1/5 Scale Kawasaki KI-100

I just happened to have a set of Robart retracts for a 1/6 scale P51 in my shop, a new 50mm brushless out runner motor and a stack of wood and foam so I decided to build a Kawasaki Ki100 with a wingspan right around 82” since the retracts seam to fit this size model nicely.

It took about a week to create the Cad drawings needed for the fuselage parts and a total of two days to glue all the parts together once they were laser cut. The fuselage is comprised of an inner box structure made out of ¼” square bass and balsa sticks. The formers are made from either 1/8” 3 Ply Birch or 1/8” Lite Ply. The formers are simply slid over their corresponding locations and glued in place. I added 1/8” sheet balsa wing saddle doublers to both sides of the fuselage. Next came the 1/8” balsa sheeting. I didn’t have any light A-grain wood so it was truly a pain trying to apply 8 to 10 pound B-C grain over the curved portions of the body. I even had to plank the bottom rear portion of the fuselage and planning isn’t my favorite thing to do.

The last photo shows the top front portion of the fuselage. This is the only area I’m not sure about on how scale it is. Does anyone know if this portion of the fuselage widens like I have it. I’d be willing to cut out these sections and replace it with balsa blocks for a truer scale appearance if someone can show me the correct shape.

To keep this project simple I’ve decided to cut foam cores for the wing and stab.