SLOPING OFF...
...the Newsletter of Christchurch and District Model Flying Club for...December 2025
D.H.100 Vampire Mk6 EDF Jet by Durafly
By David Bicker
A while back Frank Bayes kindly sold me his spare Vampire EDF needing some attention. It was the bare bones, minus EDF, ESC, LiPo set-up. So- naturally, I decided to configure it as a PSS without the kit in it. The plane had been modified & reinforced several times, resulting in it weighing nearly as much as a fully kitted out version.
On the model’s box, it states that the fully kitted AuW of the Durafly Vampire is 1050g. This stripped but heavily built version weighed in (with just a 950 mAh AAA 4 pack & a Corona CR8D RX), at 955g. All of the intake ducts, exhausts & the cheat slots on the underside were open / not blanked off.
I flew it in this configuration many times, but it barely stayed in the air unless in at least a 15mph wind but loved flying in up to a 25mph blow. It flew well, but, being a very used old model, it had loads of free play in the servo gears & the control surfaces could flap around 2-3mm each direction without input. But it still flew remarkably well. Lots of positive comments from others on the slopes & I enjoyed flying it too.
Then I spotted an advert on the Hobby King website for a “nearly new” Durafly Vampire Mk6, in its original box. The only information on the listing was that it had been part built, but not flown. They normally sell for £167, but this one was only £99. So I snapped it up.
On opening the original factory box, I found that the main parts were there. For some strange reason the first owner had poorly brush painted the fuselage underside & all of the yellow stripes in a completely wrong coloured duller yellow, overpainting the tail boom numbers in the process. The rest of the silver coloured sections had been brush painted in a dull milky silver, so the whole model looked naff (not evident in the pictures).
The undercarriage sections had wooden panels glued in then papered over & badly overpainted. The wheels & struts were in the kit (no mechanism to deploy them). Apart from the ply battery tray, canopy, pilot & servo horns/rods/clevises, it was a bare kit. Luckily, that was fine by me as I had a bag of metal geared MG90S servos and wasn’t planning to use the undercarriage in the build. The kit would need repainting anyway because, apart from looking tatty, everywhere any tape had been put on the paintwork, it had stripped the paint off when removed exposing the white foam underneath..
I had been warned that the plane had very flimsy/flexible tail booms, so I planned to reinforce them during the build to withstand slope-side landings better. So I decided not to fully build the plane initially so as to have easier access to handling the tail booms to reinforce them.
I tested the fuselage material for compatibility with using a hot glue gun & found that it was fine & didn’t shrink away from the heat of the glue.
So I glued in the supplied wooden battery / RX mounting tray & then bonded the 2 halves of the fuselage together.
I cleaned up the badly fitted wooden undercarriage bay sheeting as best that I could, then fitted the aileron mini servos. Recessing the wires into the pre-cut wing slots, but pushing them deep down, leaving a slot above them. In advance, I had extended the servo wires with soldered joints & spread the 3 wire joints along about 1” of the wire so that a single piece of heat shrink could insulate all 3 wires in one go so that they would still fit into the slot. Then a strip of Balsa was cut & pressed into the wire slots with hot glue to make the surface of the wing solid again. No tape along the wire slots as on the previous model & just sanded back flush.
Next the wings were bonded into the fuselage with hot glue.
Once these tasks had been done, I filled along the balsa-covered wire slots & the undercarriage bay covers with lightweight Polyfilla Advanced fine & keyed the paintwork with 800 grit sandpaper.
For the silver I used a Halfords alloy wheel silver, which gives a uniform finish with a dull but slightly shiny silver finish – quite like aluminium.
I then sanded / keyed where the tail booms would fit onto the wing later & put it to one side.
The tail booms might as well have been made of rubber the way that they flexed. So I bought a 1m length of 3mm ID / 5mm OD carbon fibre tube & cut it to fit into a slot that I cut into the underside of the tail booms and also into the front section of the booms that is a part of the wing underside..
The 2 booms were bonded to the tail plane, then the elevator servo was added & the wire buried in the inner side of one of the tail booms, routing into the fuselage at the point where the wiring slot ended in the boom. (All 3 servos were taped over with a square of silver Gaffer tape which was then sprayed matching silver).
I used to hang up the older Vampire in the garage on 2 big plastic coated garden tool hooks. This, over time damaged & marked the leading edge of the tail plane. So on this Vampire, I set a BBQ stick into the leading edge of the tail plane so that the plane could be suspended on it. As mentioned earlier, I very lightly tacked the wood in place as the glue cooled, with not very sticky masking tape. But even so, when I peeled it off, the original silver paint came with it!
Next the tail booms & tail plane assembly were bonded to the wings.
I used more silver paint on the tail booms but masked off the flags on the tail fins. I had previously used my plotter cutter to re-create the wing & tail boom roundels plus the registration numbers, so these were then added. WZ507 is a genuine Vampire number as can be seen in this link: https://vampireflight.co.uk
I have changed the yellow to fluorescent orange on my colour scheme because it’s the best colour for showing up on the slopes. (I also realise that the model is not a trainer/side-by side cockpit like WZ507. Call it creative license!)
Lastly, the servo horns etc were fitted & the plane set up on the TX.
Nearly every discussion about the advised balance position on the box says that it’s in the wrong place. Both Frank & I also agree with this as we both separately found that the best CoG was about 60mm from the leading edge of the wing when measured at the convergence point on the intakes opening.
With a 2500 mAh AA 4 cell pack & a Corona CR6D RX fitted, the AUW is 775g, about 26% lighter than the factory spec. This includes about 130g of lead to counterbalance the weight of the added carbon tubes in the tail booms (which are now nice & rigid, but with just a little give).
The plane’s maiden & 3 following flights were made at the club’s East Creech SE slop in early September. For the maiden flight I added a rates switch to halve the travel on the ailerons. On launching it, it was instantly clear that it was needed otherwise the plane was insanely over sensitive! As soon as the ailerons had reduced travel, it flew very well & was easily controllable. So after the maiden flight I reduced the travel on the ailerons & then deleted the rates. Now it flies so well that, with Frank standing alongside me watching, I was able to fly it hands-off for the best part of 10 seconds before the wind lifted a wing & turned it towards the slope.
The first flight lasted around 20 minutes and was trouble-free. I enjoyed it enough that I flew it 3 further times & clocked up a total of 75 minutes airtime with it that day. Luckily it was all filmed too as I was wearing my head cam & Andrew Slightham also filmed it on his phone that has an excellent camera, too.
Here’s 2 videos of it in flight:
Since that day’s flying I have taped over the cheat air intake slots on the underside of the fuselage, but left the original jet intake openings & the exhaust as they are. This should smooth the airflow around the fuselage and reduce the drag effect a bit.
