TOPIC: FW Flitzer Restoration

Here's a 'thumbnail' of the elusive Flitzer plan - a better one is available on request.



John comments on receiving a 'proper' copy of the plan:

'I did manage to find some low resolution images of the plan within a build thread on the internet, unfortunately important bits of text like the wing dihedral where unreadable.
I now know that I need to perform a bit more surgery on the wings and re-join them at the correct angle, another indicator that it was never intended to be built for flight'.

Here's the section in question - hope it helps.

Thanks guys for your encouragement and to Roger and 'Nitro' for the plan details.

I will report back with details of the wing rework now I know my initial concerns regarding the dihedral built into the model have been confirmed and some further rework is required.

Some progress to report on the wing rework. The missing shear webs have now been added and I also made the decision to replace the trailing edge as this was a little soft, excessively sanded and suffered some damage during tissue removal. You will also notice that I have cut back the leading edge and added a strip of 3/32 balsa as I prefer not to have the nose of the ribs protruding to the front of the wing as this invariably leads to unsightly 'puckers' in the tissue covering.


Progress made on the wing rework, note at this stage lack of dihedral is still to be addressed.

It was at this point that I received plan from Roger confirming correct dihedral requirements and set about separating the wing halves and resetting the root rib angles. Overlaying the RH wing panel on the plan it was noticeable that ribs R2 and R3 where incorrectly positioned meaning that R2 would sit outside of the fuselage horizontal keel when the wing was mounted. I had no choice other than another round of disassembly and realignment as otherwise the wing to fuselage joint on one side would mainly be to the tissue covering and more noticeable would now be the asymmetric dummy engine intakes.


LH wing panel with root rib adjusted to give correct dihedral. RH wing panel has root rib removed prior to noticing that ribs R2 and R3 where misaligned.

Since the above photograph I have added the tail boom 'sockets' leaving shaping of LE before re-joining the wing halves and replacing the wing tips. This is the current state of play and I am going to put this to one side for a short while as I have a couple of near completed models to finish up in time for the first Old Warden meeting of the year.

Serious restoration taking place. Thanks for the update.

Super job