Toy Planes at Flixton …………..
A few months ago, David Dawson was merrily surfing the internet when he saw some plans and maybe photos of a sit on toy biplane for young children. The drawings included details for a pedal mechanism which also rotated a propeller and he thought what a good idea it would be to make one (or more) for the visiting children to ride on.
However, common sense in the form of David Hardisty declared that children could not be allowed to pedal these toys around the hangars and beyond willy nilly, and that they would whip off the propellers in no time at all. Therefore, a compromise was reached and it was decided that parents could push these toy planes around the hangars with their child in the toy seat. To allow the planes to be pushed around a sort of steerable pram handle was designed (and constructed) by David H.
David Dawson downloaded the toys plans but decided that he was too busy at the moment to think about constructing the toy and so the plans passed from hand to hand and eventually ended up with a bemused Ken Huckle who felt that he had been lumbered.
The drawings turned out to be somewhat incomplete and many dimensions were unreadable. After a lot of head scratching and re-designing, the final Flixton toy biplane was complete.
This model inspired Barry to make a monoplane version something like a Hawker Hurricane.
A lady visitor to Flixton gave her baby daughter a ride on the biplane and was impressed enough to ask if we could possibly make one for her.
David H is now making a triplane version in the colours of the Red Barron. Ken Huckle not to be outdone is working on a Red Arrows version.
Where will it all end ?
