By David Lovegrove
The January 2025 Begbroke meeting saw the flying rounds of the Foamy Fighter Challenge
9 models from Colin Sharman’s ambitious Catalina flying boat to Andy Crisps rule breaking duration model braved the foggy conditions to fly in a variety of classes.
The competition was flown over timed 3 flights. In third place with a combined time of 20.6 sec was Simon Burch with his Fairy Battle. 2nd was Bob Lee with his Kawanishi George with 38.5 sec but runaway winner was Chris Brainwood with his Hawker Typhoon achieving a total of 63 sec with one flight of 25 sec
There were plenty more chocolate based prizes on offer though, here’s a list of the winners
Most Realistic Model : Andy Blackburn – Blackburn Skua
Shortest Flight : Duncan Martin – Hellcat
Scariest Flight: Alan Trinder – Focke Wulf 190
Most Ambitious Model: Colin Sharman Catalina Flying Boat
Laziest Builder: David Thurling – unfinished Kawanishi George
Most Effective bending of the Rules: Andy Crisp – Duration model built from the kit
There’s a video here on Youtube of some of the flights (opens in Youtube)
Kits were made available in September for the Cartoon Foamy Fighter Challenge and were free to members
The kit comprises of a sheet of wall foam, prop assembly, motor peg, a small piece of 1/64″ ply, a length of suitable rubber for the motor and a plan on A4 so it can be built as a Hurricane , Kawanishi ‘George’. A Grumman Hellcat is also available or the kit can used as the basis for your own design
Scroll down for full build instructions for the Kawanishi by Bob Lee and the Blackburn Skua by Andy Blackburn
When making your kit make sure you use a very sharp knife to cut the foam otherwise it could tear. A scalpel with a new blade is best. The foam will blunt the blade quickly so if it starts cut less cleanly change the blade.
There are several glues that will stick the foam effectively. UHU POR works well but Deluxe Materials Foam to Foam is less stringy. To give a more durable finish the foam can be painted with Ezy Dope though this is not necessary for a successful model it will just make it last longer
Once built, your rubber motor will need lubricating. First tie a knot first at the ends of the motor. A reef knot works best with a simple knot tied in the remaining ends to lock it. A number of lubricants will work, many now use silicon oil which is available in hardware stores. Simply spray a small amount into a plastic bag add your motor and rub the lubricant in, remove from the bag and your motor is now ready to wind . If you can’t get Silicon oil, caster oil or soft soap will work well too.
The kit includes a plan for 3 designs. The Hurricane and Kawanishi ‘George’ both designed by Andy Blackburn and the Grumman Hellcat designed by Lionel Haines all are also featured below and available as a downloadable PDF.
These could just be the starting point for those wishing to rise to the full challenge and design their own ‘cartoon-scale’ WW2 fighter. The choice of subjects is huge – Axis or Allied, USAF, RAF, French, German, Russian or whatever takes your fancy. And don’t forget those radical ‘conceptual’ German and Japanese fighters towards the end of WW2, few of which ever got further than the drawing board.
These now-iconic aircraft will lend themselves well to rendition in wallfoam. The only missing ingredient is your imagination. The simple rules appear in the full list below.
The finish is your choice: bare white foam or a full camo scheme – it’s up to you. The main aim is to demonstrate airworthiness. But if you do go to the trouble of a full ‘camo’ scheme, your enterprise will certainly be rewarded. And you never know; your masterpiece could end up reproduced in the hallowed pages of the Aero Modeller!
But, as we’ve said, there will be RULES. Notionally, these are:
The model must represent a genuine WW2 warbird, regardless of whether it ever entered service.
The fuselage can be a simple rectangular section.
The fuselage must be no less than 17 mm wide at its widest point.
“Cartoon” outline shapes are expected and are acceptable.
The plan (hand-drawn is OK) must fit onto one A4 sheet of paper. If there is no plan, then the entrant must demonstrate to the judges that it would be possible to fit the plan onto the specified paper.
