Perth non-stop.
On Mothers Day Scott flew the Opal to his parent’s property. After making a low pass over his parent’s property. He continued to his brother Dean's Place. Scott crashed about 500 metres past Dean's shed. The Opal suffered catastrophic airframe failure and the wings folded. Scott was killed on impact.
The reasons for the failure began with a hole Scott had drilled through the main spar to mount the oxygen equipment for his altitude record attempts.
The saddest thing was the year after the records and that Scott had a big future in Aircraft and could make anything for anybody and he was doing so well.
Only yesterday I looked at the Video of Scott flying and it is still like looking at tomorrow and you feel that Scott is still up there when you are flying in the best aircraft.
I felt I had to write this as I decided not to build or fly again at 74 years, and that feels like yesterday. Scott and I became very close in the last six months of his life; we both seemed to change for the future. It was too short.
Colin Winton.
For those of us who did not know Scott we can only look at what he created some twenty years ago and wonder what he would have achieved if he had lived.
Scott's records. Sky Sports Magazine
Scott Winton Obituary
The Facet Opal
This story on the Facet Opal has been written with the help of Dean Winton who supplied most of the information.
The origins of the Facet Opal were very low key. Scott’s brother Dean went to Scott’s factory to work on his Sapphire. When work finished for the day Scott and Dean played with making a foam wing on the hot wire machine. It had swept back wings and dihedral. They took their model to the park and had so much fun playing with it that by the next weekend they had built a 2 channel radio control wing that they took to Wybung Headland to fly. Scott and Dean soon become addicted flying model wings.
After many models, disaster, and a lot of fun Scott and Dean settled on a flying wing with a 4:1 aspect ratio and the C of G at 20% of chord. The Facet Opal had arrived in model form.
Later Dean went to Scott’s factory and the wing of the Facet Opal was there. It had taken one month to build. There were no drawings for the Facet Opal. As Dean says both he and Scott made it up as they went along.
This is where Dean lost touch with the Opal project. Scott moved to
straight to an attitude of 45 degrees and climbed out very rapidly at that angle. Scott had a lot of trouble because of the sensitivity of the Elevator and had great difficulty landing it safely. This was exasperated because the landing gear was built out of fishing rods.
had spoken to Dean on the phone and told Dean that he had fitted a small trim to the Opal and it now flew hands off, and was ready for Dean to fly.
