A quick phone call to Glens with my credit card details had the kit on its way, and it duly turned up two days later. A visit to the Just Engines web site had an Irvine 53 on order, and I was set.

The fuselage took around three days to get to the stage shown in the picture on the left. It is mostly CNC routed 2mm liteply, and the whole structure is assembled dry in your hands before hitting it with thin cyano. It was a strange experience to build a fuselage without any plans, and off the building board, but Glen explained that this is the way it has to be done, otherwise the assembly is likely to be distorted.

The decking formers and stringers are then added before sheeting with 1.5mm balsa, and there we are, one lovely fuselage. I have to confess that I got a slightly twisted stern post, but a quick e-mail to Glen had me reassured, and I pressed on.

The next stage is the wing, and here things ground to a bit of a halt. This was partly a result of building a Wot 4, and partly because I wasn't sure about the rib components for the ailerons and wing root trailing edge. The wing builds on the board, but again, there is no plan, and the parts simply slot together like a jigsaw on the cyparis bottom spar. This means that a wing can be framed up with ribs and spars in about ½ an hour. The aileron is then built onto the lower trailing edge sheeting, using part ribs. The problem I had was that these part ribs didn't seem to match the profile of the main ribs. Again, some e-mail correspondance with Glen had this sorted, and once the Wot 4 was finished, I pressed on.