Model Planes

WWI replica Fokker is hand-built and powered by a mower engine

It could be a stunt from a First World War epic - the German fighter plane preparing to swoop in for an air battle to the death.

But while the replica Fokker Eindecker looks like a Hollywood prop, the plane was actually built by amateur pilot Dave Stephens at his home.

The single-seater is one of two self-assembled aircraft that he regularly takes to heights of up to 10,000ft over Essex. Fair enough, perhaps. Until you ask the 41-year- old about the engine powering it.

He enthusiastically points out that the original 1915 model had 'a big old-fashioned rotary engine in the front', while 'the engine in mine is an adapted lawnmower engine'. 'It's 690cc, which is half the size of the engine in the family car parked outside your house.'

The cockpit is open to the air ('when it rains, it doesn't half hurt your face'), the wings are made out of 'a fabric so fine that you could punch a hole in it', the metal fuselage is desperately flimsy and the whole structure weighs just 114 kilos, or 18 stone.

And what does it sound like? A lawnmower, of course. But that takes away none of the romance, insists Mr Stephens. 'When you're flying in the Fokker, it's a feeling unlike any other."

Also:

Model B-50 Bomber

Tony Nijhuis built this functional model of the Boeing B-50 bomber, a postwar variant of the B-29:

The real bomber had four engines, so he hunted down four of the biggest electric motors he could find. He created 2-D sketches of the body, wings and tail using AutoCAD and commissioned a laser-cutting company to handle the more than 300 custom segments he needed.
To make the plastic nose and gun canopies, Nijhuis first had to hand-carve wooden molds of each one. For the retractable landing gear, he hooked an off-the-shelf pneumatic system up to pressurized air tanks made from plastic Coke bottles. He also skinned the balsa-wood-ribbed fuselage with laminate wood composite and fiberglass.

To make his model more realistic, Nijhuis added speakers that play the sound that the engines from the actual B-50 made. The entire project took two years and cost $9,000.

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