Stroker
THIS DESIGN is the result of an effort to match an airplane to the beautiful .40 to .45 four-stroke engines now available at reasonable cost. I feel the match is a good one. Although there are many excellent kits on the market that will do quite well with the four-strokers, it seems a shame to couple these engines to the mundane, for they have a personality all of their own. Stroker tries to capture the romance of open cockpit flying and combine it with the four-stroke personality to produce an efficient flying machine. It does just that. This is an airplane that will perform with the best of them and still be gentle enough for those of us barely out of the learning stage.
No-cal J-3 Cub
MR. PIPER'S J-3 CUB has been used to teach a lot of people to fly full-size aircraft, and this J-3 Cub model has taught a lot of people to fly No-Cal Scale. It has been built by novices, Juniors, old-timers, RCers, Free Flighters, etc., and all have been Curved outlines of the wing tips, rudder, and stab are formed around templates of cardboard or wood. Soak the strips in warm water; form them around the templates, and hold in place with strips of masking tape. Tall surfaces are too filmsy to withstand any shrinking of the covering. A simple trick is to build a frame, cover it with tissue, shrink the tissue with water, and then cover the tail surfaces with the tissue still in the frame. The results is wrinkle-free covering with no warps.
Double Duty
DESIGNED TO PERFORM the dual role of both basic hands-off trainer and advanced aileron trainer, this aptly-named model can adapt its flying to suit almost everyone's style. In the three-channel configuration it is a very gentle and stable training machine. It will recover from almost any attitude all by itself if the controls are allowed to return to neutral and there is 75-100 ft. of altitude. Turn entry is smooth with little of the "tail wagging" associated with rudder-only airplanes. Quite creditable rolls can be done with the properly-timed application of down elevator.
Sheeting the Easy Way
ALTHOUGH THE SUPER GLUES (cyanoacrylate) have been a boon to modelers, with their rapid set time and deep penetration, there are still applications where the older glues have an advantage. An example is the sheeting of wing leading edges. One surface can be easily sheeted with the super glues, but the second surface offers problems because of inaccessibility. The use of pins in the time-honored way can result in a satisfactory outcome; but there are other ways. The technique to be described is an adaptation of an old cabinetmakers' trick based on the fact that some glues can be polymerized with heat after they have cured. The yellow glues (aliphatic resins) polymerize beautifully, and once the polymerization has taken place additional heat has no effect! Because of this characteristic it is possible to iron 1/16-in. sheet balsa skins to balsa framework-or to foam for that matter-almost the same way we iron-on the plastic films.
Weekender
This RC model's small size and economical, quiet, small-displacement, four-stroke power plant make it a great plane for those impromptu flying sessions that have earned it a most appropriate name. Flight qualities are truly outstanding, and the new .20 four-stroker puts out plenty of power. For four-channel controls.
