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PHOTOS: DOUG KLASSEN


Phil Semmers used an old freeflight plan as the start for these two Waco SRE electric R/C models (above). The weather was nice at the Southwest Regionals this year and Colin Widdison (above, at right) has a smile like the cat that ate the canary. He’s holding his Speed 400 Kerswap. Dale Tower’s big electric Stardust Special glides in for a landing at Eloy. The photo (at right) shows the virtues of the Stardust Special—slim fuselage and low drag; and the vices—single wheel landing gear and an aft fuselage that’s not torsionally stiff.


events were particularly hotly contested with nine entrants in Speed 400 and ten in Electric Texaco. Well done, Jack, and I hope to have a shot at you in this year’s SAM Champs. Now if I haven’t mentioned it be- fore, the 2013 SAM Champs will take place on El Dorado Dry Lake from October 6 to 11. I’ve been a little remiss on building tips lately, so here are two. Stripping tissue off an airplane framework is never easy. That’s especially true if the tissue or covering was originally put on with white glue. Hank Sperzel out in Omaha has discovered that you can use a small sanding “flap wheel” in a Dremel tool, and strip that old white glue and tissue off very easily. Now that takes a steady grip and a delicate touch. I wouldn’t try it after say my third cup of coffee in the morning, but Ol’ Cool Hand Hank does it


with ease. He says it works a treat. I’ll have to try it.


Marcel Lavoie and a couple of other people supplied a hint about using eye drop bottles to hold and apply glue. The bottles are small, so you have to refill them from a big- ger glue bottle. But they’re flexible as well and they tend to draw the glue back inside the tip when the pressure is released. You can apply a single drop, or keep squeezing for a good flow of glue. And since many of us use eye drops, or know someone who does, the little eye drop bottles come at the right price—free—once they’ve been used for their original purpose.


If you’re a silk and dope or silk and tissue man, epoxy paint is not the first thing that comes to your mind when completing a mod- el. But there are places on an old time model


(like a firewall for example) where a bit of epoxy paint could come in handy. When environmental regulations chased K&B Manufacturing out of California in the early 1990s, I bought all the K&B Super Poxy paints I could get. It’s now 15 years on and I’m running out of some of the catalysts and reducer (thinner). I was pleasantly sur- prised early this year when I found that Klass Kote epoxy catalyst and reducer was perfectly compatible with some now 17- year-old Part A Red Super Poxy. I was painting replacements for some fuel soaked uprights on my model field stand. Precision Aero Products, who’d made the stand, sold me some unpainted laser-cut birch plywood replacement uprights. This red epoxy should make the new uprights last another 10 or 15 years.


Bob Aberle has drawn plans for numerous old time models scaled to 200 square inches or so. This is Bob’s version of the Perris Special (at left)—which was the last model that Sal Taibi designed. Mike Taibi and Betty Moke (above) stand behind a fleet of Sal Taibi designs present for the January 12 Taibi Memorial Mass Launch at Perris, California.


FLYING MODELS 47


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