The Spitfire Saga for the Last Time!

For new members who don’t know the story about the Spitfire, let me recap.

I had been flying for about 2-3 years and decided I needed a nice model to fly and for people to admire. So, I saw a feature in one of the magazines about a Spitfire, so keeping quiet, I bought one as a kit.

Now when news leaked out at what I had bought , I received the following comment “worst plane you can buy”. (but I didn’t understand this until later!).

Well, the kit took me just 12 months to put together. You know how it goes, one day pieces fit snug together and you can’t go wrong, then the next nothing fits correctly, you read the manual and it still does not make sense.

In the January Newsletter, I stated that last December the model was 95% complete with only the engine exhausts and gun barrels to fit and a friend of mine volunteered to take it for it’s maiden flight. (oh! yes, I still owe him for cleaning a pair of under pants!)

During the flight it was found that the C of G was too far rearwards making it very twitchy and we or should I say he, finally managed to get the plane back over the flight strip and land it safely.

A few weeks later and we took it flying again. I even had a fly and a week past and I plucked up the courage to attempt a take off and this is where the story starts.

During my first attempt, I did have a bit of an audience and it was very scary, still a bit twitchy and I was being very delicate on the controls but I managed to have a fly and land it safely. That ten minute flight took at least 2 hours for me to recover. We did have a couple more flights over the following weeks with it until one Sunday afternoon.

I remember it well. There was the Chairman, chatting to an old member who turned up (who happened to be a police man with his colleague in full uniform, fast response car, the whole nine yards) when his friend asked the question “What happens when something goes wrong!”.

I had just taken off at a great rate of knots, keeping a straight line as it raised itself into the air. Now, I was telling myself to be delicate on the aileron and start to bring it round for a right hand turn and bring it back to flyover the strip.

Bloody hell, I thought, how did it get into a knife edge position that quickly, put other control in to bring the wing up, I thought, it then does a quick “u” turn. Now flying on it’s back going in the opposite direction and the nose is dropping slightly and pointing for the ground.

Ok, don’t panic I tell myself, all you have to do is put some “down” into it. Then I find I have no control over the damned thing!It’s at this point that the Chairman answers the question “you mean like that!” pointing to my Splatfire.

After a 10 min walk close to the woods we found the remains. Yes I should have bought my camera for the nose was embedded into a muddy patch in the field and the tail was sticking up into thin air.

It was all bought back and some one suggested to lay it out like a real investigation. Now comes the hard part, what went wrong!, pilot error in most cases and this must surely be pilot error as well. We did have a few glitches during all the flights that it had and this was mentioned before. Did I check this out, yes, we did a range check before each flight and everything appeared ok. So, any lessons learnt, yes, if you do decide to build one of these, I was informed to late to make the tail bigger. This will make it more stable, so I am told. Will I build another…..oh! the challenge….now if I build the tail…...