EasyJet

The wing was built over the plan. The bottom-spar was glued to the bottom D-tube sheeting, and ribs then CA'd into place on top.

The upper spar and top-sheeting as well as leading- and trailing-edge spars were then added.

Departing from the plan, a joiner-brace was added to the center-section of the wing. I didn't have any fibreglass tape at the time, and I didn't just want to glue them together without any strengthening of the joint

An aileron servo was added centrally, rather than trying to shoehorn separate servos into each wing-pannel. I used Hitec/RCD HS-81 servos with metal gears. Another reason not to use two of them, given their cost!

The ailerons are hand-planed and sanded to a taper at the trailing-edge

The fuse construction was straight-forward enough, with ply formers and balsa longerons in the corners. The fuse is assembled upside down over the plan, with the turtle-deck added after the structure is completed and unpinned from the plan.

With the turtle-decking structure added, the entire fuse is sheeted in (rather thick, I thought) 3/16th balsa.

Plenty of rubber-bands help hold the sheeting in place as the white-glue dries!

For battery-pack access on the original design, a hugecanopy/hatch was incorporated. I didn't change this in any way. Construction was simple as the photo shows.

A simple balsa noseblock was fashioned out of laminated balsa blocks and razor-planed and sanded to shape. Laminated construction allowed the noseblock to be hollowed out as well.

The tail-block and surrounding areas were a little more tricky. They incorporated slots for the simple, sheet tailfeathers and exit holes for the pushrods.

Two more HS-81MGJ servos were fitted under that big hatch, to control the tail-surfaces via pushrod/snake. The position of the servo rails was chosen to aid in balanceing the model. One servo is shown here.

Receiver (not shown) is the eXtreme 5

All together, with sheet tail-feathers in place, this model is starting to look good!

This assembly was done for rough balancing before final covering.

Covered in my favourite orange and black Slope Livery the aircraft really looks sleek and swift! I have to admit I'm pleased with the job I did on this one!

This model was completed just in time for the end of the slope-season! (Typical...)

Any way, we did get a couple of test flights in while there was some lift. Seen here at it's first launch, being hurled off the cliff by that veteran balsa-basher Sam!

And away it went!

It proved to be very sensitive to the aileron, and it wanted to go fast all the time. It would fly fine for a couple of minutes, then a touch of roll-instability would appear, The center-of-gravity needs work. When the wind starts to blow again, we will fine tune that and see if we can't perfect this model!