The model must use either; The approved propellor (we may be able to supply a few of these), or
A propeller from the previous foamie challenge, or
A scraped plastic propeller (cut down if necessary) of no more than 4” diameter.
At least 50% of the construction must be from wall Insulation foam.
The more devious amongst you will have spotted that this list contains a few loopholes. In the usual light-hearted spirit of our indoor comps, to add to the fun we’ll reserve one or two prizes for those who can make the best and most imaginative use of them.
To summarise, the event will be similar to last year’s ‘Foamie Design Challenge’, this time focussing on foamie warbirds built as semi-profile, ‘cartoon’ scale models. A lot of you have seen models using this technique flying very well, so you’ll know they’re worth keeping after the event.
Theres a video of the Kawanishi flying here on Youtube at about 1 min in.
We’d like to encourage everyone to come up with their own design, using the construction technique shown on the three example plans shown here. Should inspiration desert you,
well-proven F6F Hellcat design by OMFC member Lionel Haines (thanks Lionel) is a sure-fire flyer.
We’re planning for the September 2024 Club meeting at Begbroke to be an early opportunity to get to grips with the construction techniques and might also involve the opportunity to make a prop (the only really taxing bit) from a kit of parts. ‘Expert’ guidance will be on hand. If time allows, it might also include preparation of the foam pieces and collecting all the other bits and pieces needed.
And to round it all off, a flying evening/mêlée at the January 2025 Begbroke meeting will decide the lucky/wily/skilful winners! Flying will be a simple duration event, flying points will the usual Total of Three Flights. Time to start researching your winning entry!…
How to Design Your Own Foamie Warbird – Andy Blackburn
Having designed a couple of foamie warbirds I thought it might be a nice idea to write a few words on how it’s done – it really is very straightforward, and the outlines don’t have to be dead accurate, all we’re looking for is something that captures the essence pf the real aircraft.
All this started with a one-model event for Lionel Haines’ foamie F6F Hellcat that was held at Trinity some years ago; however, it was a one-model competition so I thought it might be quite amusing to try and subvert the proceedings…
Kawanishi N1-K “George”
In WW2 the real F6F was sometimes confused with the Kawanishi N1-K “George”, so I evolved a devious plan:
A fullsize PDF of the plan can be downloaded here
First, draw up a copy of Lionel’s F6F plan with the outlines changed to represent a Kawanishi “George”
Second, build the model and swear blind that it was built from Lionel’s plan, just not very well (impossible to disprove).
Finally, finish the model in an Authentic Japanese Navy colour scheme and claim that it represented an F6F Hellcat that had been captured and was undergoing evaluation (also impossible to disprove).
In the event that the model was excluded I was going to make a song and dance about it, with a pre-prepared speech including phrases such as “manifestly unfair” and “travesty of justice”… It would have been interesting to see whether I could have got away with it, but fate intervened, and I didn’t get the model finished. But David Lovegrove has built one and it’s quite impressive.
Hawker Hurricane Mk II
I recently drew up this Hawker Hurricane plan to the same basic principles; as it’s an inline engine with a spinner, it’s a little more complex. But it looks nice, and David is building one (can’t stop himself).
A fullsize PDF of the plan can be downloaded here
Blackburn Skua
A fullsize PDF of the plan can be downloaded here
Doing It Yourself
Drawing up these things is really easy because you usually don’t need to worry about finding a front view – if built to the A4 sheet size, models always get 20 mm of dihedral each side unless they have a noticeably flat wing (e.g. Hawker Hurricane), in which case they get 12 mm. The fuselage top view is always 17 mm wide, tapering behind the wing. The wall foam itself is a little less than 2 mm thick, I usually use 1.8 mm in TurboCAD and that seems to work OK.
