What a great day for a test flight, warm at last dry sunny and breeze down the runway! We had the airfield to ourselves, one of the advantages of being retired. Having struggled over the winter to make a semi scratch built DH108 to 1/6 scale it is a nervous time going for the first flight. The plane is based on the Mick Reeves fusleage for the Venom (should really have been the Vampire but there are only small differences). Mick was helpful in laser cutting ribs and providing the Proskin epoxy sheet that I covered the wings in. The plane is 2 metre wingspan and is powered with a Super Bee. The plane weighs 17 lbs dry and the Bee is a good choice for it.

The first flight was made with the U/C down and used to trim it out. The second shown on the video was uneventful except for the hop on landing. We ran out of up elevator with the pitch change from the flaps. The third landing was better with a little more elevator movement. CG was spot on the calculated position and the throws apart from the elevator did not need changing.

Dave Wilde was the pilot as usual we pair up as a team.

I am delighted with it and we look forward to going to the Forthcoming meeting at Wroughton with it.

John


[link]http://www.rcuvideos.com/view_video.php?viewkey=d6efaa4b1eaf55227bc9[/link]

What can I say, beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just like the spring weather.

Well done John and Dave, fantastic achievement, in this artf era it's refreshing to see. Looks like the kero start Super Bee is a good match.

Regards

Rob.

John,

Excellent project and outcome. I really enjoy seeing jet aircraft of this vintage as I have done the DH-100 Vampire and DH-110 Sea Vixen in all wood designs and I'm in total agreement with Rob that it is ALWAYS good to see that projects like this are being designed and built by MODEl BULDERS in the true sense of the term.

I watched the video which rellay shows the stability of the design and was very surprised to see the flaps. They appeared to work just fine with the noted (expected) pitch influence.

I'm currently working on a scale Northrop wing project and the factory drawings clearly refer to a flap however, it could not be used as such in the truest sense as the test flights reveled but was then relegated to use as a pitch trimmer during flight only.

Best of luck with the 108.

Magic John, well done!

Looking fwd to seeing it at Wtn.

Cheers,

Dick

Great stuff John

Well done you two. Must have given you both quite a buzz…

Eric

Thanks for the encouragement!

I too love this age of plane and I particularly like the challenge of treading new ground.

Kerry, the original did indeed have split flaps, and it also had trim flaps on the upper surface. The upper flaps were larger than the lower ones and they only went up about 5% to offset trim change of the lower split flap. In my last model the JU EF128 I had elevons and flaps in the usual way on the inner control surface. This had very little trim change and it encouraged me to think that I could avoid the trim flap and just have the lower split flap. As it turns out we will have to be careful with not having too much flap other wise we run out of elevator. I used a modern wing section MH60 which has reflex in it as I did with the 128.

John

Top marks there John, I was looking at your Swallow last Sunday at Long Marston and I meant to have a word with you about it, I am currently finishing off a DH Venom, the Swallow looks superb in the air ( and on the ground )

IB

awesome john!!

barry

Well done John,
As we have become accustomed to, an unusual and challenging subject modelled the hard way. It looked superb in the video and I look forward to seeing it fly soon.
Best regards,

John

John

Good job-At least when the Airworld team in Germany now ask me what your fastination is with German aircraft I can talk about the DH108....

Dave Wilshere