PHOTOS: DAVID MITCHELL
Bob Kreplin’s 1944 Kitten (at left) looks airborne even when it’s sitting on a table! Single-bladed folding prop as per the original plan. The weight of the model at rest keeps the spring-loaded landing gear extended. A nice construction shot (above) of the Kitten’s fuselage. The gentle lift of the underside of the nose provides a bit of additional clearance for the rubber motor inside.
a piece of 120 or 220 sandpaper to the straight edge. You can make the piece of sandpaper oversized, and then when the glue has dried, trim the sandpaper to the width of the balsa with a razor. Voilà! You now have a custom notch-cutter. Test it on some scrap to make sure it’s the right size— you may have to fiddle with it a bit. You can further refine your high-tech tool by gluing a stop-rail onto the side, that lim- its the depth of the notch. I have found it useful to make up several of these sanding cutters, in different widths (1⁄32, 1⁄20, 1⁄16, etc.) and lengths. Short ones (1 to 2 inches long) are great for sanding notches in tight places; longer ones (approximately 6 inches) can be very useful in making sure that the notches you’re cutting across several formers are in line. There’s nothing that says you can’t make these tools out of other materials, like aluminum stock or plastic; I just use hard balsa or basswood because it’s cheap and there’s always some of it at hand. A disadvantage of the sandpaper notch-
cutter is that the forward/back motion of creating the notch can break delicate form- ers. For these, I sometimes cut a double- edged razor in half and glue the two halves on either side of a piece of scrap balsa that is a hair thinner than the stringer material. You can use this tool to make a cut directly
into the edge of a former, clearing the waste wood with the tip of an X-Acto blade. You say you’re not impressed? You want a more substantial tool? You want industrial quality? Trolling about on the Yahoo Free Flight Cook-up website (http://groups.yahoo. com/group/ffcookup/) I came across a post by John Jennings, who discovered a nifty notch- ing tool made by Fiskars (Fiskars 23567097J), sold at
www.widgetsupply.com. The device is intended for scrapbooking, but John re- ports that it serves pretty darn well to cut clean notches 1⁄16 inch wide and up to 1⁄4 inch deep in 1⁄16-inch balsa. He reckons it will cut up to 1⁄8-inch balsa, but no word on that as of yet.
Let’s take a look now at some projects that have crossed my path recently. Over the last year or so, Bruce Clark has begun to experi- ment with using an inkjet printer for his models. His Pietenpol Air Camper and his Andreason bipe are neat examples of what you can do with some basic software and a bit of patience. Since the markings are all applied to the tissue before covering, you need to spend a little time making sure you have your layout correct. A few test print- ings on paper ought to sort things out before you commit to tissue.
The Andreason shows how inkjet on tis- sue can be used to create light-on-dark
markings. In this case, Bruce started out with white tissue and printed the yellow and the blue onto it. He then rubbed white dry pigment (you can also use powdered chalk or dry pastels) on the back side of the tissue, to increase its opacity. The yellow registration markings on the fuselage were touched up on the backside with a bit of white charcoal pencil, a trick Bruce learned from Stew Mey- ers. The overall effect is quite striking—the colors really pop!
Bruce uses an Epson printer for his models. Epson primarily markets inkjet printers us- ing two types of ink: “Durabrite” and “Claria”. What you want, should you be in the market for a printer to support your hobby, is “Durabrite”, which is a pigment-based ink. “Durabrite” inks do not run in water, and thus are suitable for our purposes. We’ll talk more about ink-jet printing in columns to come. Next, the spotlight shines on Bob Kreplin’s fine Kitten, a rubber F/F cabin job from 1944 designed by Bob Hildebrand. I’m drawn to this model not only because of its great looks, but also because Bob thought- fully provided a mock-up of the fuselage con- struction for your consideration. Bob reports that, as per the plans, the bottom crutch was built first. The fuselage “V”s were then glued up, independent of the crutch—note the gussets at the V joints—before being in- verted and glued onto the crutch. Last came the top line spar, built up from a couple of laminations of balsa. The landing gear springs up into the fuselage after lift-off. Neat! I want one!
Finally, Don DeLoach has been toiling away on a big Wittman Bonzo lo these win- ter months, and nearly has it ready to go— you can tell by the state of his bench. You don’t see too many Bonzos on the FAC Greve flight line. I built a peanut once and it was a tricky bird to keep in a pattern, though once in a while it would put up a lovely flight. Well, as lovely as a such a homely aircraft can manage, that is.
PHOTO: DON DELOACH
Don DeLoach’s Bonzo—18 inches of funky, home-brewed Steve Wittman charm. The wings and landing gear pop off; wing cabling is light music wire that plugs into the fuselage.
FLYING MODELS
Don and I conferred as he was drafting this one up, and we agreed that a nice big stab could never hurt. He also upped the fin size a bit. While he has bitterly denounced the end result as a lead sled, I have a feeling he will get some satisfaction out of it when all is said and done. There’s a lotta room in that fuselage for rubber!
That’s it for this month. Send me your projects, questions, and ideas for columns at the address above. Cheers....
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