IS it a bird? No, it’s a plane!

And one of the biggest model planes in the country, too.

The Lancaster Bomber has a wingspan of 17 feet, and was built by 24-year-old IT professional Rob Greenwood, who lives in Sharples.

Mr Greenwood spent three years building the plane, which is made from a mixture of balsa wood, mahogany, carbon fibre, fibreglass and aluminium.

It is powered by four strimmer engines and fuelled by petrol.

The model is so big it has to be approved by the Civil Aviation Authority as being fit to fly.

“It’s pretty much like a real plane, just scaled down,”

he said.

So it was fingers crossed as the Lancaster took to the skies for its maiden fight as Mr Greenwood and friends prepared the model. But fortunately everything went to plan.

Building the bomber has not been without its difficulties. It was put together in the box room of Mr Greenwood’s house, but was so large that every time he wanted to turn a piece round to work on it he had to take it downstairs and outside, turn it around in the garden, then carry it back upstairs again. The plane has cost nearly £5,000, and taken thousands of hours, to build.

“It is a substantial amount of money, but you can’t really go halfway with a project like this and then change your mind,” said Mr Greenwood, who said that he could sometimes spend up to six hours a night working on the plane.

“I didn’t really take into account quite how big a project it was.”

He added that past girlfriends have occasionally got annoyed at how much time he spent working on the project.

The plane is now stored in four pieces in Mr Greenwood’s house, from where he will take it to model aeroplane shows across the country.

It currently has a flight time of eight minutes, although will eventually be able to stay airborne for up to 12 minutes.

“It doesn’t sound like a long time, but when you’re at a show, to maintain concentration for that long is quite difficult,” said Mr Greenwood.

And he added that the sense of achievement was definitely worth all the time and money spent. “To see something you have built from three boxes then lift off the ground for the first time is unbelievable,”

he said.