Fly Hafner Rotachute

[Michael louey]

 

So after finishing a couple of Spitfires, this came up on the Production Line. It was going from the sublime to the ridiculous.

British inventors are great for innovative ideas and some are quite left field. A number of them have really advanced aviation - In Flight refuelling, Practical VTOL Fighters, mirror landing systems. Sometimes the ideas don't really take on though and this is one of them. The idea was a controllable machine to land agents precisely behind enemy lines. The more practical alternative used was dropping them off with STOL aircraft like the Lysander. I wonder how the agent would hide this thing after landing....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kit is miniscule and other than handling very small parts, there were no real issues with the kit. There are a couple of items Fly wants you to "scatchbuild" which I found interesting. The main problem is how to stop this being a tail sitter as there is no place to put weights. The only solution is sticking it to a base which is basically the top of a jam jar with a cutout from a cardboard tarmac base.

 

Cheers

 

Michael

Edited April 18, 2018 by Michael louey
Postimage issues

[CedB]

Nice job on an unusual subject Michael - I like it!

[Stew Dapple]

Nice model of an interesting design Michael  

 

Presumably it would have been camouflaged had it progressed to the operational stage; the only other option would be to find a lorry-load of giant bananas to hide it in after landing

 

Cheers,

 

STew

[invidia]

Strange looking thing!! Nice build.

[Reini78]

that´s something you don´t see often...

cool, nice work

[JWM]

Nice! - what scale is it? What producent, or scratch?

BTW - the concept of giroglider was also on other side (FA 330)

Cheers

J-W

[Dave Swindell]

6 hours ago, Michael louey said:

British inventors are great for innovative ideas

Raoul Hafner was Austrian and interned as an enemy alien at the start of WW2. He did become a naturalised Briton though.

[Aeronut]

Hafner's drawings for the Rotachute show a Bren gun slung fore/aft under the seat. His reports suggest that the location of this gun would allow the pilot to use it during descent.

Would that have made the Rotachute the world's smallest Ground Attack Fighter?

[Michael louey]

On 23/02/2017 at 7:02 PM, JWM said:

Nice! - what scale is it? What producent, or scratch?

BTW - the concept of giroglider was also on other side (FA 330)

Cheers

J-W

 

Hi J-W,

 

The Rotachute is a kit by "Fly" models. It is 1/72nd however "Fly" also produce this kit in 1/32nd where it is still not very large but the detail will be more visible. One of our club members has this kit.

I know of the FA330, I built one alongside this RotaChute -

 

 

Full details of the build here

 

http://z15.invisionfree.com/72nd_Aircraft/index.php?showtopic=8975

 

On 23/02/2017 at 7:19 PM, Dave Swindell said:

Raoul Hafner was Austrian and interned as an enemy alien at the start of WW2. He did become a naturalised Briton though.

 

Thanks for the info Dave. He sounds like the British counterpart of our Fred David, the Austrian Jew who designed the CAC Boomerang. He was interned at the start of the war and had to report to the police fortnightly while designing the Boomerang. Goes to show that immigrants who have experienced persecution show a greater desire to "do their bit" than locals who haven't experienced what they are facing.

 

Thanks for the comments guys.

 

Cheers

 

Michael

Edited July 3, 2017 by Michael louey

[JWM]

Hi Michael

I did not noticed that Fly is producing it, somehow...Have to look for it. 

I have FA 330 on my shelves also

Cheers

J-W

 

[Michael louey]

47 minutes ago, JWM said:

Hi Michael

I did not noticed that Fly is producing it, somehow...Have to look for it. 

I have FA 330 on my shelves also

Cheers

J-W

 

Hi J-W,

 

Good luck getting a RotaChute - Though a dead end, it is cute. I got mine really cheap at the local Hobby Shop (I think it was about AUS $10 about half the price I've seen it online).

 

I had a look at your FA 330 - Well Done! You've added more detail than me however it looks like you used my initial rigging technique with thread. I had real trouble with tension and replaced it with wire!

 

Cheers

 

Michael

[JWM]

7 hours ago, Michael louey said:

I had a look at your FA 330 - Well Done! You've added more detail than me however it looks like you used my initial rigging technique with thread. I had real trouble with tension and replaced it with wire!

Thanks! I like FA 330 from yours photos as well.

indeed, i replaced almost all PE metal parts by scatch plastics, adding some more details, but you are right - the lost of tension in riging is visble. Now I would use EZ. Thin copper wire is also a good option here since the acess good, so you may do easy some pre-tension. Once I was trying to use metal wires for riging (for example in Spanish Potez 540) but then I found them a bit not convenient due to need of realy good directional drilling of holes.

Cheers

J-W