|
 Fed
Ruling May Bring Flocks of Buzzing Drones to U.S. Skies
 Florida
Jets 2014 Brings Model Planes to Lakeland
 Facebook
Wants to Build 11,000 Drones to Bring Internet to Africa
 Funding
for U.S.-German Airborne Observatory Cut
 Supersonic
Jet Throws Traditional Design 'Out the Window'
 Astronomers
Spot Record-Breaking Lunar Impact
 World's
Largest Aircraft Unveiled
 Dutch
Scientists Flap to the Future with Insect Drone
 Bats
Inspire Micro Air Vehicle Designs
 Red
Bull Expands Air Race Series
 DARPA
to Brief Industry Tools to Plan Dogfights with Manned Aircraft and UAVs
 The
Engine That Changed Light Aviation
 Bombardier
CSeries Begins Fly-by-Wire Flights in March
 Hubble's
1st Frontier Field Finds Thousands of Unseen, Faraway Galaxies
 FAA
Grounds Valentine's Flower Delivery Drone
 Top
Secret UK Drone Taranis Makes First Flight
 Aeromobil
Flying Car Near Production
 Birds
in V Formation Choreograph Flapping to Save Energy
 Texas
Chosen as UAS Test Site for Safe Airspace Integration
 Ordinance
Could Restrict Model Airplane Flying in Albany
 2014
FAI World Championships for Scale Model Aircraft
 The
first-ever appearance of animated Peanuts characters came in the form of
television commercials for the 1960 Ford
Falcon. I learned about them in a book titled Peanuts: The Art of Charles M. Schulz.
To me, Peanuts represents a more innocent time in America, where neighborhood kids played
together, were moral in their actions, and even "crabby" kids like Lucy were not evil. Cops
and robbers, cowboys and Indians, pirates and naval mariners did battle with makeshift weapons
and only one ball team at a time won a trophy. My sisters and I rode in basic cars like
the Ford Falcon, without the benefit of seat belts, crawling up onto the package shelf in
the back to watch the world pass by, standing on our heads in the back seat, and thinking
it a privilege to get to ride up front on the rare...
 Being
very far-sighted, having a modern alarm clock next to the bed with large LED numbers is
a great convenience for seeing the time at night. However, I have always hated the electronic
alarm sound and neither do I want music since it tends to put me back to sleep. The old
fashioned wind-up mechanical alarm clocks did the job quite handily, and I missed having
such a clock after many decades of doing without. So, I decided to look for a Peanuts-themed
clock from the 1960s or 70s. This Snoop
alarm clock came up for bid on eBay, and I picked it up for under $10, probably because
the seller said it did not work. He was correct that it didn't work in its selling condition.
However, I disassembled the entire clock and soaked it...
 Here
is a nice, lightweight WWI
British SE-5 biplane for radio control. The original was rudder-only
(RO) with a .15 size diesel engine for power. Designed
by well-known (at the time) scale modeler Chet Lanzo, this
model features break-away top and bottom wings and oversize air-filled wheels to help make
hard than normal landings more survivable. A modern 3-channel setup with an electric motor
should serve the SE-5 well, and would most likely yield an even lighter ready to fly weight
than the original configuration.
|
 Control
Line Speed always seemed like a great aspect of competition to get involved in, but
like so many others, I just never made time for it. There are some really cool videos on
YouTube of C/L Speed models being flown. On a properly adjusted engine, you can hear the
engine break into a screaming 2-cycle mode after the airplane picks up some speed and the
propeller unloads a bit from the pilot whipping it. It is like seeing / watching the afterburner
kick in on a jet engine! A major change in the design of Speed models from the 1955 vintage
of this "Monitor" is the use of a wing only on the inside...
 Microfilm-covered
indoor models is one (of many) aspects of model airplane
building and flying that I've always wanted to try, but never found the opportunity. You
might be tempted to think this is the exclusive realm of white-haired old men, and admittedly
it nearly is, but when you look at contest coverage in the modeling magazines, it is heartening
to see a good showing of youngsters. For that matter, the same holds true for just about
all forms of model aircraft these days except for radio controlled airplanes and helicopters.
As recently as a couple decades ago, radio equipment was too expensive for many younger
modelers to buy, so those who aspired to hobbies involving airborne craft had...
 At
some point you have probably read about an old model aircraft contest event called 'PAA-Load.'
