Why did I build it? Because I saw a full size one flying at Fairford airshow in 1998. You know how it goes.....[Thinks] "That's a nice looking plane, straight taper wings, nice long nose & tail, decent size tail surfaces.... I want to build one!"

First flight! Isn't it a relief when the plane you've been building flies well and looks great in the air
(If I say so myself) If you look really closely you can see the flaps are down. It's amazing how these slow the model down to a scale speed and provide an enormous amount of lift.

Launch time. After spending a few minutes working out how to hold the model, Pete "volunteered" to throw it off.

There it goes....Let's hope it flies.

A different view of the launch. This was the second launch, so I know it's going to fly this time and I'm starting to relax (a bit)

An inflight view

Landing! A slightly odd view, but the plane's landing on the front of the slope, fairly low down. This was the 1st flight, so I was aiming for a nice piece of long grass. (and I didn't have enough height to reach the normal landing area!)

This is before the 1st flight! As you can see it's got veneered foam wings, with foam nacelles. The fuz is of slightly unusual construction, it's basically a white foam hollow tube, covered in brown paper, then Profilmed. The fuz was made in two halves (top & bottom) This photo shows the bottom half of the fuz resting on the wing whilst I sort out how to fit the wings to the fuz. It was much easier to build it in 2 halves then stick it together later. The brown paper was stuck on with thinned PVA glue. Cut out a piece of paper, paint the thinned (50/50) glue on it, wait 2-3 minutes for the paper to go "soggy", then stick it on and brush out the air bubbles. It's suprisingly easy to do and the overlaps on the paper will sand nicely when the glue's dry.

A side view of the engines. They're made out of foam, brown paper covered, then given a layer of glasscloth for good measure (it looks like the bottom of the nacelles will be the 1st bits to hit the ground when landing.

Mikes DC4 flying on a Sunday morning