TOPIC: FW Flitzer Restoration

Some of you may have read the 'Pleasant Surprise' thread documenting my discovery of a completed Aerographics FW Flitzer model at an Auto jumble. The model was one of several available and I also left with a Richard Crossley designed Me 1106.

Earlier this year I took a look at the Flitzer with a view to preparing it for flight and found a few issues that would need sorting, the worst of which was misalignment of the wings and tail booms which due to the one piece wing construction would mean that some disassembly would be required to realign them. I thought it might be of interest to document the restoration and hence started this thread.

I had noticed on purchase that neither model included a motor trough and presumed that the models had been built for display purposes this was soon confirmed when removing some tissue to access the wing mounting and I could see that some of the wing construction had been left out including all off the spar shear webs. It was at this point that I decided I would strip all the tissue from the model to get a good look at the structure and also take the opportunity to scallop formers between the stringers as 'starved horse' appearance is a pet hate of mine. This was a wise decision as during removal I found a number of broken stringers and misaligned formers suggesting this was going to be a bigger job than first thought.



With tissue removal complete I also decided that the underwing stringers needed replacing so they where removed along with the formers that included some crude motor trough infill. I did not stop there eventually removing the final 2 fuselage formers and rear sections of the side keels.

As I do not have a copy of the plan replacement parts were reverse engineered from the originals or as in the case of the underwing formers sanded to shape once in position.

I did not make any changes to the motor trough other than to box in the motor mount keying this into former F5 which also provided a datum from which to position the remaining formers and stiffen up the now rather flexible back end.

The picture below shows the two halves of the motor mount ready to be attached to the trough keel and F5. At this point I had yet to remove the last 2 formers, these where replaced before splicing in place new side keel sections.



Finally new full length stringers where added completing this section of fuselage before attention turned to the wings.

That is some nice restoration work there. I love it!

Looking great.

Very nice work. I admire your patience.

Hi John,
only just picked up on this thread as I've been in hospital . Nice work - I find it much easier to make another model than undertake the painstaking chore of repair/restoration. I've got a very nice Bell Richard Crossley X-1A which only needs a new wing. A simple task.... but somehow I just can't get started
I've sent a Flitzer plan to your persnal email account.