Testimonials

Sarasota, FL, USA

Hi.
Attached are some photos of my Tomahawk, modelled on the Wellington Aero Club trainer registered WAC. I took two rolls of film of the original shortly after I started building, and managed to get a complete set of decal transfers made up for the model by a local railway modeller, who uses a hot-wax printing system.

Building started late 2002. It took about 8 months to complete, but unfortunately an early accident required a fresh fuselage to be built, though the original wing survived intact. With a couple of "ARF" models in between, it was therefore mid-2004 before the Tomahawk was in the air again, with about 1/2 lb of combined timber paint and nose-weight pared off the new fuselage in the process. However, shortly before Christmas, a further accident resulted from striking an electric fence during a dead-stick landing, the major damage being splintering of the rear fuselage, leaving the whole tail assembly dangling. I thought about the repair problems for four months, then tackled the whole job with inspiration and was flying again within a week!! The model in all but one of the photos (cowling off) is this "Mark III" version. The last repairs have unfortunately returned the model close to its original nearly 10lbs weight after balancing!!!

As you can just see from the photos, all scale panel and rivet lines were incorporated during the painting. Unfortunately, with undercoats, this amounted to up to five coats of paint in some areas, e.g. on the wings where four panels overlap, so I've had a weight problem with the model from that stage on. Thin tissue was doped on overall and rubbed down, before painting started. "Relionus" polyurethane (fuel-proof) spray-can paint from The Warehouse was used for all the paint - Undercoat, Satin- White, Matt-Black, Red, and Metallic Blue, and has proved very satisfactory. After gaining experience from scratch, I think I could probably apply it a bit thinner now and still get good coverage.

I didn't help the weight problem by having both a pupil and an instructor on board (yes it is actually Barbie and Ken, both having suffered a serious operation at about waist-level!). Both have made-up seat belts with buckles, and Ken is equiped with head-phones with an attached mike on a stalk. Cockpit vents are installed at the front of the black-top, with the "leather" padded rear edge made up of two layers of masking tape - offset for the seam-line - attached before the matt-black paint was sprayed on. Door hinges and handles, and emergency release handles were made up from bent fine piano wire glued into drilled holes. The cockpit canopy was faired into the fuselage from the doors backwards, as on the original. The aerial is piano wire inserted through brass tube, mounted in an angled hole drilled through the fuselage spine, and fitted with a scrap balsa additional streamline fairing on the lower half.

Navigation lights are non-wired LED-lights of appropriate colour on port and starboard wings and tail tip. However, I have wired in a landing light in the nose, feeding off the receiver battery, and which only comes on when the secong landing flap level is switched in on final approach. It's a "RAM" light-set comprising two landing lights in parallel. I've set up the redundant light as a cockpit light to show off the instrument panel, which has the radio "frequency" panels cut out and showing genuine Wellington radio frequencies behind perspex, as well as the other instruments.

The removable panel in front of the windscreen conceals the remote glo-starter connector and the re-fuelling point.

Having gone this far, of course I had to fit the Robart steerable sprung oleo nose-wheel!!

I have found that "Half-Flaps" for take-off has helped a lot with the weight problem, and can just pull it off the ground in nearly flat calm at about 110 yards - it's a breeze at 10+ kph wind, in about 80 yards. I land with a second level of flaps, and the model sits very stable latterally all the way down the glide-path (thanks to your built-in wash-out!!). However, with my model being so far over-weight compared with your prototype, I believe an accident is waiting to happen if I ever get caught out with a dropping wind as I lift off the runway, and meantime I'm just grateful for the time I've got out of the model so far.
Regards ...
Bill