Radio Control: Giant Scale
THE SNOW should soon be swirling over the land-it's the beginning of building season! Hope you have your Giant Scale project ready to go! A lot has happened during the past month's hiatus. Thus, this month's column will be a potpourri of things that have occurred in the Giant Scale arena in the interim. The best news is for the Quadra fans among us. Al Scott (Scott's Airplane Co., Rt. #1, Neodesha, KS 66757) is now U.S. Quadra. Al bought out good friend Dario Brisighella and is now a prime source of Quadra bits and pieces.
Radio Control: Giant Scale
SNOWED under! Doctor Jim Pepino is responsible-and my office is full of paper! The latest "Care package" from Scale Plans & Photo Service (3209 Madison Ave., Greensboro, NC 27403) just arrived. A large, red mailing tube, brought to the door by my friendly mailman, contained three of Doc Jim's latest Giant Scale drawings. They included the deHavilland Chipmunk (with two cockpit configurations), a beautiful Fairchild PT-19 (including mods for the full-canopy version), and the Waco YMF-7 Golden Age biplane. All three drawing sets bear evidence of Jim's excellent draftsmanship and exhaustive scale research. For example, he always provides accurate-documentation three-views right on the plans. And, he notes the degree of construction difficulty so that the builder will know what he is getting into before the first bit of spruce or balsa is cut. Other nice touches include recommendations on suitable engines and a tabular indication of wood sizes and types required to complete the model.
Radio Control: Giant Scale
NOISE TRAPS: Herb Heaton is my RC club vice president. He's also the designated transmitter certifier, which means he's in charge of passing out the silver and gold stickers required on every member's black box. He recently entered the legions of Giant builders with a scratch-built T-170 from RCM drawings. With a wingspan of 100 in., the model certainly qualifies as big. The red, white, and blue MonoKoted beauty uses individual servos for the ailerons. This installation required a Y servo lead with inline noise traps to avoid receiver interference.
Radio Control: Giant Scale
DOCUMENTATION: You've heard about it from me before, and will again: the ideal form of Scale model documentation. I have at hand an outstanding example. It isn't as difficult to achieve as many of you might imagine. Any Giant Scale model worth its salt is a replica of a specific prototype. What better way to produce a winning miniature aircraft than to have the real thing available for comparison? That's what Tony Paul did when he set out to build a dead-on quarter-scale J-3 Cub.
Radio Control: Giant Scale
SAVED! To all the Giant Scale builders in the U.S. of A.-rejoice, your moment of deliverance is here! A definitive Scale data source list has been compiled by Scale master Claude McCullough and his team of documentation experts. Published by NASA (National Association of Scale Aeromodelers), this 18-page reference compilation answers at least 90% of the Scale modelers' questions about documentation sources. When my copy of the list arrived, I was immediately aware that within its covers was priceless information. The names, addresses, telephone numbers, and hours of operation for practically all of the good sources of accurate Scale documentation in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain are noted.
