Planes of WRAM & Toledo 2012
A lot of vintage 1950 accessories were added to Terry Conley’s 1955 Berkeley Cessna 170 (above left) built from the original kit plans. Ken Barnes enlarged his Strato B(above right) to 71 inches and put an E-flite 32 brushless in it. Bob
Schreel dressed up his 79-inch Chipmunk(below left) in Pepsi Skydancer trim. Its spectacular airbrushed finish earned John Bradley’s CompARF 260 (below right) a deserved first, with David Payne’s Beasta close second.
past years, they always seem to grab quite a bit of attention, such as Amir Abtahi’s big T-33 Shooting Star at the WRAM Show or Roy Maynard’s CT-114 Tutor at Toledo. The T-33, done in a striking orange scheme from the Kansas Air National Guard, was pretty big at 98 inches. Of course, there were quite a few working extras like the operating canopy and the speed brakes, but mor no- ticeable was the lack of a pristine finish. Amir did a very good job of weathering the plane much as it would have appeared on an Air Force Base ramp. On the other hand Roy Maynard’s big CT-
114 was a study in a metal finish, not to mention loads of cockpit and external detail. He used Flite Metal to cover the plane and then carefully burnished it to achieve that
same used look. The plane was slightly over 1⁄4 scale making it pretty large.
From the jet age move backward to early aviation, notably WW I. The WRAM Show al- ways seems to have a very healthy turnout in this category every year, this being no excep- tion. Usually most are large models but this year a few turned up that noticeable not only for their much smaller size but their just as extensive scale detail, something that’s much harder to achieve in lesser scales. One superb example was Rob Caso’s Hal- berstadt CL2 . He treated FMreaders to an extensive look at this excellent model after he had displayed it first at the WRAM Show. One of the most memorable things he point- ed out was that being off only a little in ac- curacy at scales as small as ¹⁄₉ makes the mis-
take much more obvious when compared to documentation. The immediate effect in look- ing at Rob’s plane is how crisp the detail is and the amount of effort that went into mak- ing such a small plane such a gem. It’s worth referring to the article in the June 2012 issue ofFMto see just what went into this model. And if Rob’s Halberstadt was impressive
for its small size, Michael Gross’s 112-inch span Sopwith Camel was impressive for its size. Another impression point was the con- trol system that was tied into the scale cock- pit controls. And like some presentations you’ll see a bit of a diorama with a saw horse behind the wing and a fellow pilot getting ready to turn the prop. If you check the win- ner’s charts you’ll see that his efforts earned him the WRAM Best in Show.
PHOTO: JIM WIGGIN
Only ¹⁄₁₂ scale, Allen Mrock’s Savoia Marchetti SM 55x (above left) still spans 80 inches. It has two motors, an Axi 41-30/20 in front and a 400XT in the rear.
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Dan Grotzinger built his Dirty Birdy(above right) from a 1976 all-wood Bridi kit. and used a 1977 O.S. Max .61 FSR for power. Has 222 flights on it.
AUGUST 2012
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