How to: Convert a Glow RC Kit to Electric
ALTHOUGH RC ELECTRICS are well-established, many still believe such aircraft have to be fragile floaters-or battery-laden "bombs" for rocket-like climbs on short runs. Although there is a good spectrum of Electric kits that offers everything from aerobatics to soaring and Scale, we often view them as the only things we can fly with electric power. Can you electrify a Falcon 56 or World Engines Robinhood? Of course! Theoretically, any kit could fly with an electric motor for power, but common sense tells us that a Pattern model would require structural redesign, whereas a light cabin sport model would perform well with electric power almost as it comes out of the box. There are many naturals: Gentle Lady, Butterfly, Monarch, Piece O'Cake (sureshots which offer small challenge in the conversion). However, the higher the power-to-weight ratio of a glow-engine model and the higher its wing loading, the more difficult it is to convert.
Just for the Fun of It: Plane Talk
ALL OF THE KING'S MEN hope to put Humpty Dumpty together again. I'm the victim of a benevolent Sting. I can see the jump-start cables. Taking away For Fun is as heinous as murder by axe. For every guy into all that high-tech "in" stuff, there is one or more who want no-pressure enjoyment. Roses to smell are hard to find. Just For the Fun of It began in carefree innocence, but it grew to such awesome proportions that the author became the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. In the future we plan to talk about reader-built fun craft, with nice pictures, your data, and appropriate commentary on "feeling good" stuff. Obviously, we have to wait until you proud builders resume sending in those great pictures of your fun airplanes with enough info for us to describe them (freewheeling comments, please). You had no trouble with that before, by gosh.
Just for the Fun of It: Plane Talk
WHY THE 1/4-SCALE ARISTOCRAT? Another impulse! There is always one plane that is never to be forgotten. I always dream of planes to build, but they remain fantasies. But I build things I never thought about. The subconscious? I always wanted one big one. Buried in some pigeon hole of my mind was a dimmed memory of a long-ago 9-ft. rubber-powered Cessna (1920s), the prop carved from a 24-in.-long balsa 2 × 4. It took two of us to manhandle it to one row of knots of sliced inner tube rubber-no winder and no stretching. Tissue-covered, the Cessna skimmed aloft, never above 6 ft., a slow-motion Jumbo-Jumbo, only to land gloriously in a blackberry patch. One flight-but Lindy was happy with one flight. When the Aristocrat flew "off the board," it was as if a desk-bound environmentalist went back-packing to see bees and bears and came upon the "Lost Ark." That airplane is more indelible now than the first model I got to fly, my solo in a J-3, or any magazine I ever edited.
Just for the Fun of It: Plane Talk
Electrics? Five years ago I would not have been caught dead with the notion of a motor (rather than an engine) and a pile of dead-weight battery cells. Now, Electrics make me wonder if occasionally kicking up one's heels is good for the modeling soul. Having built models for 58 years, I find this activity of ours to be "awesome." (I have looked at too many Datsun ads.) If I told you of the stupid things I did in the beginning with these "simple" Electrics (just flip a switch and fly?), intelligent AMAers would drum me out of the corps. An Electric is simple-I think. People write so much about it that most of us are scared to death. Just a few paragraphs should supply enough A-B-Cs for a gorilla to do a 10-min. flight. Writing about my own Electrics, I probably confuse more novitiates than all columnists put together. Manufacturers even refer to the "Winter syndrome."
Just for the Fun of It: Plane Talk
THE MUSTANG! What a fitting beginning. Was there ever a more glamorous aircraft? Since its glory days in WW II, American modelers have paid it unfading homage. Hundreds of thousands of "miniatures" have been built from scratch and from kits: FF Rubber, Control Line, and Radio Control-including Giant Scale. Its appeal is greater than ever. Ubiquitous is the word. "Existing or being everywhere at the same time; constantly encountered: widespread." "I've been flying a plane for the past three years that just fits that bill," states Joe Breda of Gahamma, OH. (Like others, Joe thought your editor's announcement of this column back in the September issue was, itself, a column and responds `to your request for letters on the subject, Just For the Fun of It.') "It's one of those planes that most new Sunday fliers would like to fly but just don't have the confidence to try.
