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 This
is great! "This Brazilian pilot is in big trouble for taking selfies thousands of feet up,
even though the photos are fake. Pilotganso is a well-known Instagrammer with 72K followers;
he's gained a rabid following thanks to the incredible selfies on his page showing the aviator
hanging out the cockpit of a
Boeing 737 thousands of feet above the earth. His shots have many scratching
their heads as to whether they are in fact real. No, they're not. The Instagrammer, real name
Daniel Centeno achieves these aerial shots using ..."
 Those inexpensive
spring-loaded plastic clamps
are ubiquitous on model builders' and woodworkers' workbenches across the world. With swiveling
jaws that accommodate almost any pair of surfaces needing to be held together while sanding,
measuring, painting, cutting, or many other tasks, these things are one of the best deals
in the tools universe. They are so great that I feel bad even criticizing them in any way, but
I shall. Aside from the occasional snapping of the plastic handles ...
 1st
Lt. Walt "Pitt" Pittman was the father of our neighbor, Barbara. He flew a P-51 Mustang as
a fighter pilot in WWII and Korea. "Pitt" wrote more than 350 letters and sent many photos
to his wife (Barbara's mother) prior to being shot down in 1951.
It wasn't until 2012 that she finally decided to create "The Letters Project" to document
the life story of her father. Historians interested in the Korean War (a conflict, technically,
not a declared war) will find the content useful. Says Barbara, "If you are wondering why
I am doing this project now or why I waited so long, I don't think I have the answer ..."
 Airplanes and Rockets website visitor Ken E.
wrote asking that I scan and post the article and plans for Cal Smith's Pee Wee "Bomb." Says,
Ken, "I built one back in the 60's and would like to try another (feeling nostalgic)." Having
recently re-acquired a few Cox .049 engines for some A control line models, I can definitely
attest to the nostalgic feeling you get when hearing those babies (get it? Babe Bees) scream.
The Pee Wee "Bomb"
is all sheet balsa construction with ribs under the wing to form an airfoil. Wingspan is around
22 inches ...
 I decided it might be nice to build a simple 2-channel
R/C airplane with an .049 up front, like back in the early 1970s with my Carl Goldberg ½A
Skylane. After researching what few options are available in the way of scale ½A kits, I settled
on the Herr Engineering ½A J-3 Cub. Herr also has one for electric power, but I wanted something
with more robust construction. Construction ensued and progressed with no issues. All the
parts fit well and the wood quality was very good. A few photos are included below. I prefer
using rubber bands to hold on wings, so I replaced the nylon bolt setup with a couple 3/6"
hardwood dowels. To make things easier ...
 "Hypersonic flight - defined as Mach five or above
- would see aircraft subjected to external temperatures between 2,000 and 3,000°C, leading
to structural challenges caused by oxidation and ablation. Amongst other materials, current
spacecraft and missiles rely on
ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) to combat high temperatures. However,
according to Manchester University, conventional UHTCs can't currently satisfy the associated
ablation requirements of hypersonic flight. 'At present one of the biggest challenges is how ..."
 My
Cox Pee
Wee .010 engine sits on a shelf above my computer monitor, along with a small collection
of other vintage aeromodelling paraphernalia. They serve as a reminder of the good times as
a kid building and flying (and crashing and rebuilding) back in the 1960s and 1970s. I don't
recall what airplane I had it on - maybe a homebrew free flight job. Unlike .049 Babe Bees
and Golden Bees which I had a few of, I only ever had one of the .010s. They were more of
a curiosity than a 'thing.' In this article, the author's suggestion that indoor control line
might be a possibility was wishful thinking since even if the building proprietors were willing
to suffer the ear-splitting noise, they would ...
 1961 was really only in the dawn of the Space Age,
with the first successful communications satellites having been launched just a few years
earlier in 1957. The first suborbital rocket launch occurred in 1944 when the Germans sent
a V-2 rocket above the Kármán line (100 km, 62 mi) which separates Earth's atmosphere
from outer space. Technology was moving pretty quickly in the aerospace realm, both with airplanes
and with rockets. Model rockets were a big thing for boys (and a few girls) of the era, and
similar advances in materials and methods were being reported in the pages of American
Modeler and other magazines ...
