OldtimerTopics O
ne of the nice things about build- ing, rather than buying, a model is that if you built it, you can fix it when it breaks. Rocky Russo, aka “Professor Fate”, was correct when he said, “All models are doomed.” But another nice thing is that you can name your model. And a lot of model designers liked to name their models after their girlfriend. I was reminded of this when an English modeler told me about one of his vintage rubber F/F models called Sand Grown Jen- ny. Now there’s a model name to conjure with. I knew about Lew Mahieu’s Zeek, the nickname of his late 1940s girlfriend. I knew that Vic Smeed liked to give his models some of the pet names he had for his wife, Mar- garet. Vic had the Tomboy, Poppet, Cherub, Mamselle, Debutante, Courtesan (a bit “spicy” there, Vic) and Ballerina. I’ve just finished building Vic’s last design, a 38-inch low winger called Lola.
And one of the SCAMPS named his own design, sorta old time sport flyer, Beau Timer. Beau is a waitress in the airport cof- fee shop where some of the SCAMPS have lunch after a flying session. But Sand Grown Jenny? That was a puzzler. I pursued that. I was told that the girl- friend’s name was indeed “Jenny”. She was from Blackpool (a bit north of Liverpool for us geography challenged Yanks). The soil there is very sandy, and the farmers produce a lot of “sand grown” vegetables. Fifty plus years on Sand Grown Jenny has been im- mortalized!
On a more prosaic note, lots of our old spark ignition engines use rings. And they sometimes need to be replaced. SAM Hall of Famer Eut Tileston sent me a note recom- mending the services of Frank Bowman of Farmington, New Mexico as a specialist in reproducing model engine rings. He can be reached at
ringmaster46@msn.com.
PHOTO: GLENN POOLE PHOTO: LOUIE SCRIBNER
Louie Scribner and his pals down in North Carolina with an electric powered Boehle Giant. The 178-inch model was purchased in Illinois as part of an estate sale. More information in the column.
There’s a photo in this column of Louie Scribner’s Boehle Giant. There’s an inter- esting story behind it, and I’ve had to con- dense some of the details due to space limi- tations. Louie is an electric R/C guy in North Carolina. He wanted to fly an electric old timer, and came across an estate sale in Illi- nois. A partially completed, but unfinished, Boehle Giant was on offer. Louie bought it along with some other planes.
Now the question was how to get this air- plane home. One of Louie’s flying buddies was competing in a contest in Illinois and volunteered to bring the goodies home. Now the original owner had started construction on the Giant way back in 1984, but it was not complete. Louie, and three of his local buddies, set out to finish the plane. Dave Harding has campaigned a Boehle Giant at the SAM Champs for several years now, and Louie sought Dave out for advice. The Giant has a 178-inch wingspan and
20 square feet of wing area. Big planes do fly better, but it’s easy to add unwanted weight to these big boys. The original Boehle Giants flown in the 1930s supposedly weighed 6 pounds or so. Dave Harding is an experi- enced engineer who carefully calculates stress, and gets the weight out, etc., but his Giant weighs a bit more than 10 pounds. Louie’s “team” wound up with a heavier model at 19 pounds or so with some heavy Li-Po battery packs. He powered the Giant with a Hacker 50-12L, a 19–8e propeller and two 6S 5000 mAh packs. With that setup, the Giant had 1,300 watts of power, or about 12⁄3 horsepower.
“Team Louie” put up their maiden flight
on the Giant in July. They found they had a wonderful flyer, floating slowly along, and thermaling well. There’s a lot of effort re- quired in these big ships, but they reward their builders, and flyers, with great flights. I recently had a chance to read an excel-
by mike myers You can reach Mike Myersat 911 Kilmary Lane, Glendale, CA 91207, or via at
mikemyersgln@charter.net
PHOTO: BILL SCHMIDT
Glenn Poole holds his new electric Stardust Special (at left). The clean fuselage and high aspect wing has made this design very popular among contest modelers. Bill Schmidt out in Wichita always builds an attractive model and this Elfin 2.49 powered Ranger (above) is no exception. Mike used to see a lot of F/F Rangersflying at Taft and at Lost Hills.
30 NOVEMBER 2012
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