I had made the pilgrimage to Dortmund with the intention of purchasing a Lunak, however after a lot of hassle and being messed about it was not to be. I retired to the bar in the hotel to drown my disappointment when I saw Ekkehard from Rosenthal. We had a drink or two together and I asked him what was new, and he told me about the new Swift S1 that was soon to be released. Now having seen Frank Oest's performance at Middle Wallop I have to admit to have been taken by this machine's performance, so I parted with a deposit and expected a delivery at the Caen event later in the year; I also ordered the sexy dual shock under cart from Femma to go with it.

Sure enough at Caen Ekkehard turned up with the Swift S1, at 2.7 scale it's a big B****R the fuselage is nearly 3 meters!

The kit comes with carbon and glass bonded wings, glass leading edges, wing joiner tubes installed into the wings, wires for the airbrake and aileron servos, ailerons are pre cut and faced as are the tips and root, air brakes installed. The same finish is applied to the elevator. However the enormous rudder is a glass moulding, the fuselage comes with a nicely moulded canopy tray, instrument panel and pilot seat and a clear canopy.

The building started by using my usual technique of glassing the wings, ailerons and all the elevator,(I hate film) I wont go into how to do it as it has been published a few times in the magazines.

The quality of the wings is superb, they are extremely hard with little or no flex at all, and no ripples as sometimes seen on many wings of this length and width, the elevator is the same quality.

The problems I have encountered with the wings are as follows; wing sleeves were not aligned in the wing!!! 3mm out. The wing root profile is thicker on the wings than on the fuselage!! And the wires for the ailerons and air brakes had been bonded into the wing root for life on both panels.

I have spent many hours correcting these errors which Ekkehard has been notified about and assures me that the mistakes have now been corrected and will not be on future models. (It seems mine was the first one after the prototype was finished.)

The fuselage construction was as follows, first I installed the Femma retract unit into the floor by cutting a ply former the shape and size of the fuselage, then bonding this to the floor. There is only one former holding this style of retract so quite a lot of reinforcement around the former and floor has been applied, this will help spread landing loads.

Next was to fit a mounting for the elevator, I always use the same method, it is a simple ply plate glassed into the seat where the elevator sits. This has a captive nut secured to it; the position is pre determined by the hole already drilled in the elevator.

A small dowel is used at the front to locate the centre position in the fuselage and to stop it moving.

The rudder has a wire hinge so the fuselage needs two plates with holes to accept the hinge wire; these are simply glassed in place and two holes drilled for the wire.

The servo for the rudder has been mounted in the base of the rudderpost, and the elevator servo has been mounted in the small tail spike at the rear. I noticed at Caen this year that Ekkehard has mounted his actually in the elevator off-set to one side.

The wing servos have boxes already cut in the wings for both ailerons and airbrakes, I simply silicon the servos in place and fit small detachable covers for the servo box.

Next job was to put the wings on, the hole for the joiner is pre drilled into the fuselage, but not for the 4 incidence pegs at back and front of the root. This is where I discovered that not only is my wing thicker than the fuselage root but also that the hole for the joiner had been drilled in the wrong place!

So more time was spent trying to re align everything back to where it should be, and then re drilling and glassing the carbon wing joiner sleeve into place, I have also placed a former under the joiner to give it some support under high G manoeuvres. The fuselage has been rubbed down and all the small air holes filled. (Ekkehard said jokingly it makes the fuselage lighter)

A template was made up to suit the retract doors, and cut out using an electric jigsaw, they are simply hinged using waterproof tape, and sprung using two small bands attached to the inside of the doors.

The pilots seat is a tight squeeze and needs an amount of trimming. The canopy tray has to have the centre cut out and forms one half of the instrument panel, the other half is attached to the seat and is trimmed so that when the canopy is in place the two halves meet.

A tow release is fitted into the nose and glassed into place; I use the spike and bar system as it only requires a loop to attach. The servo sits just in the nose and is mounted when all the lead has been glassed in place.

Rosenthal recommend a minimum servo KG of about 10kg per aileron and elevator the same, however he recommends a 20kg for the rudder, especially for fast knife-edge flying. I have opted for the Hitec 645mg all over, at 6volts they are rated at about 14kg and are plenty fast enough.

The finished weight will be around the 13-l4kilos; Ekkehard has found that it flies much better at about 15-l6kilos.

Having watched Ekkehard Swift being flown by his test pilot Tomas this year at Caen, I can certainly vouch for its aerobatic performance, and stunning thermal ability, so much so that a little swift told me that two more will be emigrating to the UK later this year!!

At the time of writing mine is still waiting for a topcoat of paint and final canopy and cockpit detail, and of course a flight. It does look nice when all together, but getting there has been painful.

At Caen I have witnessed the modified fuselages from Rosenthal, and they are reinforced from the root to the tail, and the wing profile now matches the fuselage.

I will follow this up with some flight information as soon as I can.