Tim Westscott holds a late 1930s English Streamliner Wakefield model (above). Streamliners were all the vogue in English Wakefield design at the time. Tim maintains the Alwyn Greenhalgh collection of antique and historic model airplanes. Call it editorial privilege or lese majeste. The fellow fettling the twin pusher (at right) is your columnist at a Muncie SAM Champs. Al Lidberg looks on with some wonderment.
Crow. It had a four-bladed propeller mount- ed immediately behind the wing. With a lit- tle internet search you can find kits and plans for The Crow and build your own. The late Alwyn Greenhalgh amassed a large collection of English old time model airplane memorabilia, including many mod- els that were actually constructed in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s. Peter Michel is pic- tured holding a Jaguar built in 1948. Tim Westscott is shown holding an English Streamliner built for the 1939 contest sea- son. Aside from actual original models, the collection includes modern replicas of these “ancient” models.
I had a chance to examine a 1929 Ad Astra rubber model that Peter Michel built to add to the collection. It had a wing span of 40 inches or so, and there was not a bit of balsa in it! It was constructed of hickory, silk and wire. The inner portions of the wing ribs were fretted out to save weight. I watched the initial trim flights on the model. I’d say that the model did fly—“just”. Once the pow- er is sorted, flights will be more satisfying. Ad Astra was a potent contest ship in its day—1929. Balsa wood had not yet arrived
on the English modeling scene (and indeed it had just arrived in the USA).
Better flight performance was just around
the corner. Bill Brown and Maxwell Bassett would start developing what became the Brown Jr. ignition engine in September 1930. Their first contest flight with a Miss Philadelphia and a prototype Brown Jr. took place at the 1932 Nationals. In the 1933 Nationals, the team of Bassett and Brown swept first place in all the powered classes flown, and the age of spark ignition powered models built out of balsa had truly begun. The copy deadline for this column was Oc- tober 4, which is the day before I leave for this year’s SAM Champs at El Dorado Dry Lake in Nevada. I’ll have some comments about the Champs in my next column. Noise restrictions and the loss of flying fields mean that many SAMers are switch- ing to smaller electric R/C models. Bob Galler and the boys in SAM 100 in New Mex- ico are promoting an Old Time electric repli- ca event, with a wing span limit of 36 inches. The Speed 400 class is growing in popularity (1⁄2A R/C Texaco sized ships—but no noise). Both events will be flown at the Champs.
A new small field F/F event involves 36- inch wing span old time gliders launched off a 100-foot long bungee high start. There’ll be a postal competition between English mod- elers and American modelers in the class. I saw an article reviewing twelve modern small gas engines for model airplanes. The smallest ones were a 10 cc Evolution 10GX available from Horizon Hobby, and a 9 cc NGH GT9 available from Hobby King. I can think of several reasons why these modern gasoline engines would not be “legal” for SAM contests. They’re newly manufactured. They use Schnuerle porting. They’re not “original ignition engines”. They use an elec- tronic ignition system rather than points and a condenser.
But if you fly for sport and enjoyment,
rather than in contests, these new engines have some virtues. They’re fairly cheap with street prices of less than $200. You’ve got modern metallurgy, parts are available, and the engines have mufflers and throttles. While they’ve got more power than similar sized original ignition engines, they’re small enough that they won’t overpower the old birds.
This is a Tiger Zipper scaled and set up for the Speed 400 event. The photo (above left) was taken at this spring’s SAM 21 event. Could this be the world’s first
FLYING MODELS
commercially available Ready-To-Fly model? T.W.K. Clarke sold hundreds of these models (above right) in England in 1907. More information is in the column.
59
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68