68 MODEL AVIATION
D.B. Mathews
F l y i n g f o r F u n
909 N. Maize Rd., Townhouse 734, Wichita KS 67212
PROBLEMS: Before I get to the “meat
and potatoes,” a couple of mess-ups on
my part need correction. Would the
fellow who sent the video of Reginald
Denny flying a Dennyplane please
contact me? I have donated it to the AMA
museum but need your name to place on
it as the donor.
Someone wrote to inquire about the
feasibility of enlarging a Cruiser 60 to fit
a Moki 2.10 engine. I responded with a
note and photos of the enlarged version I
chose not to publish. It was all returned,
marked “Insufficient Address.” I no
longer have the original letter.
A Champion: A letter from Bill
Kincheloe of Paradise, California, related
the reaction of the parents of one middleschool
youngster to whom he and Bill
Hanna are teaching basic modeling skills.
That sent me searching for a photo I had
run many years ago in this column.
The parents in question told Bill, “If
you want our child to have an X-Acto
knife, a tube of glue, and some balsa for
your class, you supply the tools and
This young man won Senior CL Scale at 1966 Nats. Caption from the November 1966
American Modeler reads that he was third in FF Scale. Text reveals his identity.
George Sauer constructed this fiberglass-and-built-up P-38 from a Czech kit. Two 010
AstroFlight brushless motors and three-cell Li-Poly 1500 pack fly it.
materials. Otherwise [the student] isn’t
coming back! We’re not spending
anything on your stupid toy airplanes.”
I have a notion that such an attitude is
not completely outside the experiences of
others who try to spread the joys of
building model airplanes among the youth
of contemporary America. If that
conclusion is correct, some encouragement
and appreciation is due those of you who
devote time to instructing kids. For that
reason, and as a way to illustrate that all is
not wasted, I dug out the photo.
The young man in the photo who won
Senior CL Scale at the 1960 Dallas, Texas,
AMA Nats and placed third in FF Scale is
someone whose name has been rather
prominent in the news lately: Burt Rutan!
Based on several television shows about
Burt, he and his brother Dick were avid
modelers as kids and had strong support
from their parents.
As most of you who have raised
youngsters through their teens can
probably testify, it’s a parents’ dream to
have our children find some activity that
excites them sufficiently to hold their
attention, generate wholesome
preoccupation, place them in the company
of wholesome adults, and teach them
usable virtues such as patience,
persistence, a thirst for knowledge, the joy
of accomplishment, etc.
Certainly not all children who become
interested in building and flying model
airplanes will find their way into aviation
as a career, but a disproportionate
percentage of them do. Their activities as
youth surely led to aviation careers for the
Rutan brothers; Dick is a retired Air Force
pilot and Burt is a close-to-heroic airplane
designer.
Their late mother and father must have
felt greatly rewarded for the modelbuilding
encouragement they gave their
boys. They probably never considered the
term “stupid toy airplanes.”
confessed that the work of building a
model, testing, it, repairing it, and
improving it kept me away from ‘less
wholesome’ activities, so she would
scrimp to make sure I had the materials,
time, and a place to pursue what almost
became an obsession.”
I’ll bet those words brought a lump to
many older readers’ throats. They tell my
story well, and although I didn’t pursue a
career in aviation, I did use the skills
acquired to practice dentistry. I learned
that more than two-thirds of my dentalschool
classmates were also modelers.
Nice In Any Language: Lately George
Sauer has been flying a lovely electricpowered
P-38 at our field. The kit is from
Czechoslovakia via Hobby Lobby. The
incredibly light and thin but beautifully
laid-up fiberglass pod, booms, and centersection
were so nice that George couldn’t
bring himself to paint them, so he left
them in gel coat. He covered the built-up
and precovered wings with MonoKote.
George discovered a fact that is new to
many of us. The model has no landing
gear (under cart) and lands on its belly
with the power off. Using scale threeblade
propellers doesn’t work out well
since, with a two-blader, the hang-down
blade gets bumped to the horizontal, but
on a three-blader the bump just exposes
another blade.