The design process is very simple; assuming that we’re using pencil and paper (experienced CAD users will be familiar with duplicating this process electronically):
1. Choose the Subject
Find a drawing or colour 3-view of a subject that you like; there are loads of scale drawings at https://drawingdatabase.com/category/aircraft/air-force/fighter/ but the drawing below is from the well-known series of books by Kenneth Munson (in this case, “Fighters 1939-45”) originally published by Blandford.
Don’t worry too much about the fin and tailplane sizes because they’ll be enlarged to a decent size anyway – it’s only cartoon scale. Radial-engined aircraft are easier and simpler. Let’s assume that we’re going to do a Nakajima Ki-44 Shoki (drawing on left).
2. Make a Copy to the right Size
Print the drawing, measure the wingspan and then re-print at the correct size – you want a wingspan of about 11” (281 mm) to make it fit onto A4 paper if you’re showing both left and right wings together, so if the span of the drawing is 104 mm, you need to print it out at 281/104 = 2.70x or 270%
3. Trace the Outline and Adjust as Necessary
Tape down the drawing and tape some tracing paper over the top, trace the outlines and any important areas such as the canopy framing, re-positioning the tracing paper as necessary. Stop at this point and have a good look at the tail surfaces – are they a bit small compared to the available plans (Hellcat/N1-K “George”/Hurricane)? If so (as in this case), re-draw the outlines until they look about the same size as the reference designs (you could use the enlargement facility on your scanner). If you’re unsure what to do about the fin, leave it alone. For aircraft such as this Ki-44 which has a titchy tiny fin, enlarge it by 50% of the tailplane enlargement (so if the tailplane was enlarged by say 30%, enlarge the fin by 15%).
4. Add the flying surfaces in Side View
Copy the wing section from one of the existing plans, enlarge/reduce using your copier and add it to the side view, making sure that it has +2.5 degrees incidence. Tailplanes should be set at 0 degrees. The wing might need moving up a little bit so that it doesn’t interfere with the foam sheeting on the bottom of the fuselage.
5. Finish off with Details
Finish off with the top and bottom sheeting, doublers, noseblock, prop assembly, and so on, and you’re almost finished – don’t forget the downthrust. Make up some cardboard templates from a cereal packet for cutting foam to shape, and you’re done.
6. Test flying
This is one model that you must test-glide, because the wing incidence and decalage is already set, so the safest way of getting a good set-up is to test-glide the thing in the living-room. You might find it easier to remove the noseblock and adjust the glide until it floats nicely, then find out where the c.g. is by taping a couple of short lengths of cocktail stick to the wing top surface and balancing it in the fingers upside-down. Then install the rubber and prop and, wind some turns on to stop the motor flopping around and messing things up, pin the prop in place and then balance in the same place. Then you can wind on a few turns and see what it does.
Building A Foamie Warbird
Bob Lee
The aim of this piece is to provide some help and guidance to those intending to build a model for our Foamie Warbird Challenge. I’ll illustrate the build using the Kawanishi ‘George’ but the Hellcat and the Hurricane will build in much the same way and you can easily use the techniques to build your own design.
This will be the way I built the model; others way well have their own ideas which I’ll admit could be better or quicker than mine but I did what I knew would work for me. Whatever you do, although this may only be a small, cheap, fun build, treat it as seriously as you would a major build. It’s no secret that the only successful model is one that is built straight and true.
Things you will need outside of kits that were supplied are:-
A decent sharp knife. I use a Swann Morton No 3 scalpel handle with No 11 blades and I get through a lot of blades. A cheaper alternative would be a ‘snap off knife’ from B&Q or similar.
Adhesive: I mainly used UHU Por because I have used it in the past and had some. However I am led to believe the Deluxe Material Foam 2 Foam glue is a better choice. I also used small amounts of PVA and a glue stick.
Card for templates: I cut card templates for all the foam parts. Just place the template on the foam and cut around it. I use artists mounting board from Hobby Craft. This is 2mm thick but can be cut with a scalpel and won’t distort as you cut around it. Cereal packet is traditional but to my mind, too flimsy. Keep the templates so that making a 2nd or even 3rd model is very easy. To make the templates, cut the parts from the plan and glue them to the card using a glue stick.
