Making your own cowls
by Don Grissom [email protected]
It is that time of year to start building and getting ready for next year’s RC Combat events.
One issue I seem to have after most contests is bent or broken cowls. In most cases I can order another one from the kit supplier, although there are times I wish I could just make my own.
I noticed that Dane McGee made a cowl for his Me 410. It is a simple solution to the problem and takes a little work to fabricate the first one, but it can be duplicated easily once you have the necessary parts.
Steps to make a cowl plug and molding:
- Make a paper pattern of the cowl shape and firewall. Trace the outline carefully.
- Transfer the tracing to a block of balsa and rough-cut the shape.
- Use a block sander to shape the balsa block to match the pattern. This is the messy part—take your time to get the correct contours.
- Find a plastic container roughly the size of the plug (a Coke bottle, peanut butter jar, or apple juice bottle will work).
- Place the balsa plug inside the plastic container and use a heat gun to shrink the plastic to the form. Be careful not to overheat the plastic, as it can weaken or burn through.
- Once the plastic is shaped, cut the cowl to make the engine and muffler openings before painting.
This is a simple and effective method for making cowls for scale airplanes.
RC Combat Nats
This past summer I had the chance to attend the RC Combat Nats in Muncie, Indiana. RC Combat celebrated its 10th year of competition at the Nats. As in past years, the turnout was smaller than usual, but some of the top pilots competed.
We started the week with two official events: Slow Survivable Combat (SSC) and Open B Combat. SSC had the most pilots with 17, which allowed us to run two heats. Unlike some other events, we did not have a single pilot drop out of the contest this year.
After 10 rounds in two days, William Drumm III finished first in SSC. Brian Neff was the Open B winner with a score of 3,480, beating his father by slightly more than 200 points.
As we entered the last two days of Combat, we knew rain was on the way. Although Muncie had not had rain in weeks, we brought some.
We got a late start on day three, but were able to run five rounds of 2948 and six rounds of Limited B that day. When we returned the next day, the weather did not cooperate and we had to call the events, using the scores from day three to determine the winners.
In Scale 2948 the winner was Tom Neff. There were only eight points between second and fourth places—or about two feet of streamer. Limited B finished at six rounds, and William Drumm III took first place in that event.
I look forward to next year and hope even more people come and compete.
A Great Year
I would say I have had a great year and I’m looking forward to another excellent one. I have begun changing over all of my Open B and Limited B airplanes to the Lethal Weapon for SSC.
I had such good luck at the Nats that I decided to change over the rest of my airplanes for next year.
Sources
- RC Combat Association
- www.rccombat.com
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