Other than that idiosyncrasy, the
Lockheed flies wonderfully without
George having to mess around trying to
start both engines. The twin AstroFlight
brushless motors produce a sound that is
closer to a pair of Allisons than a similar
wet-power model.
Ryan NYP: Bill Holland’s Spirit of St.
Louis is a remarkably accurate model of a
famous prototype. Even more remarkable
is that it flies extraordinarily well as an
RC airplane.
For many years, anyone who wanted
to build an NYP for FF Scale had to
increase the volume of the horizontal tail.
While looking at the material about the
prototype on the Internet, I learned what
lies behind this phenomenon.
The airplane was essentially a highly
modified Ryan M-1. What escaped me
was the fact that 5 feet were added to
each wing, yet the horizontal tail was not
enlarged. The prototype was tail-volume
shy for conversion to a FF model, hence
the almost mandatory addition of
approximately 20% to the horizontal
stabilizer to avoid porpoising when
building a model. From that, one can
appreciate Charles Lindbergh’s flying
skills even more.
Also on the Internet I learned that
Charles Lindbergh was the only person to
ever fly the NYP. After the Atlantic
crossing, it was retuned to the US aboard
Bill Holland of Medford, Oklahoma, owns this 1⁄4-scale Ryan NYP that Nick Ziroli built
from Ziroli plans. Text has details about its unusual feature.
Shawn Strunk built his tiny electric-powered RC Fokker triplane from a Guillow’s kit. It
flies quite well since he modified the laser-cut parts.
We modelers can share in the pride of
Burt and his team putting a home-built
vehicle into space twice within 10 days.
One can only wonder which of those kids
aching for some adult(s) to help them
build and fly models in your town might
turn into another Burt Rutan. You good
people who are encouraging kids with
model airplanes must not feel that you’re
wasting your time.
Bill Kincheloe wrote a paragraph that
captures the parental attitude that was so
prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s, when
aviation careers were the “hot ticket for
success.” Apparently that is not the
attitude of contemporary parents, yet I
have no idea what they encourage their
kids to become—surely not politicians.
Many years ago I wrote about and
included photos of the Mantz brothers
because of their intense interest in model
airplanes and their parents’ solid
encouragement. Now, years later, one is a
machinist in the aviation industry locally,
and the other is an aircraft mechanic at a
local Cessna dealership.
Bill wrote:
“My parents (and those of several of
my friends) supported us in various ways,
not the least of which was the occasional
quarter kit, nickel tubes of Comet cement,
little bottles of ‘dope,’ and rubber bands.
In the depths of the Depression, this
support was sometimes hard to come by,
but their enthusiasm for modeling made it
happen somehow.
“Mother told me in the last years of her
life as I was making a ‘success’ as a
professional engineer that I had fully
justified her belief that my models would
‘amount to something’ in the end. She also
the USS Memphis and then eventually
flown to all 48 contiguous states, many
cities in Central and Latin America, and
finally to Washington DC to be displayed
at the Smithsonian Institution.
The NYP held 400 gallons of fuel,
which represented half of the aircraft’s
total weight at takeoff!
The movie in which Jimmie Stewart
played Charles Lindbergh used three
reproductions; one is now in the
Experimental Aircraft Association
museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin; one is
(or was) in the San Diego Air Museum;
and a third resides in the Ford Museum in
Dearborn, Michigan.
Bill Holland slows the model Spirit in
flight, makes a low pass over the runway,
triggers a minicassette onboard, and
Jimmie Stewart’s voice can be heard
shouting “Which way to Ireland?” It’s
sort of spooky.
Triplane: Shawn Strunk recently
stunned us at our flying field with his
tiny electric-powered RC Fokker
triplane—not just because of its
diminutive size, but because of the kit’s
source. It was a Guillow’s T-series balsa
kit!
Don’t confuse this new series of lasercut
kits with the older die-cut units.
