PHOTOS: BILL SCHMIDT
Bill Schmidt resurrected this .020 powered A-OK design (above left) from a single advertising photo that appeared in model magazines some 45 year ago. Working from just that photo and lacking any plans, Bill used structural techniques that have proven to be tried and true over the years. Thanks to long-
wound the six strands of 1⁄8-inch rubber to about half the motor’s capacity and let it go. The model stayed up over a minute. He then relays, “To find out its dead air
time, I cranked in a full 1,000 turns. Well, the air wasn’t as dead as I thought. At five minutes the nose block fell out, but the mod- el didn’t come down. At ten minutes, it was out of sight. I walked in the direction it had gone and was lucky enough to find it about a mile from where I launched it, sans nose block and propeller. [I guess] I’ll have to carve a new nose block and propeller and rig a dethermalizer.” As a note to our F/F returnee of the previ-
ous segment, Tom Binkley, there are lots of ways of losing an airplane short of running over it with a park maintenance truck!
Rubber motor calculator Grant Carson’s experience brought to
mind one of the dilemmas of building older models like his 1940 vintage Scatterbrain. The kits or plans typically do not have any information regarding the size of the rubber motor required, or even worse, references to “Pirelli” or “T-56” rubber leave today’s mod- elers scratching their heads. Bob Hodes, of Nevada’s famed FAC “Vul-
ture Squadron”, some time back developed an Excel spread sheet for scale models that will work as a starting place for small mod- els like Grant’s. It is ingeniously simple be- cause all you do is feed in some model di- mensions and weight and it magically comes up with a recommended motor size. Dura- tion competitors may want to tweak the re- sults to suit their own planes and purposes, but it is a great place to start. You can find Bob’s magical calculator by going to
http://freeflight.org/DigestOnline/Hodes. It is a presentation of the National Free Flight Society web site where you can find many more useful tools and pockets of information.
Things that are A-OK Some time back I recounted master-mod-
eler Bill Schmidt’s saga in trying to find the original plans for a small gas model called the A-OK distributed by a company called Custom Desine, both of which originated in the St. Louis, Missouri area. When his search proved unsuccessful, Bill generated
FLYING MODELS
time reader and modeler, Bob Spinks, Bill was able to build the actual plane (above right) from the original kit plans that Bob provided. Note the curious fuselage construction that probably insured the fact that the model would never become mainstream, despite its rakish looks. More in the text.
his own shop drawings based on the left rear quarter view photo/sketch of the plane used in the company’s magazine advertisements. I presented a couple of photos of Bill’s ver- sion of the rakish-looking model at that time. For a more in-depth description of the
search for the origins of the plane, there is a page-long article of Bill’s odyssey in the Feb/March 2012 issue of The National Free Flight Society Digest. Fast forward to the present, we find loyal
reader and long-time modeler, Bob Spink, galloping to the rescue out of Chamberlain, South Dakota with what must be the only remaining A-OK kit in the world, complete with full-size plans. The Budweiser Clydes- dales couldn’t have kept Bill from building the real deal .020 version directly from a copy of Bob Spink’s plans—but with some interesting results. “It differs from my rendition dreamed up
solely from the magazine picture a year ago. Mine had a sheet balsa box fuselage, where- as the factory design is a stick girder with sheet balsa sides and a single narrow sheet on the top in a kind of “T” cross-section. “I used 4–6 pound balsa on this one as my original ship was tail heavy and I extended the motor mounts to get a good c.g.—and the result looked bad. On this corrected model, I put no tissue or multiple coats of dope on the aft fuselage—and you guessed it—it’s nose heavy! I wanted to show you the strange construction of the fuselage via the photo included. I find it poor in torsion and in bending. The .049 version is the same construction.” The photo of the new model built from the
kit plans shows not only the differences in the original plane and Bill’s rendition of it, but also shows how close he was to captur- ing the whole plane working from just a sin- gle photo. Bill goes on to say that the plan title box
shows that the plane was designed and plans drawn by a J. Shifko. The mystery deepens as to its origins (1966–67 or there- abouts) since no currently active free - flighters in the St. Louis area can remember ever seeing the plane at any meets—local, regional, or national. Anyone with information about the plane
can contact Bill via e-mail at
bschmidt08@hotmail.com. He is also offer- ing his shop drawings of his version of the model for a nominal fee at that same contact address.
Things that are not A-OK British subscriber, Brian Knock, was kind enough to send an e-mail regarding the pho- to of the late Roger Schroeder’s model that I had identified as a DeHavilland Dragon Rapide. Brian points out that there are dif- ferences between the Dragon series of planes, and that the plane in the photo is ac- tually the DeHavilland Dragon. The Rapide has a “pointier” nose and the wings are “ta- pered and pointy tipped” with a faired-in un- dercarriage. Brian notes that there is also a four-engined version called the Dragon Ex- press, which may be new and fresh meat for premier FAC builders. Brian was kind enough to let me off the
hook by saying that even UK writers get them mixed up. I appreciate the civility, Brian!
In closing Unfortunately, this sub-head is not only a
way of wrapping up this month’s column, but it is also an announcement of the clos- ing of Shorty’s Basement due to health rea- sons. Carole and Dan Kane have been stal- wart friends of freeflight for more than several years, working hard to secure the rather unusual supply and equipment needs of the freeflight community, including such esoteric items as Rapier motors. They also began offering their own high quality kits of new and unusual modeling subjects, which were much appreciated. Carole says the plan is to keep Shorty’s
open the rest of the year and to be at the AMA Nats in July selling the remainder of their stock, but health concerns will pre- clude continuing on an on-going basis. We wish the best for both Carole and Dan and thank them for their years of service to the freeflight community. We’ll be back at this spot next month of-
fering the best in building and flying tips from our readers, and more photos of out- standing airplanes. Enjoy the spring ther- mals—and throw something into the air!
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