Free Flight Duration
EVER SINCE I WAS a Junior, I can remember editorials in the model magazines about the "Junior Problem." "Where are all the Juniors?" the writers moaned. They wrote about the good old days during the Depression when a ten-cent Comet kit would keep a kid occupied for hours; when hundreds of youths would turn up for a contest in the city park; and when there was a hobby shop on every street corner. In the 1950s television was the culprit, luring youth away from the building board. But it was much more than television that caused the decline in the numbers of children participating in free flight. Some of the factors were societal, others specific to the hobby.
Free Flight: Duration
BOXING IT UP: You don't need to be a jet-set modeler, flying all over the country, to take advantage of a model box. Even if you only travel by car or van, a model box provides a great way to safely store and organize your models. If you have ever gone to a contest and started putting one of your models together, only to discover you left the stab at home, then you need a model box. Before you get the plywood out and start building a box, decide what to put in it. "Ah, that's easy. All my models." Measure your car, then measure your models, then think again. A giant, coffin-sized model box that can contain everything from your D Gas job down to a Peanut Scale is just going to be too big to be practical, unless you have a few friendly "pallbearers" available at contest time.
Free Flight: Duration
TIMER TUNING: There are many different clockwork timers available from Eastern Europe. Most, if not all, use the same gear mechanism-copied from the German Leica camera self-timer. Self-timers only need to run 15 to 20 seconds-just long enough for you to hit the button and jump into the picture. But for free flight, we need these things to run five to ten minutes or more. That means slowing things down a lot, and that makes the timers much more susceptible to dirt. It doesn't take much to bring one of these timers to a screeching halt.
Free Flight: Duration
LAST MONTH I BEGAN DISCUSSING tapered wings. If you read that column, you have the basics down about building a jig. As mentioned last time, you can either make separate tapered jigs (one for each panel of the wing) or you can construct a single constant-chord jig that matches the bottom curvature of the wing at the root. The next step is to cut the ribs. This is probably the single reason why everybody doesn't build tapered wings for every model. Cutting a set of ribs for a tapered wing is a lot more trouble than cutting a bunch of identical ribs for a constant-chord wing.
Free Flight: Duration
CAMPBELL KITS: Lee Campbell sent along two new 1/2A kits for review. One is the Frank Garcher-designed Fortastrop for Nostalgia. I vaguely remember the Midwest kit of the Fortastrop from the mid-1950s, but can't recall ever seeing one built. It was probably one of those designs that was left behind in the horsepower and square-inch race that started with the Cox and Holland engines. The Fortastrop is a nice-looking, though rather typical 247-square-inch model with tapered tips, a medium-height pylon, and a 33% stab. I especially like the diagonal rib construction on the stab and the rudder firmly mounted on the fuselage. Construction is simple and straightforward. About the only unusual feature is the built-up, sheeted pylon. Price for the kit is $29.98.