These are more lightly engineered and
have balsa wood that is of higher quality
than what is in the ones many of us are
familiar with. Shawn further lightened his
rendition by vigorously sanding both sides
of the sheet parts and using a Dremel
hand tool to remove much of the interior
of the bulkheads and to scallop the keels
and LEs.
With a little GWS IPS motor running
an A gearbox, a three 340 mAh Kokam
Li-Poly battery pack, and three Draganfly
servos, the model weighs only 6.4 ounces
ready to fly. Flight duration is roughly 10
minutes at reduced throttle (which is
necessary since the batteries will burn out
the motor if run wide open for an
extended period).
Covering is an iron-on, lightweight
film called Solite. This material appears
to be slightly lighter and thinner than
UltraCote Lite, while retaining the lovely
transparent colors. All controls are
Dacron line arranged in a pull-pull
configuration.
How does the Fokker fly? After
tweaking the washout in the wings and
coupling the rudder and aileron, this little
beauty flies quite well. Much to my
amazement, it can be flown fairly slowly
outdoors without snap-rolling out of the
sky.
Guillow’s kits are available at most
hobby shops and at many craft or toy
stores. Check them out. As Shawn has
proven, they have some real potential. MA
Edition: Model Aviation - 2005/02
Page Numbers: 68,69,70
Edition: Model Aviation - 2005/02
Page Numbers: 68,69,70
68 MODEL AVIATION
D.B. Mathews
F l y i n g f o r F u n
909 N. Maize Rd., Townhouse 734, Wichita KS 67212
PROBLEMS: Before I get to the “meat
and potatoes,” a couple of mess-ups on
my part need correction. Would the
fellow who sent the video of Reginald
Denny flying a Dennyplane please
contact me? I have donated it to the AMA
museum but need your name to place on
it as the donor.
Someone wrote to inquire about the
feasibility of enlarging a Cruiser 60 to fit
a Moki 2.10 engine. I responded with a
note and photos of the enlarged version I
chose not to publish. It was all returned,
marked “Insufficient Address.” I no
longer have the original letter.
A Champion: A letter from Bill
Kincheloe of Paradise, California, related
the reaction of the parents of one middleschool
youngster to whom he and Bill
Hanna are teaching basic modeling skills.
That sent me searching for a photo I had
run many years ago in this column.
The parents in question told Bill, “If
you want our child to have an X-Acto
knife, a tube of glue, and some balsa for
your class, you supply the tools and
This young man won Senior CL Scale at 1966 Nats. Caption from the November 1966
American Modeler reads that he was third in FF Scale. Text reveals his identity.
George Sauer constructed this fiberglass-and-built-up P-38 from a Czech kit. Two 010
AstroFlight brushless motors and three-cell Li-Poly 1500 pack fly it.
materials. Otherwise [the student] isn’t
coming back! We’re not spending
anything on your stupid toy airplanes.”
I have a notion that such an attitude is
not completely outside the experiences of
others who try to spread the joys of
building model airplanes among the youth
of contemporary America. If that
conclusion is correct, some encouragement
and appreciation is due those of you who
devote time to instructing kids. For that
reason, and as a way to illustrate that all is
not wasted, I dug out the photo.
The young man in the photo who won
Senior CL Scale at the 1960 Dallas, Texas,
AMA Nats and placed third in FF Scale is
someone whose name has been rather
prominent in the news lately: Burt Rutan!
Based on several television shows about
Burt, he and his brother Dick were avid
modelers as kids and had strong support
from their parents.
As most of you who have raised
youngsters through their teens can
probably testify, it’s a parents’ dream to
have our children find some activity that
excites them sufficiently to hold their
attention, generate wholesome
preoccupation, place them in the company
of wholesome adults, and teach them
usable virtues such as patience,
persistence, a thirst for knowledge, the joy
of accomplishment, etc.
Certainly not all children who become
interested in building and flying model
airplanes will find their way into aviation
as a career, but a disproportionate
percentage of them do. Their activities as
youth surely led to aviation careers for the
Rutan brothers; Dick is a retired Air Force
pilot and Burt is a close-to-heroic airplane
designer.
Their late mother and father must have
felt greatly rewarded for the modelbuilding
encouragement they gave their
boys. They probably never considered the
term “stupid toy airplanes.”
confessed that the work of building a
model, testing, it, repairing it, and
improving it kept me away from ‘less
wholesome’ activities, so she would
scrimp to make sure I had the materials,
time, and a place to pursue what almost
became an obsession.”
I’ll bet those words brought a lump to
many older readers’ throats. They tell my
story well, and although I didn’t pursue a
career in aviation, I did use the skills
acquired to practice dentistry. I learned
that more than two-thirds of my dentalschool
classmates were also modelers.
Nice In Any Language: Lately George
Sauer has been flying a lovely electricpowered
P-38 at our field. The kit is from
Czechoslovakia via Hobby Lobby. The
incredibly light and thin but beautifully
laid-up fiberglass pod, booms, and centersection
were so nice that George couldn’t
bring himself to paint them, so he left
them in gel coat. He covered the built-up
and precovered wings with MonoKote.
George discovered a fact that is new to
many of us. The model has no landing
gear (under cart) and lands on its belly
with the power off. Using scale threeblade
propellers doesn’t work out well
since, with a two-blader, the hang-down
blade gets bumped to the horizontal, but
on a three-blader the bump just exposes
another blade.
Other than that idiosyncrasy, the
Lockheed flies wonderfully without
George having to mess around trying to
start both engines. The twin AstroFlight
brushless motors produce a sound that is
closer to a pair of Allisons than a similar
wet-power model.
Ryan NYP: Bill Holland’s Spirit of St.
Louis is a remarkably accurate model of a
famous prototype. Even more remarkable
is that it flies extraordinarily well as an
RC airplane.
For many years, anyone who wanted
to build an NYP for FF Scale had to
increase the volume of the horizontal tail.
While looking at the material about the
prototype on the Internet, I learned what
lies behind this phenomenon.
The airplane was essentially a highly
modified Ryan M-1. What escaped me
was the fact that 5 feet were added to
each wing, yet the horizontal tail was not
enlarged. The prototype was tail-volume
shy for conversion to a FF model, hence
the almost mandatory addition of
approximately 20% to the horizontal
stabilizer to avoid porpoising when
building a model. From that, one can
appreciate Charles Lindbergh’s flying
skills even more.
Also on the Internet I learned that
Charles Lindbergh was the only person to
ever fly the NYP. After the Atlantic
crossing, it was retuned to the US aboard
Bill Holland of Medford, Oklahoma, owns this 1⁄4-scale Ryan NYP that Nick Ziroli built
from Ziroli plans. Text has details about its unusual feature.
Shawn Strunk built his tiny electric-powered RC Fokker triplane from a Guillow’s kit. It
flies quite well since he modified the laser-cut parts.
We modelers can share in the pride of
Burt and his team putting a home-built
vehicle into space twice within 10 days.
One can only wonder which of those kids
aching for some adult(s) to help them
build and fly models in your town might
turn into another Burt Rutan. You good
people who are encouraging kids with
model airplanes must not feel that you’re
wasting your time.
Bill Kincheloe wrote a paragraph that
captures the parental attitude that was so
prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s, when
aviation careers were the “hot ticket for
success.” Apparently that is not the
attitude of contemporary parents, yet I
have no idea what they encourage their
kids to become—surely not politicians.
Many years ago I wrote about and
included photos of the Mantz brothers
because of their intense interest in model
airplanes and their parents’ solid
encouragement. Now, years later, one is a
machinist in the aviation industry locally,
and the other is an aircraft mechanic at a
local Cessna dealership.
Bill wrote:
“My parents (and those of several of
my friends) supported us in various ways,
not the least of which was the occasional
quarter kit, nickel tubes of Comet cement,
little bottles of ‘dope,’ and rubber bands.
In the depths of the Depression, this
support was sometimes hard to come by,
but their enthusiasm for modeling made it
happen somehow.
“Mother told me in the last years of her
life as I was making a ‘success’ as a
professional engineer that I had fully
justified her belief that my models would
‘amount to something’ in the end. She also
the USS Memphis and then eventually
flown to all 48 contiguous states, many
cities in Central and Latin America, and
finally to Washington DC to be displayed
at the Smithsonian Institution.
The NYP held 400 gallons of fuel,
which represented half of the aircraft’s
total weight at takeoff!
The movie in which Jimmie Stewart
played Charles Lindbergh used three
reproductions; one is now in the
Experimental Aircraft Association
museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin; one is
(or was) in the San Diego Air Museum;
and a third resides in the Ford Museum in
Dearborn, Michigan.
Bill Holland slows the model Spirit in
flight, makes a low pass over the runway,
triggers a minicassette onboard, and
Jimmie Stewart’s voice can be heard
shouting “Which way to Ireland?” It’s
sort of spooky.
Triplane: Shawn Strunk recently
stunned us at our flying field with his
tiny electric-powered RC Fokker
triplane—not just because of its
diminutive size, but because of the kit’s
source. It was a Guillow’s T-series balsa
kit!
Don’t confuse this new series of lasercut
kits with the older die-cut units.
These are more lightly engineered and
have balsa wood that is of higher quality
than what is in the ones many of us are
familiar with. Shawn further lightened his
rendition by vigorously sanding both sides
of the sheet parts and using a Dremel
hand tool to remove much of the interior
of the bulkheads and to scallop the keels
and LEs.
With a little GWS IPS motor running
an A gearbox, a three 340 mAh Kokam
Li-Poly battery pack, and three Draganfly
servos, the model weighs only 6.4 ounces
ready to fly. Flight duration is roughly 10
minutes at reduced throttle (which is
necessary since the batteries will burn out
the motor if run wide open for an
extended period).
Covering is an iron-on, lightweight
film called Solite. This material appears
to be slightly lighter and thinner than
UltraCote Lite, while retaining the lovely
transparent colors. All controls are
Dacron line arranged in a pull-pull
configuration.
How does the Fokker fly? After
tweaking the washout in the wings and
coupling the rudder and aileron, this little
beauty flies quite well. Much to my
amazement, it can be flown fairly slowly
outdoors without snap-rolling out of the
sky.
Guillow’s kits are available at most
hobby shops and at many craft or toy
stores. Check them out. As Shawn has
proven, they have some real potential. MA
Edition: Model Aviation - 2005/02
Page Numbers: 68,69,70
68 MODEL AVIATION
D.B. Mathews
F l y i n g f o r F u n
909 N. Maize Rd., Townhouse 734, Wichita KS 67212
PROBLEMS: Before I get to the “meat
and potatoes,” a couple of mess-ups on
my part need correction. Would the
fellow who sent the video of Reginald
Denny flying a Dennyplane please
contact me? I have donated it to the AMA
museum but need your name to place on
it as the donor.
Someone wrote to inquire about the
feasibility of enlarging a Cruiser 60 to fit
a Moki 2.10 engine. I responded with a
note and photos of the enlarged version I
chose not to publish. It was all returned,
marked “Insufficient Address.” I no
longer have the original letter.
A Champion: A letter from Bill
Kincheloe of Paradise, California, related
the reaction of the parents of one middleschool
youngster to whom he and Bill
Hanna are teaching basic modeling skills.
That sent me searching for a photo I had
run many years ago in this column.
The parents in question told Bill, “If
you want our child to have an X-Acto
knife, a tube of glue, and some balsa for
your class, you supply the tools and
This young man won Senior CL Scale at 1966 Nats. Caption from the November 1966
American Modeler reads that he was third in FF Scale. Text reveals his identity.
