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Slingsby Kirby Gull scale 1/4**

Posted: 01 May 2020, 16:23
by Bovin
Hello everybody,
After finishing a new fuselage for my Nemere 1/8 which had crashed due to a failing wingjoiner, a carbon rod, now a steel one, I started thinking about a new glider. First I wanted to build a Fokker FG 1, but that is very similar to the FG 2 that I had already built. Besides I like the period of varnished ply gliders! A fellow modeller mentioned the beautiful Fafnir. I talked about the flying characteristics of the vintage gliders. Because I do almost all my flying on flat fields, not on a slope (not much slope in Holland..) I realised that the thermal qualities are much more important. I thought building the wonderful Petrel, almost started with the frames when I realised that it has also a thick wing profile which cannot be changed without changing the “looks” of this glider. Luckily I found the Slingsby Gull,and a much thinner wing, but with struts. A development was the “cantilever” Gull, with a stronger wing (not thicker) and without struts. Fortunatly it has also spoilers, a great help for me with landings!
If I build this glider in scale 1/4 it has a span of practically 4 metres, which suits me well, with a relatively short fuselage, luckily in varnished ply. Also I wanted to build it light, hoping it will fly better in thermals.
The real one;I found a great drawing in the Martin Simons book about SlingsbyThe scale soaring Uk has also very usefull documentation :D
Because I (still?) can’t work with digital drawing programs I enlarged his drawingThe nasty thing is that the lines are also enlarged, so the frame plans are rather crude. In this case I started without a detailed plan, I just work from the original plans, often to find solutions while working. I also plan to make the fuselage with as few girders as possible. With good butted joints the ply should take all the loads. I tried that on a new fuselage of my Nemere 1 / 8,
Slingsby Kirby Gull scale 1_4.pdf
(2.74 MiB) Downloaded 50 times
http://www.retroplane.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4632 end of page 1, which seemed to work well.So I started with the frames, I laminated them from 7 layers 1 X 5 mm spruce, dry bended, clamped and glued with thin cyano
This is a very easy way of making the frames, now I could set up the fuselage.
To be continued,
Vincent