DRAWING UP AN... AICHI D3A1/2 VAL

摘要

My main reason for not designing and building more World War Two aircraft has been my local flying field. Most of the aircraft I could have considered would require retracting undercarriages and the rough grass strip that I fly from is nowhere near good enough for this. I could have modelled aircraft with fixed undercarriages but this does put a limit on the number of aircraft from this period that would be available for a practical scale model. In the past I have considered the Fokker DXXI, the Junkers 87 Stuka, the Fieseler Fi156 Storch, the Mitsubishi A5M Claude and the Polish PZL P24 fighter. I did draw up a model of the Japanese Nakajima Ki 27 Nate and a model has been built from the drawing. The model has not been flown yet but I can see few problems. A similar sized model flew very well indeed at the Canadian World Scale Championships in 2002.I also started some drawings for the Fokker DXXI but when one of the Dutch team brought along a beautiful example to the Scale World Championships in France my interest waned.