Last Sunday I travelled up to Haigh Hall, near Wigan, for the Large Model Association meet. It was an excellent show with lots of very impressive models, there were some nice ‘old timers’, a beautiful De Haviland Hornet and, most impressive, a 1/7th scale Airbus, not to mention the 1/3rd scale Hawker Hunter. Some of the models there can be seen at the LMA website at
http://www.largemodelassociation.com/
While at the show I met the builder of the FW 190 namely Phil who runs a company called Fighteraces, from Phil learned that the air retracts that were purchased for this model were available and after the folding stuff changed hands I had them. Fighteraces have a good range of scale kits and parts and their website is worth a look at
http://www.fighteraces.co.uk/
The retracts are of US manufacture and beautifully made, I mentioned to Phil that I didn’t like the way they moved fast in a non-scale way, his reply was to show me a control valve that incorporates a pair of needle valve allowing the legs to retract as slow as you like and even at different rates.
One leg has been fitted into the wing and it really looks the part, unfortunately I had already modified the other mount to suit the mechanical retracts so I need to un-modify it, luckily I had to reduce the bearer spacing so it will be easy to remove the spacers and redrill the original holes.
You may be interested in seeing a 40” wingspan ducted-fan model I purchased at the show. It was an own design but came out looking very like the Typhoon. It is beautifully made with Spring-Air retracts and an OS 46 VR DF engine. I fear that my reactions would be too slow now for a model like this so after completing it I will probably sell it.