Also in my garage
The team behind Classic Jaguar Replicas also does a fine line in model aircraft
Phil and Oli Cottrell may be familiar names to regular readers, having helped out various members of the C&SC team over the past 15 years with their considerable experience. Along with recent addition John Davis, the trio makes up Classic Jaguar Replicas – the Berkshire-based outfit hand-crafting Jaguar C-type, D-type and XKSS recreations.
One look around their busy workshop – which has a proper ‘men in sheds’ feel to it – and you soon start to notice that not everything they construct has four wheels.
“I built my first model plane in 1976,” says Phil, “It was a Kamco Kadet, a high-wing trainer with an Enya 40 engine.” The inspiration was simple: “I had friends who were pilots, and they were all into building and flying model aircraft.”
He soon moved into scale models that were more accurate – a fifth-scale Spitfire and Hurricane being among the first builds he completed – and it was little wonder that son Oli was eventually bitten by the bug.
“I grew up surrounded by cars and aeroplanes thanks to Dad,” says Oli, “but I’ve only really been flying them for the past eight years.”
He also started with a high-wing trainer but graduated into scale kits – a sixth-scale Tiger Moth being one of the models occupying space in the workshop and the loft room back at home.
The kits, largely constructed from balsa and plywood, are for the most part powered by lithium-polymer batteries with a flying time of around six minutes, but in recent years the planes the pair build are incorporating a lot more carbonfibre components – the perfect material for something that requires strength without an increase in weight.
A good example of that evolution is the blueand-yellow Extreme Flight Edge 540T, held in the main picture above by Davis. “It’s still largely made from balsa and plywood,” explains Oli, “but the wing-support tubes are carbonfibre.
That means it has the strength to be able to perform some fairly extreme aerobatic manoeuvres compared to the more traditional models.”
Davis, who recently made his debut at Maidenhead Radio Modellers – a club formed back in 1948 – nods in agreement: “He flies that like he drives one of the C-types!”
Oli’s newest addition is a fifth-scale Wot 4 XL, a recent birthday gift from his dad: “It’s powered by a 20cc, 2.5hp two-stroke petrol engine,” he explains with enthusiasm. “I wanted a larger sports model and it’ll do around 60-70mph; it will do rolls and the like, but it’s not really built for that. However, I don’t have the limitations of the battery life, which is nice.”
The Cottrells are both licensed instructors and will be teaching Davis, who has already informed his wife that he has a new hobby. For the father-and-son team, though, the rewards are easy to explain. “It’s a great social scene and the flying is exhilarating,” says Oli, “but for us it’s nice that we can approach building and flying the models with the same precision and art that we put into our Jaguars.”
So what’s the ultimate? For Phil it has to be a quarter-scale Spitfire, which could come along after he’s built the Hurricane and twin-engined models still in their boxes. Oli fancies a thirdscale Pitts Special, based upon the biplane of Curtis Pitts that first flew in 1944.