As its name implies, the challenge involved hauling specific weights of 'payload' aloft
and vying for the longest flight. What you might find surprising is that the 'PAA' part
of the event title comes from Pan American Airlines (PAA, aka PanAm),
who created and sponsored the activity as an educational effort to encourage youngsters
to consider the necessary accommodations to efficiently and profitably transport people
and cargo from point A to point B. Careful attention to airframe configuration and weight,
powerplant size, propeller, wheel size and weight, covering material and finish, etc., was
required to...
 These
images were scanned from my 1976 yearbook for
Southern Senior High School in Harwood, Maryland. It was my senior year, my year of
liberation. Only the photos of seniors from when they little kiddos were scanned. The picture
were submitted by their parents, in some cases without the knowledge of
(and probably much to the dismay of) the subjects. I did a
fairly extensive Internet search looking for where someone else had already done it, but
to no avail, so, here they are. If you recognize yourself or someone else and send me an
e-mail, I will be glad to add the info with the page scan. No, I'm not included anywhere;
I don't think my parents even owned a camera...
 Our
daughter, Sally, was named after the Peanuts character that was Charlie Brown's baby sister.
I have been wanting to get the
1958 Hungerford
Sally doll of her, but the price was always higher than I wanted to pay. Finally, this
Sally was available on eBay for well under $100, so I bought it - marks and all. It doesn't
really mater to me if it is not is like-new condition as long as it is in good shape and
clean(able).
 On
December 16, 1965, NASA astronauts Walter M. "Wally" Schirra Jr. and Thomas P. Stafford
conducted the first live musical performance from space. Using a smuggled mini harmonica
(Hohner
#39 Little Lady) and some reindeer bells, Schirra and Stafford, respectively,
radioed a 'UFO' report saying "Gemini VII, this is Gemini VI. We have an object, looks like
a satellite going from north to south, up in a polar orbit. He's in a very low trajectory
traveling from north to south and has a very high climbing ratio. It looks like it might
even be a ... Very low. Looks like he might be going to reenter soon. Stand by one ... You
might just let me try to pick up that thing." Just before reentry into the Earth's atmosphere
for a splashdown, the two pranksters then broke out in a round of "Jingle
Bells."
|
 Here
is a nice, quick project if you have ever wanted to try your hand at an
amphibious model airplane. The Shoehorn
was originally designed and built as an .049-powered free flight job with a 32" wingspan,
but with today's miniature radio systems it could easily be converted to 3-channel operation.
For that matter, you can substitute a brushless electric motor for the glow fuel engine
that, along with today's high density, low weight Li-Po batteries, would easily provide
as much power as the .049. The Shoehorn
is of built-up balsa construction with Silkspan and dope covering, but of course there you
could substitute iron-on plastic covering available for park flyers
(which this would have been considered if park flyers had a name back
then).
 During
World War II, a lot of leisure activities were sacrificed due to unavailability of
raw materials for manufacturing products needed to pursue them. We have all see photos of
kids collecting scraps of metal, rubber, and other materials for recycling as components
of airplanes, guns, canteens, ships, etc. Aircraft modeling took a hit along with most other
hobbies since metal for engines and wood for airplane kits (balsa
was popular for shipping contain packing) were scarce. It wasn't until the late 1940s
that Leroy Cox was
able to begin mass producing his famous line of miniature engines, most notably the .049
family. Other manufacturers - like Allyn - were following suit...
 Website
visitor Pat M. wrote to ask that I scan and post this article for the
Yako free flight rubber
model. The unique feature of the Yako is that it is a canard - wing in the back and horizontal
stabilizer up front. It appeared in the December 1971 edition of American Aircraft Modeler
magazine. "For the Tenderfoot" catered to beginner model builders - mostly kids. They were
typically small free flight or control line jobs that could easily be built without help
from an experienced modeler, although of course seeking assistance was encouraged. I have
been surprised at the number of requests I have received for models from the "For the Tenderfoot"
series that ran for many years. Could it indicate...
 This
advertisement for the
United States
Rubber Company's T-56 rubber appeared in the Annual Edition of Air Trails.
T-56 was a very popular choice for free flight modelers back in the day. I posted another
ad for them from an April 1957 American Modeler. United States Rubber Company was
one of the original 12 companies used to calculate the Dow Jones Industrial Average
(DJIA) for the stock market on Wall Street. In addition to
manufacturing automobile and airplane tires, it also supplied the free flight model world
with T-56 rubber for powering.
