The front half of the fus is built over the plan, glued and clamped as per instructions all straight forward and the parts fit together well. The engine has all ready been purchased a Laser 150 4 stroke, a beautiful piece of British engineering. The engine bearer spacing and tank height have already been calculated.

Back of fus built over the plan.

The makeup of light ply spruce and balsa ensures a very robust structure the quality of the kit is superb, non of the parts are warped and all fit together fine. I use Tightbond ll for the majority of the construction and epoxy for high stress areas.

Having built the front and rear fuselage halves the next step is to glue them together.

There are many steps to building an aircraft like this and some of them need a lot of attention and setting up to get right, a lot of steps if you get it slightly out, you can get round it in some way or another. This is not one of those! A lot of time needs to be taken to ensure that everything is straight and in line, you defiantly don’t want a bent fuselage just eyeing it up isn’t accurate enough for me, so I used lasers set up in the workshop,1 down the main longeron and one down the center line.

Once I was certain all was correct, it was joined with slow setting epoxy and clamped, a second check was made for alignment, and when I was happy, thin Cyno was applied in small areas to hold everything in place while the epoxy cured.

Ok so I had a go at making some catches for the working luggage compartment. I looked all over the internet for ¼ scale over center catches with no luck, so I had a go at making my own out of

Brass sheet and piano wire, with some success to get the pattern I found one and flattened it out, drew round it and then reduced the drawing on a photocopier, the only problem was the original was a little too small as was pointed out to me by Richard a man who has done a wonderful build thread on the RCMF website ( I will add the link to my Links page)

These are a few photos of my first attempt.

Turtle deck fitted and luggage compartment made, the door is aluminum and I have made some new catches.

Once the fuselage was completed I set upon the cowl, the glass fibre one is excellent, but I wanted to have a go at an Aluminium one.

The front part would be really hard to replicate, so I parted it from the rest and made two hinged doors and a top out of Ally. This is not Litho plate as this wouldn’t be strong enough, I think its about 1.5-2 mm thick.

The doors were then hinged with piano hinge from a dolls house supplier and tiny model engineering rivets the air scoop was fabricated and fitted using the same method.

Now for the hatch fasteners.

I wanted these to replicate the full size, so they are spring loaded and hold the hatches closed under spring pressure, it took a couple of goes but I am happy with the result.

Started on the office.

Completed port side rear

Port side front

This is one of the instrument panels from Inzpan, built up from the kit,

Painted and weathered.

The undercarriage has been finished and wrapped in Litho plate, with rivets impressions pressed in.

Covering started ! This is a long job, nylon and dope.

for inspection patches.

A little work on the lathe to make the venturi tube for the side of the fuselage.

This is an example of a real one, the numbers were always in white or yellow background.