March 2013 – Recent photos from our friend John Bird in Australia

“Progress report of Keil Kraft Senator (one of the “Pan Pacific build and fly with friends” choice of models representative of classic era of free flight rubber powered kits and popular postal model competition models.

Mine is built from the original Keil Kraft plan, but is converted to electric RC. My design pays homage to the large hand-carved balsa props used on free flight rubber powered models by using a planetary geared brushed motor and a large ‘slow fly’ carbon prop (motor system shown is one of three different plug-in electric power systems options built of this electric conversion. The one shown in this photo is encased within the nose block).

The micro electronic electronics battery, esc and RX are yet to be fitted – the servos seen in these photos were positioned to merely to place and fit the rudder and elevator push rods. I am yet to assembled the complete electronic system and to establish their location within the fuselage relative to the CG position for each of the three different motor prop options.

To facilitate transport and storage, the under carriage plugs into tubes in the fuselage and is held in place with a micro rare earth magnet. The tail plane is removable and is held in place with a small nylon bolt.

Roger Gibbs kindly gave myself and Greg Egan a demonstration of his method and expertise in covering with Lite Span an under cambered wing and the compound curves of the wing tips.

I am sure when you see photos of the final covered ready-to-fly Senator Roger’s expertise in the covering of the mainplane will be apparent.

Roger is also building a Senator, his will be rubber powered with a hand carved balsa prop as per the original.
He has included a small departure from the original free flight model, by having micro rc operated rudder control.”