December 2011
Something about the little Mini Tyro really appealed to me when I read the article so I figured I’d have a stab at building one. I had a (self enforced) deadline of the beginning of December because that is when our second child was due. Needless to say I missed this deadline and I’m now hoping to have her finished for Christmas. Hey ho, there is no real rush I suppose!
I used to have a DC Merlin which would have been a nice fit, but that has seemingly gone walk-about, Which left me pondering something to power her with, a chance conversation with Peter down at 308 Hobbies resulted in shaking hands on a deal for one of his ‘spare’ Indian Mills. Power plant sorted then, best crack on.
I was pretty rubbish at taking pics during the build, a couple are terrible quality, being taken in a dimly lit living room with a camera phone, but you can see what is going on.
I had some 1/16 sheet kicking around so I started by cutting out the fuselage sides and a template for the wing ribs.
A few days later I got down to my LHS and fetched supplies of fresh Balsa, from here the build progressed fairly rapidly, first up the tail feathers:
Fin next:
Then a pair of wings!
And finally onto the fuselage:
These was all the shots I managed to take while building her, but I guess it isn’t a complex build so there isn’t much of interest. Onto the covering then…
I’ve always loved the DB ‘house’ colour scheme, having fond memories of seeing it on a biplane years ago, so I figured I’d replicate that scheme. I used Litespan, which I’ve always found really nice to work with, once you get over the slight faf of having to paint the Balsaloc on first.
I started the build with the tail feathers, so figured thats where I’d start the covering…
I didn’t shoot any pics of the wing or fuselage mid covering, so just a couple of her finished:
All done, and in between feeding our new baby girl countless bottles of milk too!
For those that are interested, I soldered up a little tin plate tank to give me a bit more duration than the in-built Mills one. The design of which was an exact duplicate of the one I put together for the KK Phantom earlier in the year.
I’ve a couple of Hitec HS-55 servos and a Spektrum AR600 receiver.
Hopefully I can get the controls done this week, I think I’m going to try sewn hinges, although I’m more than a little nervous
More as it happens!
