Geoff has now completed building his Ben Buckle Falcon and flew her for the first time on April 27th. Here's what he said after what was obviously a very good day: 

"Falcon has flown today. Had a super day with 7 hours on the site. Skylark singing wall to wall and a Kestrel visiting its nest in a tree on our site. Tea taken every three hours sitting in safari chairs. Bliss!"

Oh, the joys of retirement!

All that remains for us is to admire this lovely model from various angles and hopefully look forward to Geoff's next project!

The centre shot shows the Falcon perfectly balanced on Geoff's home-built C o G rig that was fully described on ModelFlight #27. If you would like to see that article repeated on take your pick, then send an e-mail requesting it, quoting 27as and I will be pleased to put it up on the site again.

The Falcon weighs in at just 2oz under 8lbs. With a 96" wingspan and a 13" chord Geoff reckons it should levitate, never mind fly, at that weight! It is 57" long and is powered by a Neil Tidley Laser 70 of which Geoff cannot speak too highly. 

Finally, my sincere thanks to Geoff for taking the trouble to document his Falcon project, for the superb photos and for some good hints and tips along the way.

John Duxbury's latest project is a 65" span Lebino Laser 200 kit which he bought a few weeks ago, already started, from a guy in the West Midlands, UK. The fuselage had a couple of formers fitted, and the wings, tail and fin had all been glassed although they had not been completed.

John spent a little time seeing what he had actually bought and has since fitted the u/cart and tail wheel, opened up the tubes in the wings to that the aluminium wing joiner would actually slide into the wings and edged the foam tail surfaces in balsa.

The engine - an SC 108 - was bought after seeing an ad for it in RCM&E. It has not been run and the fellow selling it turned out to live just about a mile from John's home!

John has fitted the engine to the airframe using a Dubro rubber isolating mount and he has also fitted a BCM in-cowl silencer, both of which can be seen in this close-up. These items came from Just Engines, a company which John rates very highly.

John says, "That is about all I have done so far; I will send more pics as things progress".

John did not receive any documentation with the kit, and says if anybody reading this has any experience of it, he would be very interested to hear from you. The kit came with some nice Bud Light decals, but he has not the faintest idea what the rest of the colour scheme should look like. He would also like some pointers as to where he might find some information on the full size. If you can help, contact John at duxbury@ntlworld.com please.

Following the main construction of the wing, there have been quite a number of additional tasks to do to finish it off.

Leading edge sheeting
Sheeting complete
Aileron control pushrods and bellcranks fitted to left and right wing sections, balsa capstrips glued to top and bottom of ribs. The small balsa support behind the bellcrank mount carries the hold down plate for the wing struts and is generously epoxied to the rib.
Aileron pushrod slot. Those little ply wood squares fitted flush to the bottom of the wing are the hold-down plates for the wing struts.
Leading edge caps and balsa wingtip blocks glued and shaped.
Block sanding entire wing for smooth and even joints all over.