 When
I bought this 1976 vintage Snoopy telephone
on eBay, the seller didn't disclose that the volume level in the earpiece was very low,
including the ringtone. Technically it worked so I couldn't claim fraud, but it worked poorly.
So, I began doing a bit of research on the Internet and found that a lot of people were
having similar problems with the Snoopy phone and a couple other novelty models
(Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, M&Ms dude, et al) that
were based off the same Western Electric design. I planned to clean up the phone and put
it into service, but wanted to make sure it was functioning properly before going to the
trouble. The first thing I did was some standard continuity tests to make sure signals could
flow from point to point. I discovered...
 My
only experience with Jetex engines with a No. 50B, and that was back in the early 1970s.
It was attached to a dime store type Guillows glider - the king where the wing, stab, and
fin slid into slits in the fuselage. Once the engine finally ignited, the glider took off
with a cool hissing sound and headed skyward. The glider had been trimmed to fly smoothly
with power off. I can remember having a heck of a time getting the crappy little piece of
chemical-coated wire wick to stay lit as it passed through the Jetex's nozzle. Looking back
from this perspective, I do believe I was fairly inept at a lot of things at the time, so
maybe that was the entire problem. Maybe someday I'll pull my
Jetex No. 50 from...
|
Radio Control News
Printed Circuits & Capacitors
 1954
was just a decade after World War II, during which time the Army Signal Corps introduced
a method of printing - or etching - metallic circuit conductors on an insulator substrate,
and thus was born the printed circuit
board (PCB). The first boards used a phenolic-paper laminate,
which is the shiny brown substrate material that is still found in some industrial applications
like motors and control panels. Ferric chloride was used to etch away the copper foil not
masked off with photoresist chemicals. I made many crude PCBs using a resist ink pen to
draw circuit traces and component mounting pads, then etched away the exposed copper with
ferric chloride...
 It
was six years prior to this
field strength meter
construction article being published that Mssrs. Brattain, Shockley, and Bardeen invented
the transistor using the element germanium and a point contact "cat's whisker." In 1954,
the date of this article, Texas Instruments introduced the first commercially available
silicon device - the TI 900 silicon transistor. However, operational frequencies of semiconductors
were only in the hundreds of kilohertz, so vacuum tubes were still necessary in higher frequency
radio circuits like the field strength meter, which operates in the 30 MHz band...
 If
you believe that servos with
metal
gears signify the latest and greatest in reliable, robust, modern radio control actuation,
you are probably right... unless of course those actuators happen to be these metal-geared
servos from the 1950s. In that case, you might look at them and wonder how anyone ever managed
to get model airplanes into the air and back safely on the ground when using them. Guys
spent a lot of time and money building large, heavy airframes and used low power-to-weight
ratio engines for lofting vacuum tube receivers, bulky actuators, and wet-cell batteries
into the air. Rubber-band-driven escapement mechanisms were probably more advanced in design
and implementation than...
 You
might not need to wire up a battery and light bulb to do a range check on your radio system
anymore, but there are a few other good ideas in the 1955 installment of "Hints
'n' Kinks" that you might find useful in your model endeavors. The relative few who
still build, fly, and repair model airplanes will appreciate the resourcefulness of such
methods.
 Reading
through this article reminded me of how dedicated some modelers are today and have been
in the past in their efforts to advance the state of the art. The ingenuity of people often
makes me feel like a real dope by comparison. Mechanical and electronic devices conceived
of, built, tested, improved, and perfected by our aircraft flying brethren are truly astounding.
This "Pi-Bar"
invented by Gerald Ritz is a simple tool to "make it easy to lay out a propeller of any
blade shape, area, or pitch, with absolute accuracy and without computations or the use
of formulae." I wonder how long it will be before we witness the first 3-D printed propeller
for free flight?
 As
the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. That being the case, here are
8,000 of some of the most amazing words that I've ever seen regarding
Cox control line airplanes.
These photos were sent to me by Airplanes and Rockets website visitor Charlie H.
According to his e-mail, there are around 300 models in all, many of which are still in
their original boxes. I see some pretty unique examples in the photos. If my understanding
is correct, he is interested in selling his collection. It must be worth a small fortune.
I will let you know how to contact him if he does want to sell part or all of the models.
Many of these models sell for hundreds of dollars each on eBay.
|
