Miles M38 Messenger from Aeromodeller plans

[Bill G]

This will be my second Miles aircraft in recent times, after building an Aerovan recently from scratch. The vintage Aeromodeller plans seem to generally be good workable plans, with this one found at outerzone.uk. This plan was drawn by HJ Pridmore, and the prototype M48 was likely chosen for giant scale rubber, as it lacks the added weight and complexity of the M38's flaps. Since the M38 is the commonly known version of the plane, the build will be an M38 build with slotted flaps similar to the Aerovan. I also recently built the Aeromodeller Heston Phoenix plan by Eric Fearnley, which is an excellent off the board flyer. Both designs use a thick airfoil, which proved to have a good speed range on the Phoenix and dismissed some of my concerns about using a thick section on a model this size. I had a geared setup that was planned for use on the Phoenix, but proved to be slightly heavier than needed for the application. Lo and behold, the M38 has a very similar cowl/vent opening which the ply gearbox mount was configured for, so it may prove useful for this build. The plans were enlarged slightly beyond the 37" span to 40" thanks to Adobe, which was not intentional but acceptable. I recently got an update of the free package that would actually print all the pages, for the first time. I've never used Adobe in the past for printing plans, and will likely revert back to my prior method of scaling which is bit cumbersome but exact. On a real Miles building trend, the Aeromodeller Speed Six is another model on the list.

The parts set was cut out using a method which I've been using for quite some time with accurate results. The wood stock is placed under the plan, where the part outlines are scored over with a dull exacto knife. The scoring leaves an imprint for cutting, while not cutting through the plan. After cutting out the master part, a second part is cut using the master as a template, as most parts are required in sets of two. No cutting templates are needed, and a parts set can be cut rapidly.

Using Dubro parts, Micro Losi-T shocks, plastic and aluminum tubing and a few other bits, the landing gear assemblies with functional shocks were fabricated for the plane. It's amazing what can be fabricated, using off-the-shelf Dubro and other hardware.

My favorite so far is this red model:


This photo shows a good view of the gear struts: