PHOTOS: VANCE GILBERT
This picture and the following perfectly illustrate Vance’s method of building up a half-shell fuselage. Each half is built separately with its own keel…
the designers were drinking when they dreamed it up; planes that have always left you wondering—“could this ever fly?” Well, fellow adventurers, I hereby throw down the gauntlet!
Forget about winning the local No-Cal contest on a 6-minute flight with your Hostler Fury! Who cares if you can do 10 minutes with your 1.7-gram Kawasaki Hein? I want to see you get a 20-second offi- cial flight with your No-Cal trimotor Zeppe- lin Staaken R.XIV!
No one will remember your No-Cal P-51 in a year’s time, but show up with a No-Cal Lloyd 40.08 trimotor triplane and boy, you will be famous forever. Or how about a Vick- ers Nene Viking? Ha-ha! Now that would be something!
Do these props make me look fat? Wait. Did I say a Vickers Nene Viking? Yes, I did. Well Vance Gilbert, confound us all, has beaten us to the punch and he’s not pulling any, either. Punches, that is. Always on the prowl for overlooked, un- usual subjects, Vance has been toiling away on this mammoth, full-monty project for the better part of the winter. It’s a rubber pow- ered jet; no word on whether it will be push- er or tractor, but I’m guessing tractor. He’s expecting to hang 9.5-inch props on it. Other details, as of this writing: the fuse-
....And then the two halves are glued up as one large assembly, using clothespins to draw the keels together.
lage at 90 percent covered is 30 grams, 36 inches long, 5 inches wide at widest and 6 inches high. Woof! Go find yourself a 5-inch diameter container, hold it up and make air- plane noises while thinking for a bit about launching that into a light breeze. Hmmmm! The nacelles weigh 10 grams each. The wing is 25 grams, fin/rudder add another 3.3 and the stabilizer 7.5. The all-up weight is 80 grams so far, un- shrunken, with no dope, trim color or prop hardware. Vance reckons that with the 49- inch
span and approximately 350–360
square inches of wing area, he will have real- ly good numbers going on, even if he gets up around 100 to 115 grams all-up without rub- ber. He says and I quote, “I think this’ll be a flyer. Really wicked fun.” Oh, yes indeed! Being an unusual fellow, Vance has some unique building techniques. I especially like his approach to building half-shell fuse- lages. Forget all the clever jigs, building box- es and what not. Vance just builds two mir- ror-image fuselage halves, each with its own keel, and glues them together. No mess, no fuss. A minimum of handling is required, which helps keep hangar rash down when using light wood for stringers.
Note how little wood Vance has left in his fuselage formers; reinforcement strips are glued across the grain at weak areas to keep the formers from collapsing. I also like the
way Vance built his wing. Each top and bot- tom rib strip is aligned side-by-side at the point where they meet the TE and LE of the wing, rather than on top of one another. This doubles the amount of glue surface holding the TE onto the ribs, makes it easier to create a thinner airfoil, and allows for a clean transition to a thinner TE if desired. The main spars are glued onto the tops of the bottom rib strips, but the upper rib strips are notched into the spars. Also note that although Vance is using bent rib tops, he makes a break at the main front spar and runs the rib top straight from there to the LE. A thin piece of sheet is glued to the top of each rib, and this piece is sanded to the desired profile. The 1⁄16 square strip that is let into the front of the ribs helps to maintain the profile of the forward airfoil and acts as a turbula- tor. Diagonal trusses between the main spars provide tremendous torsional rigidity at practically no increase of weight. When this wing is covered, it will be stiff, strong and light. Which is a good thing, when you’re gonna be hanging those rubber-laden nacelles off of it!
So there you have it. Which are you, Jack Sprat or his wife? There is nothing more fun in freeflight rubber modeling than to go outside your usual envelope. Take a dive and soar!
A mostly-bones shot of Vance Gilbert’s Viking, showing his neat handiwork. Note the fuselage sheeting aft of the wing (above left), and the cross-support between. Launching a sausage like this baby, you’ll want something fairly sturdy to hang on to! The Vikingtaking shape. Beats there a heart that cannot love this
FLYING MODELS
beautiful monster, or long to see it fly? The fuselage is covered (above right) in multiple sections, one strip per bay, using dry tissue. Vance waits until the whole fuselage assembly is covered before doing any shrinking of the tissue to avoid warps to the fuselage.
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