Hello Roger,
The metal Chilton is being built in Taree, New South Wales, and I’ve been working on it since December last year. It is indeed built to fly, the Chiltons are lovely looking classics and regrettably there are only a few around. Not being a wood person, building it in metal was an easy choice for me and my previous project was a 75% Spitfire which was good preparation. I’m currently working on the outer wing panels and hope to have the basic construction finished by July.
I downloaded a set of Roys plans, had a look at the website and have also sourced a number of good quality large scale model plans to get sufficient information to modify the structure of the aircraft, as building it according to the original wood plans is not feasible. While the fuselage was pretty straightforward and is generally similar to the wooden version, the wings and tail feathers needed some extensive redesign with the loads and required material thickness calculated by a static engineer. We had to change the spar arrangement as the wooden spars didn’t translate and also use a modified NACA12 profile to handle bending loads. That said, the outer mould line and dimensions are basically unchanged and should retain the character of the original Chiltons.
The engine is going to be a 80hp Rotax 912 in a close fitting cowl, empty weight will be about 100lbs more than than the original and cruise and VNE will be slightly higher. A friend is interested to also build one so I have made templates and his aircraft is in the early stages of construction, pending the static load testing (4g) of my airframe.
Please give my regards to Roy, his plans have been very helpful and have made this endeavour much more straightforward.
Kind regards,
Chris Weber
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