Page 51 - MFW March 2024

fitted with a French Ava 27hp, two-stroke flat four but was
underpowered.

A second Kitten was built with various modifications and
fitted with a more powerful JAP engine and flew later that
year, registration G-AEXT. The purchase price in 1938
was 360 pounds. The two aircraft flew again after WWII
but sadly both crashed killing the pilots but G-AEXT was
not destroyed.

A third Kitten was assembled in 1951 from kit parts stored
in a garage in Loudwater, Buckinghamshire. This machine
had further minor mods with a registered G-AMJP. It too
later crashed.

The only surviving aircraft of this type is G-AEXT and was
owned by Alan Hartfield many years ago. This was fitted
with Aeronca JAP-99 engine of 35hp. It has had two
owners since then I believe but I will come to that later.

The model spans 2440 mm (96 inches) with a design
weight of 5.3kg (11.68 lbs). Par Lundquest is renowned for
designing light constructed models and therefore
suggested the model be powered with a 60 size four
stroke. This would give a realistic scale speed but I
thought it may be marginal! Par’s prototype model
weighed 4.7kg!

The model fuselage construction is mainly a box
construction from balsa with suggested 0.4 mm thin ply
side reinforcing. A Ply fire wall and ply engine mount
reinforced with hardwood supplies the strength for the
engine. The wing panels again are conventional balsa
with some panels reinforced with 0.4 ply. The
undercarriage is a sprung steel rod unit set into a rigid
hardwood and ply box. The wings slot into the fuselage
centre sections via aluminium square boxes which I
changed in favour of carbon tubes within tubes set inside
the undercarriage boxes and ply/hardwood boxes in the
wings. The rudder has a pull-pull set up and the elevator is
designed to operate inside the rear of the fuselage as per
the full size. The whole elevator/stabiliser is removable as
per the full size. Each aileron has its own servo. The top of
the fuselage in front and behind the pilot is removable,
held in place with a number of caps screws making fitting
controls and tank etc easier.

Having checked with the local model shops I found that
the amount of 0.4 ply was either very expensive and/or
difficult to obtain. I therefore substituted the ply with 10
and 8 micron fibreglass sheet from the late Brian Borland
at Airsale, which as you can imagine is exceptionally
strong, but needed polyurethane glue to adhere to the
balsa. The 8 micron sheet was used for the wing panels.

Par’s prototype had an OS 60 four stroke fitted; I had an
Enya 60 spare from a previous model and fitted this
believing the small additional power would be sufficient. I
built a dummy port cylinder head by creating a silicon
mould of the Enya, then creating a urothane replica. I did
not build and fit the exhaust system thinking that this may
get damaged during initial test flying.

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