The ‘Guillow’s Flying Models‘ Facebook Group ran their annual ‘Build Off Fly Off’ event again this year. The Guillow’s kit that was voted on to build was the Guillow’s Hawker MK IB Typhoon, kit #906. Fortunately for me, I had a sealed copy of this kit in my build inventory so I joined in the group build once again. The contest rules were simple: build and then fly the model for at least 20 seconds and submit a flight video during September 2024.
Based on my experience with last year’s build, the Guillow’s Cessna Bird-Dog (Building a Cessna Bird-Dog), I expected another slow build coupled with some building frustrations associated with my shakey hands and bad eyes. Fortunately, this build turned out to be much better in those regards than the Cessna. It was still a slow build, but I guess that is just my building style. However, this plane went together much better than last year’s model, and from a structural standpoint, I was genuinely pleased with the final result. The covering came out ‘OK’ and then I decided to give a try at airbrushing on a Camo paint scheme to reflect that shown on the building plans. I am giving that effort a score of C-. I had lots of trouble getting the correct consistency for my Vallejo ‘Model Air’ airbrush paint to spray correctly. I also decided to ‘free-hand’ the borders between the paint colors rather than masking them off. I was looking for a more feathered transition between the colors rather than a defined borderline. The results of that effort were problematic due to my shaky hands.
Including the paint, which only added 1 gram to the weight of the plane, this year’s model came in at 20 grams (without the motor & prop), however, I needed to add a full 6 grams of nose weight to get it to balance thus making the final weight 26 grams. That’s still less than 1 ounce (1 oz. = 28.35 g) so I guess I did OK with the build weight.
Like last year, I did not complete my build in time to fly the plane and submit a flight video by the contest cut-off date. So I missed the official date to be entered into the competition. But I did complete the build and when there is some nice weather, I will attempt to get a 20-second flight out of the model.
I have prepared the following brief video which shows some of the building process including the finished model. I hope you enjoy the video:
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