Decoration and markings: Permanent markers work well and add little weight. Windsor and Newton do a range of colours in Promarker range available at art stores
It’s a fact of life that experienced builders normally make changes to a plan when they see what they think is a better way of doing things. I am no exception so you will see places where I have done things differently to the plan.
Let’s start with the fuselage and, before you go any further, you have a decision to make. The plan for theKawanishi shows that the top and bottom surfaces go inside the fuselage side pieces, i.e., flush with them. I studied the picture of the model built by David Lovegrove and the top and bottom surfaces are on top of the side pieces since he thought that this would make an easier build. I agree and built mine that way.
The first job is to make templates for the fuselage sides and bottom. If you are doing as I did, then the side needs to be cut to the dotted line and the bottom piece to the outside line. After cutting out you should have templates looking like this :-
You will see two other things at the top of the picture. These are intended as temporary internal formers to help keep things square during the build and are cut to the internal width of the fuselage. I made two but actually only used one.
In the picture below you can see that I have cut two side pieces and two bottom pieces (one of which has gone wonky at the back end!). One ‘bottom’ piece is of course for the bottom, the other will be cut up and used for top which I did in more than one piece. In any case the top will be longer than the bottom so I made one more partial piece for this which is the parallel section.
Since the foam comes on a roll, it will curl up. The solution to this is to iron the pieces flat once you have cut them. I placed the foam on a glossy magazine (Aeromodeller or RCM&E!) and used my covering iron. I can’t tell you what temperature it was set to, other than it was halfway, so a bit of trial and error is involved. If you feel the iron sticking, then it’s too hot. You want it just below this point.
To cut the balsa pieces, I cut the shapes out from the plan and stuck them to the balsa using a glue stick. If you cut the piece out straight away then you can just pull the bit of plan off afterwards (if necessary, Isopropyl Alcohol will release the glue). You can now see why you need so many copies of the plan!
The next stage is to glue the balsa doublers to the fuselage sides and for this I used PVA since it gives time to slide the parts around into position. Be sure to make a handed pair as below. I used 1/16” balsa for the doublers but am told this restricts the space available at the nose. 1/64” ply, as supplied in the kits prepared by the Club, will avoid this problem.
Now is also a good time to drill the holes for the rear motor peg. These need to be sized so that they are good, secure fit for the rear motor peg tube.
OK, now you can start to assemble the fuselage, as in the picture below:
Firstly, I held the side down to the cutting mat using yellow (low tack) Duck masking tape. With care this won’t tear the foam when it is removed. I then glued on the bottom piece but only as far as the back of the wing. This is the parallel section of the fuselage. Leave the back end till later. I also added F1, this helps keep things square. When this was dry, I added the second side as below:-
I added the top piece in several stages, starting at the front (note the temporary former to keep it all square):-
You guessed it, the next piece is the canopy, and that former is still there. It comes out of the back then this is dry.
The next job requires great care! Glue the sides to the back end of the lower piece, taking great care to build a straight fuselage rather than a banana shaped one! It’s best to do this is small stages and take your time. Assuming you’ve got this OK, add the top surface in the same way.
Now is the time to check that everything is straight, square and true. If that is the case then congratulate yourself; that’s the hardest part done. If the fuselage isn’t true in any way then I’m afraid that it’s best to go back and try another one. This is where those templates that you cut will come in useful. Having a second go will be quicker than the first time.
With the fuselage out of the way, it’s time to start on the wings and it will be no surprise that the first job is to make a template. Note that the wing root isn’t a straight line, it has a very slight concave curve to it. This hopefully ensures that the two wing halves mate up correctly when they are joined. This time the curl in the foam can be used to advantage, so cut the wings such that they curl in the chord direction to start to form the aerofoil. You can see this in the picture below. You need to reverse the template for one wing.
