I met Dave Chinery at the Bickley electric meeting yesterday. Some may recall that Dave wrote a regular electric flight column for RCM&E a few years ago and he’s still busy as can be seen by just a glance at his latest creation – this 123″ span version of the Fairey Long Range Monoplane.
Two full size examples of this aircraft were built, the first in 1928. They were designed to experiment and study long range flight charcteristics, the second aircraft capturing the world record in 1933 with a flight of 5410 miles from Cranwell to South Africa.
There are no prizes for guessing that Dave’s model is electric powered using an AXI 5320/12 motor spinning a 19″ prop. The 14lb model employs 21 x 2400mAh Nicad cells.
In flight she’s a slow moving aeroplane but as you can see she has character in spades and plenty of presence in the air. Needless to say, she was one of the show-stoppers yesterday.
Dave’s justly proud of his creation
The Monoplane is covered in silver Oratex
She has that all important ‘presence’ when in the air – superb!
