The Flair Puppeteer is a very well known sport scale version of the Sopwith Pup. I went through a phase around three years ago when it became a must have model, and pestered Vicky relentlessly until she bought it for me for Christmas. I started the build on the dining room table, which was the only building space available in the old house, full of enthusiasm, and made some fair progress. The picture on the left shows the two parts of the fuselage nearly complete, with the stabiliser and elevators on the board being built. At the back is a brand new Saito 56, bought for the plane at the Model Engineering exhibition at Olympia just after Christmas.

This picture was taken a short while later. The tail assembly is complete, and the two parts of the fuselage have been joined together. The aluminium cabanes for the top wing have been screwed to the spruce bearers which run across the fuselage. This simple setup helps to get the incidence of the top wing right first time. The next step is to clad the forward part of the fuselage with 3/32" balsa, and fit the engine bearers into the box which holds the tank. This is visible through the cutouts in the nose.

Shortly after reaching this stage, work on the plane petered out, as I started to have problems working out the engine installation. The carburettor was always going to need a recess to be cut into the firewall to accommodate it, but the main problem was getting access to the needle valve. It was directly in line with the front undercarriage bearer, which was going to be impossible to move. Dave Agombar came round, and showed me how to turn the carb round through 180° so that the needle valve was now pointing upwards, but now the choke was directed through the undercarriage bearer. At this point, I decided to build something else, and the project was shelved with a nearly complete fuselage, and the lower wing built.

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This page was last updated on 21/02/04

Copyright Jonathan Mead 2002