A Russian Bear
George Maiorana brought a new airplane to the Weak Signals' Toledo Show and to Top Gun this year. It is a model of an aircraft I hadn't seen before, but it looks familiar. Before static judging at Top Gun, George was still adding parts to the aircraft. Talk about waiting until the last minute!
I thought you might be interested in some background and some of the processes that George went through while building the Tu-4 and the Chinese AEW aircraft, which are both powered by electric motors.
Background
There were three Boeing B-29 Superfortresses that made emergency landings in Vladivostok in the Soviet Union in 1944. The crews were allowed to leave, but the communist military kept their aircraft.
Two of the airplanes were disassembled for detailed evaluation and their parts were sent throughout the Soviet Union to be copied. The third copy was kept in flying condition for evaluation. What resulted was an almost exact copy of the Boeing B-29 that was designated the Tu-4. More than 1,200 Tu-4s were built up until 1953.
George Maiorana and Skip Mast spent many hours collecting information about the B-29 and documenting the aircraft in the US Air Force Museum at Dayton, Ohio. They measured the different parts of the aircraft, how high it sits off of the ground at different points, and they took many photos for the design work and for building the models that would follow.
Previous Models and the Switch to Electric
This is the third airframe from the original design that George built. The first was the Miss America '62, which was powered by four four-stroke engines. That model was demolished in a crash after losing one engine, stalling, and going in. George decided that that was it for "wet power," and he switched to electric power for all of his models; he reasoned that electric would be more reliable.
The second model was built as an electric-powered Russian Tu-4 covered with Flite-Metal. During the past three contest seasons with the Tu-4 and the numerous wins in Team Scale with pilot Dave Pinegar, George's belief about electric power seems to have been proven correct.
George contacted Tom Cimato of MaxCim Motors, gave him the most recent B-29 specifications, and with Tom's help he knew that electric power would be possible for the competition Tu-4. The MaxCim coreless motors with the gear drive would make the large Tu-4 fly well in whatever configuration George wanted.
With George's craftsmanship in the shop and Dave Pinegar's piloting skills, the two of them have been a scourge of the Team Scale circuit in the past couple years. They have won at Top Gun, the Scale Nationals, and the US Scale Masters Championships.
The New AEW Turboprop Model
This new effort came from the idea that the Chinese version with early-warning radar dome and turboprop engines would be different, and it would be an exciting model for the builder, pilot, and judges.
George wanted to make the early-warning radar work/rotate while the model was in flight. It took some time to figure out exactly how he was going to do it, but a servo in the dome serves as the motor for turning the dome. It works like clockwork, and the dome doesn't impede the flight controls at all.
Finish and Covering
One of the more interesting aspects of the model is the aluminum finish. These types of finishes have been difficult to achieve in the past, and they're not for the faint-of-heart modeler who is short on building time. George says he gets several questions about the model's finish. They're usually:
- What is it covered with?
- What did you use to apply the rivets and how many are there?
- What did you weather it with?
The answer to the first question seems to surprise most modelers. Although aluminum tape has been used to cover scale models for many years, most modelers believe that it is too heavy or too difficult to apply. George thinks both notions are false.
If you are interested in using aluminum tape, George will refer you to Ed Clayman's Scale Aero site. There is a wealth of information there, so browse around and click on "Flite-Metal," and you will have all of the information you need to buy and apply the aluminum finish for your model.
The aluminum panels are assembled starting from the back and bottom of the aircraft and working toward the front. Some aircraft have little or no overlap with the aluminum panels. Using a template for each panel is a good idea, and it will decrease the number of errors you may make when installing the panels. The rivet process requires its own article, so I'll save that one until later.
Rivets and Weathering
Your airframe's weathering is your choice, based on your documentation; it can be shiny, grimy, have exhaust carbon, oil streaks, etc. To dirty up the Tu-4 and show off its rivets, George generously applied black latex paint he purchased (in a 2-ounce bottle) from a craft store to the airframe.
He allowed it to set briefly, then he continually wiped the surface with a damp cloth until he obtained the desired effect. Some panels can be taped off with blue masking tape and polished with any compound. (Go easy here; it only takes a few seconds to polish a panel.)
The model has to be handled carefully because the thin metal finish can be damaged by too much touching; some people just have to see if it's really metal. George has put together an additional panel to show off the metal and the process of making the rivets on the skin, of which there are approximately 120,000.
According to some modelers, there are many technological advances in this airframe. George describes his efforts as putting together existing technology from different sources to construct this model.
Team Scale has had a positive effect on scale modeling. It brings new and sometimes different models not only to competition, but for all of us to enjoy.
Thanks to George Maiorana for the technical information about the AEW turboprop.
Fair skies and tailwinds. MA
Stan Alexander
Sources
- MaxCim Motors
57 Hawthorne Dr. Orchard Park, NY 14127 (716) 662-5651 [email protected] www.maxcim.com
- Flite-Metal / Scale Aero (Ed Clayman)
16115 Espinosa Dr. Houston, TX 77083 (281) 530-5823 [email protected] www.scaleaero.com
Specifications
- Wingspan: 115 inches
- Wing area: 1,150 square inches
- Weight: 30 pounds
- Propellers: Custom homemade carbon-fiber four-blade
- Scale ratio: 1:15
- Motors: Four MaxNEO-13Y
- Gearing: 2.73:1
- Power cells: 48 Panasonic 3000 mAh NiMH cells
- Radio: Futaba 9ZAP
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
