Pink-foam Spitfire

It started when I discovered rather a lot of 1" thick pink-foam insulation scraps blowing around in the road. I carried home quite a bit of it. (Foam is difficult to get, here!)

It's an inch thick, light, stiff, and has a fine grain that takes sandpaper well. It cuts well with a hot wire, and seems ideal for modeling purposes.

With a large sketch as a pattern and a hacksaw blade as a tool, I rough-cut the wing from a slab of the foam

Coarse then fine sandpaper allowed me to smooth down the wing-blank, and add an airfoil section "by eye".

Popsicle-sticks and epoxy allowed me to join the wing panels to the centre section. By jigging up the tips dihedral was added too.

The hacksaw blade came into play again, to cut out the fuselage. The thickness of the fuse mandated cutting three profiles of the fuse, which were then sanded down to shape as with the wing.

Tail feathers were manufactured out of pink foam as well. In order that they not be too fragile, I had to make them much too thick. Ideally, some corrogated plastic would have made better tail surfaces, but the experiment was to see what could be done with pink-foam, not Correx!

Note the reinforced packing-tape used as strengthening and also as hinges

The elevator servo is an HS-55 and the pushrod is a piece of piano-wire pushed through the foam.

Note the FMA eXtreme 5 receiver stuck into a pocket in the foam!

The pushrod is quick-linked to a piece of plastic epoxied in for a horn.

A hot piece of piano-wire bored a longditudinal hole through the fuse for the antenna.

Another HS-55 stuck into a block of foam works the ailerons via a bicycle brake cable running in an "outer" made from coffee-stirrers.

Note this photo was taken after the aircraft had flown. This spitty never flew with camo colouration.

Another photo taken after tests were complete.

The bicycle-brake aileron linkage exits the wing to connect to a home-made horn.

This aircraft never flew with camo covering. It only ever took to the skies in it's natural pink colouration. I understand there was a pink Spitfire used during WW-II for reconnaissance, but that isn't why this model is pink.

No, that isn't Mr. Snuffle-up-a-glass. that's a man who recognises the true value of a Rum'n'Coke!

And yes, despite being hacked together in the most ham-fisted manner, and ending up as rough as a bear's arse, it flew!

It didn't fly well and it wasn't terribly pretty (except, the classic lines of the spitfire with it's elliptical wing can't help but be pretty) but it did actually fly!

In fact, it was even capable of some exotic manoevers, if you handled the sticks carefully!

But it was never a great flier, tempramental, and that bicycle-brake and coffee-stirrer aileron linkage was a nightmare that should only ever be visited on cheap bastards who refuse to use proper flexible control cable!

Shown here, coming in hot behind our usual gliding site (those houses look much closer than they really are!), this model was an experiment and once the experiment was over, there was no point continuing on.

Point proven, this aircraft never flew again. I covered it with various colours "Zagi" tape, just to see how it would look. And in fact it is still hanging on my wall, but the gear is out of it, and I doubt it will ever take to the skies again.