Radio Control: Scale
BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS, my wife and I will have returned from a trip to London. We're going to visit with the folks at Irvine Ltd.-the makers of Irvine engines. Hopefully I'll have some interesting photographs and product news for you, especially any engine-related developments that are on the horizon. I bet I take in a little rock-and-roll, too. Suits me. After England, I'll have a week at the office, then I'll be on to Chicago for the Radio Control Hobby and Trade Association's annual National Model and Hobby Show. The Chicago show is a good one for hot new products and fabulous displays.
Radio Control: Scale
IRVINE LTD.: MY VISIT with the folks at Irvine Ltd. in New Southgate, England last month was terrific-but way too short. The English hospitality was first-rate; my wife and I had a terrific time, and really appreciated the hospitality shown to us by our hosts. It's amazing how closely their RC flying situation parallels ours; I had a first-rate flying demonstration on October 14. I spent the afternoon at the local sod-farm flying site with Irvine's Director of Operations, Mark Wood and a dozen other club members. Believe me when I tell you that if it wasn't for the strange (yet somehow familiar) language they speak, I could have been fooled into thinking I was in the good old USA. The site had the usual blend of RC personalities that are at every American flying site I've ever seen: The runway-buzzing hotdogger, the guy with half the covering coming off his "ugliest trainer on earth," the precise aerobatic engineer, and his younger protegé who does everything just a little bit better. Of course, there was the typical collection of old-timers who hang around, shoot the breeze, and enjoy the company.
Radio Control: Scale
MODELERS' PROJECTS: I met Bob McKenna at the WRAM show in New York a year or two ago. He promised to send a photo of the Ultimate he was building, and the pictures finally arrived. Bob's blue-and-white Goldberg airplane is finished in 21st Century Fabric and 21st Century Paint. The markings are from Paul and Dan Major at Major Decals (a division of Northeast Screen Graphics). These markings are based on dumentation received from Bob Banka's Scale Model Research. A Super Tigre .90 two-stroke provides plenty of power up front. Nice airplane, Bob; it looks real good against that friendly Florida sky.
Radio Control: Scale
FABRIC COVERINGS: Many Scale models are covered with fabric, then primed and painted to precisely match the full-scale aircraft they're emulating. Without a doubt, fabric coverings are some of the easiest-to-handle model finishing materials, but they still have their share of quirks. Have you ever covered a model with a polyester fabric (such as Colortex, Solartex, Super Coverite, or Worldtex), painted it with more than one color, then experienced a major disaster when the masking tape pulled away every layer of the paint job when it was removed? If it's happened to you, and it has probably happened to most of us, don't be too quick to blame the products you're working with. The problem is more often caused by the method than by manufacturing. Even if the products you selected were individually the best, the combination of the products may not have been the best.
Choose the Correct Finish
The kit box is empty, the instruction manual has all of its little boxes checked, but your airplane's still in bare bones. Now what? What do you do when construction is done and finishing time comes around? A countless number of techniques and an even greater number of materials are available for finishing model aircraft, but how does one decide which is the best material or method? Choosing finishing methods and materials has long been one of modeling's major dilemmas and one of its most controversial battlegrounds. Every modeler you speak to has his or her own idea of which finishing methods and materials are best. Who's right? Who's wrong? What do you use and why do you use it?
