I bought this kit in 1998 shortly after returning from two years of missionary work in Chile, I actually bought a lot of kits in 1998 hoping I'd get to them. Life got in the way: college, marriage, kids, etc., so they all got put away until about 2011 when I remembered I had them. I managed to get a few to fly so I figured it was time to give the big kit a try. My goal was to build it close to Guillows plans but add some extras such as an adjustable nose plug, balsa spinner, sheeted nose, scalloped formers in the fuselage and other things I hadn't tried yet.
Here's the fuselage, I had to laminate a few sheets of 1/16" balsa on the front because I somehow got the angle wrong on the first former but I fixed it by sanding down the laminations (you can see grain change directions near the bottom of the nose in this photo) This weighed 23 g before I sanded anything so it will likely be a heavy model.
(My modeling table is the same as my gun cleaning table and my ammo reloading table, that's why there's gun oil and bullet casting molds in the background)
Here's the cowl, sans the front which I sanded off to make room for the nose plug. I doped the squared opening and nose plug with a couple coats to avoid having the wood soften when the rubber lube gets on it.
Here's everything put together, the plug fits nearly perfectly into the cowl.
The backwards prop shaft is just so I can pull the thing in and out before I get a prop mounted in there.
Wow, my goal was to keep the whole model under 60g for the wood structure, looks like that might be a bit hard to achieve.
I wanted to make a balsa spinner, not because I needed one but because I thought it would be neat. I've made laminated cowls before rather than use the plastic ones so I figured I'd give it a try.
Here's the almost completed spinner, next to the Guillows-supplied plastic one. I know the profile isn't perfect but it's pretty close. I may try to shape it a bit more but I don't want the diameter getting any smaller.
On to the tail surfaces....