 "Retired USAF Colonels Blake and Sandy Thomas met at
Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. On their first date Blake took Sandy on a ride
in a 1944 BT-13, a two-seat military trainer with a radial engine. 'It was love at first flight,'
Sandy said. In December 2017, they will celebrate their 23rd anniversary. Their shared love
of aviation led to flying offspring. Their first-born homebuilt was an RV-7, their third,
a Sopwith Schneider. This is the story of their middle offspring, a replica World War I fighter,
the 1917 Nieuport-28. The Plane Named 'Sandy,' the the
Nieuport-28 ..."
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 John Burkam was one of the few true pioneers in free
flight and particularly
R/C
model helicopters. His experiments date back into the 1940s. His rubber-powered Penni
Helicopter appeared in the January 1970 issue of American Aircraft Modeler. John
was an engineer with the Boeing Company. His attention to detail and lack of fear in tackling
design issue with numbers, graphs, and formulas is apparent in his work, although any type
of design in previously unexplored or little explored areas of technology requires some degree
of seat-of-the-pants guestimates. Both philosophies are present in this article. The "Super
Susie" is powered by a Cox .049 Tee Dee engine ...
 Contest-minded aeromodelers, or for that matter competitive
types of all disciplines, are most often the people who advance the state of the art in any
field. Never content with good enough, they continually strive to come up with new and better
ways of doing things. That's not to say everyday sportsmen don't
innovate;
they just don't usually do it with the vim and vigor of competitors. Although I cannot
know for sure, I suspect that the tip offered here for a suggested way to carve rubber power
free flight propellers to maximize thrust under a continually changing amount of torque from
the twisted motor is the result ...
 "Bill's Authors Say Goal is to Protect Air Traffic
from Collisions with Unmanned Aircraft. U.S. Representative Jim Langevin (D-RI) and Senator
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) have introduced the
Drone Operator Safety Act in the U.S. House of representatives, a bill
to they say is intended to help protect American air traffic from the 'misuse' of drones.
According to a news release on Congressman Langevin's website, the bill would make it a criminal
offense to fly ..."
 "The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has developed
a patented system and method of transitioning an aircraft between helicopter and fixed wing
flight modes. The
stop rotor aircraft is capable of both a helicopter mode vertical takeoff
and landing (VTOL) and efficient high speed fixed wing flight by flipping the left wing/rotor
blade 180 degrees between flight modes. Conversion between flight modes will take about 1-2
seconds and simulations indicate altitude deviations of less than 50 feet ..."
 This autobiography by Maximus designer
Robert
Sifleet from the June 1961 issue of American Modeler is half of a pair of articles that
also covers building and flight details of the
Maximus. Robert
won the 1960-1961, U.S.A. Championship. As with most champions, he began at an early age and
progressed with dogged determination into early adulthood. Even in these days of ready-to-fly
models that have been thoroughly engineered for successful flight, free flighters - and with
a couple exceptions control liners - are still building, trimming, and flying their models
themselves ...
 It's finally
here - the
Great North American Solar Eclipse of 2017! The amateur astronomy community
has been anticipating and preparing for the event for a couple years. Astronomy magazine
dedicated the entire August issue to providing detailed information on viewing suggestions
along the entire path. Traffic from the Pacific Coast of Oregon to the Atlantic Coast of South
Carolina will probably be a challenge as people vie for positions as close to the centerline
as possible. Those who manage optimal locations will see about 2 minutes and 40 seconds of
total darkness. Others within the 68-mile-wide path of totality will see from a fraction of
a second up to the full extent. According to a calculator on the Vox website, we will only
see a 76.2% eclipse, which will barely darken our skies ...
 "Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
will soon navigate without using GPS or human assistance as demonstrated by several successful
test runs last month as part of the Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) program. DARPA recently
announced the breakthrough, after four days of testing in central Florida. The test runs marked
progress toward development of small, quadcopter drones that are able to fly through obstacle-ridden
environments ..."
 "Join the Academy of Model Aeronautics Foundation in
celebrating model aviation for the fifth annual
National Model Aviation Day,
August 12, 2017. National Model Aviation Day was created to encourage clubs to celebrate
the hobby and share it with the public. Our chartered clubs have also been asked to conduct
a fundraiser to provide assistance to a worthy cause. For this year all clubs have been asked
to support the AMA Foundation. The AMA is devoted to inspiring the young and young-at-heart
to pursue a hobby that will inspire creativity and advanced learning through the use of hands-on
applications. The purposes ..."
