TOYER'S TIGER PICTORIAL

‘Lord of Scale’ Dave Toyer's Tiger Moth even uses some real De Havilland parts!’

- Alex Whittaker

The De Havilland Tiger Moth has been celebrated in these pages many times so I will pass over the usual historical sketch. This gives us space for even more pictures of a truly magisterial Tiger Moth model spotted at the Nats.

This superb version was built by Dave Toyer. In traditional modelling circles, BMFA Nats competitor Dave Toyer amounts to royalty. You see, back in the day, Dave was also that tall, fresh-faced young man you saw in all of Boddo's books and RCM&E articles. He is the keen younger modeller in all those evocative black and white photos. In those shots it is energetic Dave who is launching models, building models and generally working alongside Boddington The Great. They were true friends and David actually went on to work for Boddo. He helped develop and build all the classic DB Kits for commercial release.

Until very recently, Dave also worked on full size vintage and classic aircraft. It was therefore natural for him to base his Tigger model on one of the life-size examples on which he had worked at Sywell. David's hugely impressive Tiger Moth is built to 27% scale. She has a wingspan of 95” inches, weighs 12.2 kilos and is powered by a Laser 180 four-stroke glow engine.

PLAN AND DOCUMENTATION

The model and all its scale features are scratch built. David had access to the full-size example and also the Tiger Moth manual, so he was able to draw up his own plan. He also consulted ‘fullsize’ magazines and existing Tiger Moth model plans. David deemed the latter commercial plans inaccurate, so he drew up his own.