to do what I want but I'm cocking my 1911 and pointing it at the monitor and for some unknown reason, the pics are now wanting to upload..... very slowly but at least the computer is agreeing with me right now. Speed up you sumbitch or I'll blow yer diodes out yer backside!)
WT

[WangoTango]

Pictures of Mike Walker's Spit......

[TomasS]

Hello
The model is a Kyosho Spitfire 90 with a Saito 125. I have put in some extra hours on the details; the only thing missing now is nicer hatches to the landing gear. She flies wonderfully, as a trainer if you wish, with dignity as a Spit if you want and you can try a little IMAC if you want.
I´m totally impress by this ARF..

I´m a happy man, two successfully maiden flights in two days. My Spit and my Pilot-Rc Yak with a MT-57. Both with brilliant flying characteristics.

Sorry for my bad English, it is many, many years since I went to school

[WangoTango]

	Quote: Originally Posted by TomasS
	Sorry for my bad English, it is many, many years since I went to school

Tomas,
Your English is a little off but you speak "Model Airplane" very well! Nice Spitfire and congrats on the maiden!
WT

[Flyfalcons]

Thanks for the information, Tomas. Your English is a lot better than my Swedish!

[Flyfalcons]

That's a great story, Wango. Really similar to what I'm hoping to do very soon, and yes I'm looking very seriously at the Mick Reeves and also waiting on Comp-ARF to announce their Spitfire. I've been researching my grandfather's squadron, and I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when I visited England last fall and found a Spitfire Vb in his squadron's colors sitting at the RAF museum! I still need to go through his logbooks to see if he had flown that serial # (it did fly with his squadron for a time), and if not, whether he flew the Vb or IX, or possibly both. I'm not a huge warbird guy, but have wanted to do this for a while, and finally have the time and means to make it a very special project.

[WangoTango]

Ryan,
If you wind up ordering from Mick Reeves, make sure you specify that you want BALSA tail feathers. When Mike got his kit there were 1/8" ply stab/elevator and vertical fin/rudder pieces. When Mike put them together the assemblies weighed a couple of pounds! Mike called him overseas, I grabbed the phone from him and asked Mick what was up with the lead tailfeathers on this Spit. He told me there was a shortage of good balsa at the time..... Well he graciously sent a whole set of tail feathers at no charge and this is what got glued in place. We kept the assembled old ones to hang on the wall for a good laugh! (The wall is now warping under the weight! LOL!) Overall the kit is really nice. Everything fits well. Mike bought the retracts as well. The spinner is big and nice as well. Mick is quite the gentleman and will take good care of you also. Stay in touch. I'll get some pics of the old MK I and send them to you for reference.
WT

[K-5054]

A beautiful aeroplane, nice pictures, well done