 Here are three models in one with separate plans provided
for each of ½A, FAI (Class A), and Class B versions of Robert Sifleet's contest
winning Maximus
free flight bird. This piece from the June 1961 issue of American Modeler is half
of a pair of articles, one of which covers the model build and flight details, and the other
that provides a brief autobiography on Maximus designer
Robert
Sifleet.
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 - Archives -
NASA and Industry Take Next Step Toward X-Plane
Senator Wicker Will Help Write Next Chapter of Drone Technology
UK Government's Drone
Collision Report Criticised
The Only
Jet Fighter Ever to Shoot Down a Satellite
UK to Bring in Drone
Registration (U.S. just
eliminated registration)
Two Mustangs Have Issues at Duxford Air Show
General Aviation Unites Against ATC Privatization
Drone Rules That Never Became Law
So Much for Those New Drone Registration Rules
 "MIT engineers have developed and built an unpiloted
aerial vehicle, or UAV, that is expected to provide temporary telecomms service to areas affected
by disasters and calamities. The UAV technology is considered inexpensive and is capable of
flying and providing service for several days. This is not the first time
UAV technology has been exploited for this purpose. Google has also developed
and tested a system that provides temporary telecomms coverage ..."
 "Geely, the parent company of Volvo, announced that
it has acquired the flying car company Terrafugia. The
Terrafugia
flying car, created a decade ago by a handful of MIT grads, just made another huge leap
toward becoming an actual product thanks to its new owner. The South China News reported that
Geely, the company that also owns Volvo, agreed to acquire Terrafugia. Reports indicate Geely
was particularly interested in the Terrafugia’s FAA approval last year allowing the transforming
car to be certified as a light sport ..."
 "The future is electric, and we are one step closer
after
Eviation Aircraft released the first prototype of an all-electric airplane.
The futuristic machine has a range of 965 kilometers and the capacity to carry nine passengers
and two crew members. The plane was released at the 52nd International Paris Airshow. The
non-emission aircraft is a huge leap forward in electrical aircraft. Currently, aviation is
responsible for 2% of the world's total carbon ..."
 Carving a
solid scale model airplane,
ship, train, or automobile from a block of balsa or pine was a favorite pastime of many people
up until maybe the latter part of the last century. For some it was the preferred means of
crafting a replica of their favorite subject, and for others it a second-best option if building
and flying, sailing, etc., a working model was not possible. Lack of funds, time, skill, or
any combination thereof could have been the cause. Little known to the solid scale modelers
just prior to the publication date of this issue of Flying Aces was that their collective
skills would be ...
 Here are another seven
hand-dandy tricks of
the aeromodelling trade. As with many of the tips and kinks offered by readers of the era,
some - if not most - involve materials and/or methods that have long been replaced by more
modern means. Still, you might find something useful in the extensive collection from vintage
American Modeler and Air Trails magazines ...
 "Engineers
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed a drone capable of staying
aloft for
five days at a time. This technology could prove a huge boon in the
communications sector, particularly in regards to disaster situations. Unpiloted aerial vehicles
(UAVs) have long held the potential to be a valuable asset in the face of disasters. When
communications fail over a wide area, these UAVs can be used to travel into affected ..."
 Thanks to the Academy of Model Aeronautics for this!
"The FAA is providing the following updated information regarding the
Small
UAS Registration and Marking interim final rule as a result of a recent decision by the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit regarding the small UAS registration
program. The court's decision invalidated the registration requirement as it applies to certain
model aircraft that ..."
 In the 1960s, model aviation was still a fairly enticing
hobby to boys captivated by the sights, sounds, and smells of airplanes, helicopters, and
rockets. Indeed, that was the era that began my lifelong engagement in model building and
flying. The U.S. Navy sponsored the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) National Competition
(Nats)
for many years in hopes of providing a segue into naval aviation through aeromodelling. Somehow,
local television stations and newspapers never bothered to give the sport much air time or
print space, respectively. A quick search ...
 "Workhorse - the US-based transport company working
with UPS to make drone delivery a reality - has upscaled its airborne technology with the
'Surefly'
personal helicopter. 78 years since the first 'copter took to the sky,
workhorse has set out to reinvent the VTOL craft using its expertise in battery-powered electric
mobility. the drone-helicopter hybrid is designed to be easy to operate ..."
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