My latest creation...

Well, not content with the small stuff, I fancied something with a little more raw appeal...

This is Ralph Saldivar attending to his 1970 12th scale F-4 Phantom jet, powered by a...yes, a jet engine! Well, a simplified version (pulse jet) specifically designed for model aircraft etc, this one was made by 'DynaJet', and was their 'Red Head' model, which produced around 5 pounds of thrust.

I loved the look of the model, the attention to detail is phenomenal, even down to the opening canopies and removable rear section (the dummy afterburners are removed for flight).

Ralph made a speciality of jet propelled model aircraft, and the Phantom is pictured alongside his 'Sabre' jet, the Phantom really apealed to me as it was a favourite of mine as a kid, and I think I built several Airfix Phantom's back in the day, I think the US Navy markings were very appealing.

I've made a good start I think, first I had to print out the plan, from my favourite old plan site 'Outerzone.co.uk' which was a stitch up of 36 sheets of A4 paper, then I painstakingly measured and transcribed all of the components into my CAD software, then cut them out of various ply & balsa sheets, ready for construction.

Here's the progress so far:

You can see the full build progress log on the 'Scratchbuildersguidetothegalaxy.club'

http://thescratchbuildersguidetothegalaxy.club/thread/54/span-scale-phantom-pulse-powered?page=2&scrollTo=152

You can see in the pictur above, that I had to assemble a jig for the fuselage formers to be aligned properly, which I made from old skirting board. this allowed me to get things nice and square, and with any luck, should make the wing assemble fairly straight forward.

I think it's good to experiment with different aspects of modelling, and I'm certainly loving the scale aspect of this particular build. The only thing is, I'm starting to run out of space in my loft!!

Oh dear, something must go...

Andy