Time for the spar and this is somewhere that I deviated from the plan. The plan shows a 1/32 thick spar glued to the underside of the wing and certainly this is an easy way to do it. What I did was cut a 2mm wide strip (that’s the thickness of the foam) from a sheet of 1/16” balsa (lovely use of mixed units there!). I then cut a 1/16” wide strip from the wing at the spar position and glued the two halves together with the spar in the middle, as below:-
Actually, taping it down, as I did, wasn’t my best idea ever. The excess glue (PVA) from the joint ensured that the whole thing ended up stuck to the cutting mat. I had to slide a steel rule underneath in order to free it. (Baking paper between the mat and the foam can stop it sticking. I use Silicon Baking Paper.. Ed)
You now need to join the two wing halves. The dihedral is 20mm under each wingtip, so you need a couple of suitable spacers for this. Actually, I have a box full of spacers from previous models and the chances are that the right spacers are in the box (somewhere!), and this was the case this time. So it’s worth making some decent spacers (I use mounting board, same as my templates) and keeping them. Spring the wing halves into something like the correct aerofoil and bring them together at the correct dihedral angle. With a bit of luck, they will mate up fairly well. If not, then you will have to make some adjustments to the curve that I mentioned earlier. The joint doesn’t have to be perfect, I used UHU POR for this and it’s a pretty good gap filler. The picture below shows my wings being joined:-
The plan calls for the joint to be reinforced with carbon tows which I don’t have so I just used a strip of tissue instead, this was glued with some thinned down PVA brushed through the tissue:-
The next step is to slide the wing into the slot in the fuselage. With a bit of luck this shouldn’t be too difficult. Check that the joint is in the centre of the fuselage and that the dihedral is the same both sides. To secure the wing I slightly diluted some PVA and brushed this into the wing/fuselage joint. At last it’s beginning to look like an airplane:
The tailplane and fin are no problem but I did add a spar to them both in the same way that I did on the wing. You do also have to ensure that the tailplane is ‘parallel’ to the wing. Mine wasn’t (the back of the fuselage is twisted) so I pushed a small balsa wedge underneath the tailplane (at the spar position) on the side that was low. Now it’s really looking complete:-
You can now turn your attention to the noseblock/prop. The first thing that I did was cut out the noseplug to fit inside the opening in F1. This needs to be a good fit or it will fall out when the motor runs down. But it mustn’t be too tight either! I made mine from 1/8” which is thicker than shown on the plan. This allows for some downthrust packing later.
Next for the noseblock. I cut two pieces of 1/16” balsa oversized and glued them together cross grained then glued this into the centre:-
I then offered this up to the model and marked out the outline of the front of the model :-
Cutting just inside the marked line produced a noseblock that was a good fit into the front of the model. For consistency you do need to always fit the noseblock the same round, so mark the back in some way to ensure this. The above process was a bit long winded. I hope it made sense!
The noseblock can now be drilled in the centre for the prop bearing. The bearing needs to be a good tight fit into the hole; if it can move around at all then cyano it into place but take great care not to get cyano into the hole (don’t ask how I know that !). The edges of the noseblock can then be rounded off:-
I’m not sure if the kit was supplied with a pre-formed hook on the prop shaft or not (it was). If it isn’t then you need to form one, as I did in the picture above. A diamond shape is easiest: don’t make it too big or it won’t be able to rotate freely (the fuselage is very narrow here).
To finish the prop/noseblock, pass the propshaft through from the back of the bearing, slide on a glass bead and the prop. Then put a 90 degree bend in the propshaft, cut it to length and secure it to the prop with a few turns of thread and a small drop of cyano very very carefully applied – you absolutely must not let it get anywhere near the foam!
That’s it. A complete model!
I had to put it on the scales, 3.7 grams which I thought was OK. Happy with that.
