Mag. I used to buy had detailed plans in every issue. Soon as I re-kitted one, I'd dig out an issue and build another....
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450 mph RC model jet
- Thread starter Mailman
- Start date
My thing was building and CL flying scale-model Guillow balsa-wood kits. Spad, Curtis pusher, Wright flyer, Zero, P-40, P-51, F6F, F4U, Cessna 170, Fokker DR1, others can't remember. Made retractable gear for the Zero, a 3rd line activated a trigger for retract/lower. Made a P-51 using balsa sheeting instead of silkspan. Heavy, but fast.
The Curtis pusher was a dog, the Corsair my best flyer.
A big ol' aggressive dog ran out on our flight area and made big problems for us.
I kamikaze'd my heavy/fast balsa-skinned P-51 into that thing.
Problem solved.
Anybody remember the smell of "liquid bananas"...?
The Curtis pusher was a dog, the Corsair my best flyer.
A big ol' aggressive dog ran out on our flight area and made big problems for us.
I kamikaze'd my heavy/fast balsa-skinned P-51 into that thing.
Problem solved.
Anybody remember the smell of "liquid bananas"...?
IE castor oil in the nitromethane fuel? Oh yeah.
Guess again.........
They used to make a model epoxy back then that smelled like bananas or double bubble gum... depending on who you asked.
The banana smell was from the oldschool amyl acetate solvent in nitro cellulose dope...
Hmmm... guess I never smelled it. Bein' as how my dad was an aircraft mechanic, he brought me dope home from work. Never used any from the hobby shop. It had an acetone smell. Perhaps the banana smell was added to the hobby stuff to make it more appealing?
I remember the smell of Ambroid glue - not as volatile as the Testors stuff and a bit stronger (it came in an orange and white tube).
I built all of the Guillow's planes with their "die-crushed" wooden parts (the wood got progressively worse and in the later years was extremely poor quality) but I never tried to fly one C/L. You were brave and must have had lightning-fast reflexes TwoMany!
After I had built all of the Guillow's and all of the larger Sterling kits (they did a really nice Corsair too), I started making my own kits using 3-view drawings from books that were in the public library. I would simply scale them up and transfer all of the measurements to larger paper and then start in with my trusty #11 Ex-Acto knife. I could buy a 36"x3"x1/16" sheet of decent balsa wood down at the local hobby shop and build a good looking rubber-powered model for around $0.75-$1.00 including glue - using the wheels and props from the Guillow's/Sterling plane kits.
Tons of fun for a young kid and a great way to keep out of trouble. I wish youngsters these days had interests like that.
I built all of the Guillow's planes with their "die-crushed" wooden parts (the wood got progressively worse and in the later years was extremely poor quality) but I never tried to fly one C/L. You were brave and must have had lightning-fast reflexes TwoMany!
After I had built all of the Guillow's and all of the larger Sterling kits (they did a really nice Corsair too), I started making my own kits using 3-view drawings from books that were in the public library. I would simply scale them up and transfer all of the measurements to larger paper and then start in with my trusty #11 Ex-Acto knife. I could buy a 36"x3"x1/16" sheet of decent balsa wood down at the local hobby shop and build a good looking rubber-powered model for around $0.75-$1.00 including glue - using the wheels and props from the Guillow's/Sterling plane kits.
Tons of fun for a young kid and a great way to keep out of trouble. I wish youngsters these days had interests like that.
I wish youngsters these days had interests like that
as my mother would say
Get outside and find something to do
When I was 4, my old man picked me up and put me on the seat of a 24" Stelbar bicycle and, with a cigar in his mouth, gave me one big push down the driveway out into the street and said, "There you go." That was a do or die situation and I didn't go down. I loved that bike and rode it so much, I wore out the crank bearings,
My next door neighbor was an engineer. He spent all his spare time building scale model WW1 biplanes from scratch with gas engines. He never flew them, but he did build an ultra light airplane he and his son flew. When he died, his basement looked like a museum filled with planes hanging from the ceiling on wires. When his widow moved to Florida in her late 80"s, the sons sold the house in a hurry and had to clear it out. They had 2 weeks to look for a home for the planes and were unsuccessful doing so, but found a buyer for the motors. All those beautiful planes went into a dumpster...