George Sauer constructed this fiberglass-and-built-up P-38 from a Czech kit. Two 010
AstroFlight brushless motors and three-cell Li-Poly 1500 pack fly it.
materials. Otherwise [the student] isn’t
coming back! We’re not spending
anything on your stupid toy airplanes.”
I have a notion that such an attitude is
not completely outside the experiences of
others who try to spread the joys of
building model airplanes among the youth
of contemporary America. If that
conclusion is correct, some encouragement
and appreciation is due those of you who
devote time to instructing kids. For that
reason, and as a way to illustrate that all is
not wasted, I dug out the photo.
The young man in the photo who won
Senior CL Scale at the 1960 Dallas, Texas,
AMA Nats and placed third in FF Scale is
someone whose name has been rather
prominent in the news lately: Burt Rutan!
Based on several television shows about
Burt, he and his brother Dick were avid
modelers as kids and had strong support
from their parents.
As most of you who have raised
youngsters through their teens can
probably testify, it’s a parents’ dream to
have our children find some activity that
excites them sufficiently to hold their
attention, generate wholesome
preoccupation, place them in the company
of wholesome adults, and teach them
usable virtues such as patience,
persistence, a thirst for knowledge, the joy
of accomplishment, etc.
Certainly not all children who become
interested in building and flying model
airplanes will find their way into aviation
as a career, but a disproportionate
percentage of them do. Their activities as
youth surely led to aviation careers for the
Rutan brothers; Dick is a retired Air Force
pilot and Burt is a close-to-heroic airplane
designer.
Their late mother and father must have
felt greatly rewarded for the modelbuilding
encouragement they gave their
boys. They probably never considered the
term “stupid toy airplanes.”
confessed that the work of building a
model, testing, it, repairing it, and
improving it kept me away from ‘less
wholesome’ activities, so she would
scrimp to make sure I had the materials,
time, and a place to pursue what almost
became an obsession.”
I’ll bet those words brought a lump to
many older readers’ throats. They tell my
story well, and although I didn’t pursue a
career in aviation, I did use the skills
acquired to practice dentistry. I learned
that more than two-thirds of my dentalschool
classmates were also modelers.
Nice In Any Language: Lately George
Sauer has been flying a lovely electricpowered
P-38 at our field. The kit is from
Czechoslovakia via Hobby Lobby. The
incredibly light and thin but beautifully
laid-up fiberglass pod, booms, and centersection
were so nice that George couldn’t
bring himself to paint them, so he left
them in gel coat. He covered the built-up
and precovered wings with MonoKote.
George discovered a fact that is new to
many of us. The model has no landing
gear (under cart) and lands on its belly
with the power off. Using scale threeblade
propellers doesn’t work out well
since, with a two-blader, the hang-down
blade gets bumped to the horizontal, but
on a three-blader the bump just exposes
another blade.
Other than that idiosyncrasy, the
Lockheed flies wonderfully without
George having to mess around trying to
start both engines. The twin AstroFlight
brushless motors produce a sound that is
closer to a pair of Allisons than a similar
wet-power model.
Ryan NYP: Bill Holland’s Spirit of St.
Louis is a remarkably accurate model of a
famous prototype. Even more remarkable
is that it flies extraordinarily well as an
RC airplane.
For many years, anyone who wanted
to build an NYP for FF Scale had to
increase the volume of the horizontal tail.
While looking at the material about the
prototype on the Internet, I learned what
lies behind this phenomenon.
The airplane was essentially a highly
modified Ryan M-1. What escaped me
was the fact that 5 feet were added to
each wing, yet the horizontal tail was not
enlarged. The prototype was tail-volume
shy for conversion to a FF model, hence
the almost mandatory addition of
approximately 20% to the horizontal
stabilizer to avoid porpoising when
building a model. From that, one can
appreciate Charles Lindbergh’s flying
skills even more.
