Free Flight: Sport & Scale
HOW many hours have you spent scouring hardware stores, thrift shops, and swap meets looking for a nice, light aluminum pot of some kind to make into a cowl? Soda can bottoms sometimes work, and occasionally a measuring cup has almost the right shape, but the chances of finding one of just the right size, shape, and weight are pretty slim. If you're not fussy, perhaps you can sacrifice a little to avoid making something yourself. If you do have to make your own round cowling, it will probably be built up from a few rings at the front and then wrapped with balsa sheet or stiff paper to form the back portion. This is a nice, light way to do it, but the cowling has the disadvantage of breaking up on impact fairly easily. Vacuu-forming or heat-forming plastic over a form makes nice small cowlings, but they sometimes split when they hit. For a really solid, add-weight-up-front cowling, fiberglass is the material of choice, especially for models of 36-in. span and up.
Free Flight: Sport and Scale
ADVICE FOR NEWCOMERS: Follow Aristotle's advice. Okay, you've decided to build a Free Flight (FF) Scale model, but you can't decide what size is best to start with, or how heavy to make it. Follow Aristotle's advice and seek The Golden Mean. A model of about 36 inches is ideal for FF Scale. It's a nice compromise between huge crowd-drawing models, such as Don Munn's giant rubber-powered racers (which require special logistics to build, transport, and store), and the wee eight-inch-span Pistachios, which tax building fingers and sometimes get sat upon. The best advice for someone starting out in FF Scale is to blow up that Peanut plan or reduce that Jumbo plan to the magic 36-inch span (give or take a few inches). If you can build it to weigh less than four ounces (rubber-powered) or 16 ounces (gas or electric), you are almost guaranteed success in the air!
Free Flight: Sport & Scale
"What goes up must come down." That's a truism for everything except taxes. Certainly, the return to terra firma accounts for most modelers' grief. Assuming that your model is Free Flight and has no pilot to flare at the last moment, it generally flies right smack into the deck, with only minimal help from ground effect. Quite often, the only purpose of the landing gear (I like the word undercarriage better, as the gear serves for more than landings in the classical sense) is to make the plane look Scale, help it ROG (rise-off-ground-Ed.), and cushion the crash. Paul McIlrath (Cedar Rapids, IA) has some interesting thoughts on undercarriage construction that he'd like to pass on. Paul writes: "You should remember that much of the force on the wheel and gear is backward, not upward. That's true for both takeoffs and landings. Although the industry standard (single strut wire) is neat and effective, there is a simple variation that can noticeably improve its operation.
Free Flight: Sport & Scale
WHO WAS Miss Neta Snook? Many thanks to everyone who sent in entries to this great contest! You guys really know your history, not only of model planes but of the people who made and flew full-scale craft. Neta, now known as Neta Snook Southern, is the lady who taught Amelia Earhart to fly. She learned at a school where the students had to build their own trainer, a Curtiss Jenny copy, from memory! She was the first female student at the Curtiss school in Newport News, had a fascinating career as a barnstormer and instructor, and was an airport manager and test pilot for Bert Kinner in Los Angeles. She retired from aviation in 1922 when she married and, apart from taking the controls of a Spirit of St. Louis replica in 1977, never flew a plane again. She presently lives in Los Gatos, CA building gopher traps and giving Bible classes.
Free Flight: Sport & Scale
NOW that the baby's born, what shall we name it? The letters on the sides and wings of a Scale model can make it or break it. Purists would not dream of putting on a fictitious registration, but there are a lot of modelers who don't enter contests and want to have fun with their models in more ways than one. American registrations are pretty dull, as they consist of letters and numbers. Foreign registrations, however, offer a wide latitude for making statements, as they are all letters. In some states people pay to have personalized license plates on their cars. You can have a personalized model in the same way-and for no cost at all!
