Free Flight: Sport and Scale
The epoxy didn't set up! Hooray! In the May issue of Le Fana d'Aviation, this phenomenon, which has occasionally plagued modelers, saved two full-size planes from a horrible terrestial fate. Americans like to weld machine gun barrels shut and do similar things to retain forbidden objects that have some aesthetic value to us. The Swiss military, in their infinite wisdom, decided that rather than scrapping all of their old target tug F + W Emmen C-3605's, they would render them unflyable and sell them to civilians. This was to prevent incompetent civil pilots from destroying these historic artifacts. To this end, the Lycoming T-53 turboprop units were poured full of epoxy.
Free Flight: Sport & Scale
RETURN address is important once your models begin to fly well enough to go onto roofs, into trees, and out of sight in thermals. Bob Hatschek, editor of Flyoff, the quarterly journal of the Brooklyn Skyscrapers, types his name and address (along with "Reward"?) on a bit of Japanese tissue that is then doped onto the model. This is a very professional way to do it, and it looks great-assuming the color "decal" you have made matches the tissue you used to cover the model!
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
SPRING into spring(s): Modelers always seem to need springs, but the size they need never seems to be readily available. Springs do a variety of things: They hold down hatch covers, cushion landings, imitate valve springs on dummy engines, center castering tail wheels, and dozens of other useful things. Today, let's try making some of our own for those special custom installations. Most of you are aware that there are many types of springs, and that the two most common types are tension and compression. A tension spring pulls things apart, and that could be used to keep a cowling pulled down tight. A compression spring squeezes things together and is often used in landing gear struts, usually in conjunction with two nesting sizes of tubing for a sliding leg.
Free Flight: Sport & Scale
FLYING ACES NATS, The Home Movie! If all of the coverage of the fantastic 1988 FAC Nats in Geneseo, NY has you eager and ready to get into the air, you will want to get a copy of Dean McGinnes' (Flying Aces Swamp Squadron) coverage of the biggest Flying Scale event in history! I just finished watching it for the second time, and despite all of the usual problems inherent in home movies (i.e., an occasional rear end blocking a model shot, overlong coverage of trophy presentation, etc.), I thoroughly enjoyed it. For those who were there, it's a great souvenir. For those who weren't-what a gold mine! Dean has "atmosphere" shots, close-ups of models, mass launches, and clips of most of the modeling greats of the movement. You can see Don Srull's incredible 12-prop Dornier DO-X electric-powered flying boat in the air, Dennis Norman launch his superb rubber-powered Lancaster, Gordon Roberts competing with his legendary Chambermaid, Bob Thompson in his Captain Midnight getup, Walt Mooney, Allan Schanzle, Fernando Ramos, and on and on.