Also on the Internet I learned that
Charles Lindbergh was the only person to
ever fly the NYP. After the Atlantic
crossing, it was retuned to the US aboard
Bill Holland of Medford, Oklahoma, owns this 1⁄4-scale Ryan NYP that Nick Ziroli built
from Ziroli plans. Text has details about its unusual feature.
Shawn Strunk built his tiny electric-powered RC Fokker triplane from a Guillow’s kit. It
flies quite well since he modified the laser-cut parts.
We modelers can share in the pride of
Burt and his team putting a home-built
vehicle into space twice within 10 days.
One can only wonder which of those kids
aching for some adult(s) to help them
build and fly models in your town might
turn into another Burt Rutan. You good
people who are encouraging kids with
model airplanes must not feel that you’re
wasting your time.
Bill Kincheloe wrote a paragraph that
captures the parental attitude that was so
prevalent in the 1930s and 1940s, when
aviation careers were the “hot ticket for
success.” Apparently that is not the
attitude of contemporary parents, yet I
have no idea what they encourage their
kids to become—surely not politicians.
Many years ago I wrote about and
included photos of the Mantz brothers
because of their intense interest in model
airplanes and their parents’ solid
encouragement. Now, years later, one is a
machinist in the aviation industry locally,
and the other is an aircraft mechanic at a
local Cessna dealership.
Bill wrote:
“My parents (and those of several of
my friends) supported us in various ways,
not the least of which was the occasional
quarter kit, nickel tubes of Comet cement,
little bottles of ‘dope,’ and rubber bands.
In the depths of the Depression, this
support was sometimes hard to come by,
but their enthusiasm for modeling made it
happen somehow.
“Mother told me in the last years of her
life as I was making a ‘success’ as a
professional engineer that I had fully
justified her belief that my models would
‘amount to something’ in the end. She also
the USS Memphis and then eventually
flown to all 48 contiguous states, many
cities in Central and Latin America, and
finally to Washington DC to be displayed
at the Smithsonian Institution.
The NYP held 400 gallons of fuel,
which represented half of the aircraft’s
total weight at takeoff!
The movie in which Jimmie Stewart
played Charles Lindbergh used three
reproductions; one is now in the
Experimental Aircraft Association
museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin; one is
(or was) in the San Diego Air Museum;
and a third resides in the Ford Museum in
Dearborn, Michigan.
Bill Holland slows the model Spirit in
flight, makes a low pass over the runway,
triggers a minicassette onboard, and
Jimmie Stewart’s voice can be heard
shouting “Which way to Ireland?” It’s
sort of spooky.
Triplane: Shawn Strunk recently
stunned us at our flying field with his
tiny electric-powered RC Fokker
triplane—not just because of its
diminutive size, but because of the kit’s
source. It was a Guillow’s T-series balsa
kit!
Don’t confuse this new series of lasercut
kits with the older die-cut units.
These are more lightly engineered and
have balsa wood that is of higher quality
than what is in the ones many of us are
familiar with. Shawn further lightened his
rendition by vigorously sanding both sides
of the sheet parts and using a Dremel
hand tool to remove much of the interior
of the bulkheads and to scallop the keels
and LEs.
With a little GWS IPS motor running
an A gearbox, a three 340 mAh Kokam
Li-Poly battery pack, and three Draganfly
servos, the model weighs only 6.4 ounces
ready to fly. Flight duration is roughly 10
minutes at reduced throttle (which is
necessary since the batteries will burn out
the motor if run wide open for an
extended period).
Covering is an iron-on, lightweight
film called Solite. This material appears
to be slightly lighter and thinner than
UltraCote Lite, while retaining the lovely
transparent colors. All controls are
Dacron line arranged in a pull-pull
configuration.
How does the Fokker fly? After
tweaking the washout in the wings and
coupling the rudder and aileron, this little
beauty flies quite well. Much to my
amazement, it can be flown fairly slowly
outdoors without snap-rolling out of the
sky.
Guillow’s kits are available at most
hobby shops and at many craft or toy
stores. Check them out. As Shawn has
proven, they have some real potential. MA