Miles M.14A Magister - Based on Dennis Bryant plans.

Span 70 inch – 1.8 metres. 

Power plant – Saito 65 Four Stroke.

Variation to plan – use of single servo per wing for aileron control in place of bellcrank. Plan shows Merco 60 two stroke.

Building time – approximately four years – I’m a slow builder and have had to take time of to build / repair other models. I also felt that I needed to get my overall skills up to a point where I felt comfortable flying the plane.

Number of flights – around 10.

Non fabricated parts – nose cowl – fibreglass purchased with plan.

Major fabrication efforts – tailwheel from piano wire and brass; side, top and bottom cowl are lithoplate hand shaped and covered with a peel-and-stick film.

The aircraft was chosen as a scale project based on a photo of the full-size aircraft that I saw in a book of antique aircraft. I liked it’s appearance, high visibility colour scheme and it seemed a good stable type of aircraft for modelling – low wing symmetrical foil with a fair degree of dihedral. It also was an aircraft not seen often as a model – although over the past year I have seen at least four models in various magazines. There is a half-scale one in the UK and Dave Platt had one at Top Gun in the USA.

I located the owner of the original aircraft and wrote to him. The full-size aircraft is now located in a museum on the Isle of Wight (I think). When I sent him photos of my model he identified two errors – one with the markings that I have now corrected and the second with the forward windscreen. The lower side rail on my model is curved, whereas the full size is straight. Wish I had known that when I was building it as I spent considerable time getting the curve correct(?).

The only problem has been in getting the nose cowl to match other cowl parts. I have used an epoxy paint; however, whilst it initially matches, it is hard to get it to set and it tends to fade over time. I would be tempted to change to air force trainer colour scheme except for visibility. I may replace front cowl with a balsa one and see if epoxy takes to that better than fibreglass.

So how does it fly? Like it is on rails. I had a more experienced scale modeller fly it for the first time and he was very impressed. We had a small problem with nose-over initially, however moving (bending) the legs forward about half an inch fixed the problem. The model has a free castoring tailwheel, however there is plenty of ground control from the rudder. When in the air cruising along with a nice plume of white smoke from the four stroke it is a fantastic sight. The 65 provides ample power and I expect a wide range of aerobatics could be performed, however I just like to potter around like I expect the full size would do.

As time permits I will super detail it a bit more to match the full size (see below) - e.g. wheel pants, instrument panels, a few of the lumps and bumps -  and I hope to be able to get to a few scale meets with it.

My SIG Citabria, now christened Annette after my lovely and youngest daughter, has now been flown and I am very happy to say she performs very well. The kit recommends a ·46 2-stroke or a ·60 4-stroke, and those of you who have followed its (long) building progress will know that I fitted the ·60 RCV 4-stroke engine. Gordon kindly undertook the initial flight and expressed the view that there was certainly plenty of power there, and this was soon confirmed in the very short take-off run with the engine at full throttle. The plane is extremely stable and remains steady even in fairly changing and turbulent air conditions. She can come in nice and slow and steers well on the ground.

Looks good to me, even without cowl and spats!

One wing strut came detached from the fuselage fixing on the maiden flight and for the second flight, a week later, I had slipped small lengths of fuel tube over the nylon clevises to try and ensure that they stayed firmly closed. I loved the take-off as she lifted off at a nice gentle angle and stayed rock-steady as she climbed, despite a bit of gusting side wind. I am not yet into aerobatics, so my flight was just a matter of gentle circuits and figure-of-eights, and the plane was a delight to fly. All was well until a cry went out that a wing strut had come adrift, despite the retainers. To play safe, I handed the plane over to Gordon's safer hands and by the time he brought it gently down, both wing struts on one side of the wing were adrift from the fuselage but still attached to the underside of the wing, the fuel tube grips having slipped back over the nylon clevises. 

As mentioned before, the business of rigging the plane is somewhat tedious, with the wing struts being screwed up into the wing every time with very small screws and the fuselage end being anchored (?) by the use of clevises through small aluminium plates fixed into the fuselage. I was concerned about this repeated screwing in and out of the wing every time I take the plane to the field and decided to modify the wing fixing to avoid this necessity, as well as replacing the nylon clevises with metal ones with a much more positive closure, plus the fuel tube grips . The modification is clearly not a scale approach, but it looks o.k. to me and is certainly a great improvement in terms of security as well as resulting in a faster and less fiddly rigging. My wing-fixing modification was to screw and epoxy four Flair closed-loop adapters into the wing, having put a flat face on each side of the adapter and slightly enlarging the little hole to allow a metal clevis to be fitted. The wing struts can then be disconnected at the fuselage and the threaded rod simply run out of the clevis under the wing to remove.them - they  could be left fitted to the wing as they will pivot back to lie flat along the wing, but they could be prone to accident if left attached, I fear.

adapters	flats	clevis fitted	wing fixing

Quite a bit of interest has been shown in the RCV engine. Once set up and run-in in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions, it is certainly a good starter and sounds rather interesting! It does run extremely hot, and on its first run with the cowl fitted it was immediately evident that cooling was far from adequate. The heat of the exhaust pipe actually started to melt the ABS cowl where it is close to the pipe, and the whole of the cowl became far too hot to touch. Subsequent flights have therefore been made without the cowl fitted, but I have now greatly enlarged the air exit space at the lower back of the cowl and wait to see if air flow has been improved sufficiently to solve the problem. The manufacturer's recommended fuel is Duraglo 10, but I was initially running on Irvine Contest 10 which I thought met the specification, but since Duraglo 10 is actually stated to be particularly cool running, I have now switched to that. 

Because of the 2:1 gearing of the RCV engine, a larger-than-normal prop is required - a 16 x 12 being typical - so before thinking of using this engine I would suggest you check that it will suit your model in terms of ground clearance and appearance - I realise that you don't see the prop once the thing is running, of course, but it might be important to you. A remote glow lead is also an essential on this engine, and you may therefore find it essential to be able to turn up the current to the plug a bit before you can obtain sufficient glow - my control panel did not have that facility, so I have had to buy a panel specifically for this model! There is also a tendency for the exhaust pipe nut to loosen, despite being done up really tight, so I took  the advice of another club member who has this engine and re-fitted the exhaust pipe using a piece of card as a gasket  where the pipe fits into the engine proper. However, this has not proved 100% effective - there's too much give in the card, I think, so I'm trying again without the gasket but with the thing tightened even further by someone more confident than me as to how tight is safe without risking stripping the thread!