Nobody is going to be able to resist a quick test glide at this point and a bedroom is the best place. Mine needed a small amount of tailweight but you should be able to get slow, floaty guide. Test glide with the prop in place.
To fit the rubber motor, cut the rear motor peg to length and check it fits. It will also be much easier to load the motor if you cut a small hole in the underside of the fuselage at the motor peg position:-
As a starting point, cut a length of rubber (the kit is supplied with 55 thou), 3 times the length between the rear motor peg and the front hook. Join the ends; an overhand knot should be OK with this thin rubber. At this point there will be an overwhelming temptation to try a power flight at home. This really isn’t a good idea as you are unlikely to learn much and may well damage the prop when you hit something (which you will). Better to take it to one of the Berinsfield or Trinity meetings and fly it in a decent sized hall with lots of free advice available.
I haven’t flown mine yet so at this stage won’t give any trimming advice, others that have flown one may be able to do that.
Have fun!
Addendum from David Lovegrove: I’ve built and flown both the Kawanishi and the Hurricane and I’m pleased to say that I found Andy Blackburn’s designs to be spot-on. Neither needed much in the way of trimming. You can easily bend the flying surfaces to induce a turn, or to adjust the flight attitude. In a larger space you can be more generous with the radius of the turn, so maybe a trip to the next event at Berinsfield would be a good way to get to know the models’ characteristics?
Members models are starting to appear if you have some build pics send them to me at webmaster@oxfordmfc.bmfa.uk and I’ll add them to the page.
To kick things off here’s Alan Trinder’s lovely Focke Wulf
Alan printed directly onto the foam using a laser printer, this can though burn the foam so watch out for that if you try it yourself
Blackburn Skua – Andy Blackburn
Building a Cartoon Foamy Warbird – Andy Blackburn
This is a brief build blog for a cartoon foamy warbird, the plan for which should be downloadable somewhere around here.
Did most of the decoration before assembly as this seemed easiest, it required a bit of experimentation with pens and stencils to work out how to do the colouring; turns out that the wall foam is a bit like blotting paper so you have to be quick and light with the pens.
Ordinary masking tape can be used to guide the pen as long as almost all of the adhesive is removed by running it through the fingers. I urge practice and experimentation.
This shows all the parts cut (using card templates) and decorated. There are still some details to add.
Stage 1 of the fuselage. The second former is made from 1/16” square and costs 1/20 of a gram but it makes assembly very much easier. Note that the slots for the wing have been cut, but not all the way through and were left in place so that the fuselage was a bit more stable during assembly.
Stage 2, fuselage sides are joined. The top and bottom pieces are then added. Deluxe Materials Foam 2 Foam adhesive and thick foam-safe CA was used for most of the construction.
Dihedral was set using bits of BluTack (carefully) to keep everything in place until the glue set. Canopy framing was done using the thinnest black fire-tip pen. It doesn’t have to be dead accurate, it just has to suggest that the model represents the subject aircraft.
This is the fuselage more-or-less finished. Suspicious observers might notice what looks like Tippex on the top of the canopy, almost as though a mistake had been made. I’m not saying that there was one and if there had been one I’d pretend that there hadn’t, but I do urge you to look at a photo of the canopy framing before blithely drawing lines on the model without a care in the world…
Assembly is straightforward but remember to check everything for squareness in all three views before applying the glue. Foam 2 Foam can be used like ordinary glue, which is what I did.
Above right is a view of the 1/32” square basswood spars (obtainable from Mantua Models and model railway shops) that are simply glued to the bottom of the wings with Foam 2 Foam after all the panels have been joined. The dihedral joints were fixed with foam-safe CA which has made it quite rigid.
And there we have it, a Blackburn Skua from 803 squadron, HMS Ark Royal 1939.
Total weight is a little less than 3.5 grams and it’s slightly nose-heavy without rubber.
Here’s an almost finished Hawker Typhoon from Chris Brainwood using printed tissue .
This does add to to the weight though which is around 4.5g
