TOPIC: Fairey Delta 2 for TSP L-2

Lockdown has its compensations, and, after some months of encouragement from the admirable Daniel Rackstraw, I have finally started my second FD 2. The first one I made, back in 2002, was only my second 'OD', and though it flew extremely well, it was no more than a cartoon of the real thing.



This time I hope to do better, with a fully moulded fuselage and wings, though (pusillanimously) retaining the external motor in a trough.

The first decision was, 'how big'? The Jetex Sebel 'Tailored' kit was rather too small with a wing span of 9.5";



Steve Bage's plan is larger, 10.5", but my original (for Rapier L-2) was 10", so this I decided to stick with, and accordingly printed out Steve's plan at 95%.

The first task was to make the male moulds for the fuselage, using, following my normal practice, templates cut from 1mm ply. I had some old blocks of balsa which was really too hard and of too poor quality for a flying model, but perfect for this purpose.

After some hours of carving and sanding, I applied two coats of thin epoxy resin and rubbed down with 'wet and dry'.



These are 'tack glued' to 1/2" balsa backing, ready tor the 1.5mm fuselage sides.



I used the softest lightest balsa for these and soaked them for 3-4 hours before binding them to the moulds (not forgetting a layer of cling film!) with elastic..



These were put in a safe place to dry for 36 hours (I'm fortunate that we have an old fashioned house with an airing cupboard) but on top of a radiator would have been equally efficacious.

Wow, you have been busy, looking good.

Well, what with one thing and another, progress has been slow. I unwrapped the tightly bound shells from their 'mummy', trimmed them and pinned them back securely to the moulds.



You will note the surface markings made by the elastic binding. To get rid of these, the surface is dampened with hot water (it is important not to overdo this) and the whole put in a safe warm place to dry out for 24 hours.

Totally subscribed to this build...good work Roger a technique I have yet to try!

Roger adds:

beware these masochistic urges my son!

When the shells were dry, I eased them off the moulds and trimmed them to exact shape:





You will note there are four shells as I decided to build a second FD 2 'kit of parts'. The two half shell together weigh 5.4 grams - not too bad. The next stage in building the fuselage is to cut out and glue in half-formers. These are necessary to support the light balsa shells, and I know from experience that skimping on these leads to disaster, so I will probably use the full compliment drawn up by Steve Bage. So that's 36 formers in all (nine per shell, two shells per fuselage, two models.

But under 'Tier 4' what else is there to do?

No, don't answer that!