Dark Cold Days

not my idea of fun! so i tend to stay away from the field during the winter, instead ill get a little protect on the go.

this winter its a Dancing Wings version of the legendary De havilland Tiger Moth.

Its almost ready for its maiden flight (wont that be fun), over all it dont look too bad, iv never been much of a quality plane builder but this kit by Dancing Wings has much to be desired (even by my standards), the kit is designed to work with either electric or nitro, i went for the nitro option. i acquired a used 61 size 4 stroke Magnum engine that after a service and setup seems to run ok and has more than enough power for this model. i have had to modify several parts on the kit as it seemed some parts where positioned wrongly or i just felt they where sub standard. i have also made the wings removable as it seems that the original design is to have them fixed permanently (this is no good for my needs for both transport and storage) each wing panel now comes off individually and when fitted to the plane has carbon braces and thumb bolts to secure in place. i have also moved the position of the tail servos, they now are inverted and a hatch fitted to the bottom of the fuselage for easy entry. i have added additional webbing to the wing panels (just for a little extra strength). i also added extra balsa to the leading edge of each wing panel as i was using 2 colours of covering and the single length of carbon tube was never going to be enough for the covering to stick to. The under carriage was a little twisted and un-true, i also had to bind each join with wire as they where very poorly welded and actually broke whilst i was running up the engine on the ground.

Overall, its a cheap model kit but it really does need some thought before throwing it together ( remember, throwing models together is what and how i do it, but i wouldn’t have dreamed of putting this thing in the air as it was originally intended), the instructions are poor, Very Poor, i had a couple of bits of shaped wood left over that for the life of me i could not work out where they where supposed to go, you have to really think about some of the construction. i guess for the cost of the model the engine and the covering (lets ignore the mods cost for now and the radio that i already had) its a couple of hundred quid to make this thing fly, so its a cheap model and it shows, but the proof is in the pudding as they say so keep checking back to see just how well it does, or even if it does actually fly!

The Pilot

I 3D Printed using a Creality resin printer with clear water washable resin, the .stl file was acquired from Thingyverse and i scaled it to fit in the model