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 Arch Whitehouse authored many aviation-related techno-thriller
mysteries for Flying Aces magazine. He was a British World War I veteran with the
RAF as a mechanic and observer. In this adventure, Hale Aviation Company's intrepid chief
test pilot Crash
Carringer took on the challenge of identifying the cause of an unreasonably high number
of deaths of Hellfire aircraft fighter pilots while in the air. I won't spoil the plot by
giving any details of the story. It's a good way to kill 20-30 minutes ...
 The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a year away
when this article would have been written, given that it appeared in the January 1941 issue
of Flying Aces magazine. Major Frederic Ives Lord preferred a light-weight, inexpensive,
more expendable type of aircraft like the P-40 Warhawk than something like a P-51 Mustang.
His thinking being that it would be more effective to overwhelm the enemy with massive squadrons
of airplanes that could be quickly replaced (and pilots, too?) rather than recovering and
repairing battle-damaged aircraft (and their air crew). In fact, the major envisioned mostly
enlisted pilots, akin to the expendable crewmen in Star Trek - usually identifiable by their
red ...
 Many thanks to Airplanes and Rockets website visitor
Pat S. (who happens to also live here in Erie, Pennsylvania) for letting me know about
the Sceptre Flight website with its huge list of
model
engine test data. Per the webmaster, "This list of tests is continually added to on a
monthly basis due to the hard work of Zoe Quilter who completely scans 3 old magazines each
month and also to Colin Usher who has collected all of Zoe's scans. My thanks to both of them
as this list would otherwise be nowhere near as large. Thanks also to Ray Jennings in Northern
Ireland for his help in scanning many test reports." There are links to 600-700 magazine articles
reporting on glow and diesel engines. Amazing! ...
 "Rescued from a desert bombing range then painstakingly
restored over many years, the
B-29 Superfortress Doc brought vintage strategic air power to EAA AirVenture
in July. Doc and crew flew away from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with the 'Best Bomber Award,' among
others, returning home to temporary quarters as Doc’s Friends Inc., pass the hat to build
a permanent home for the beloved bomber in Wichita, Kansas ..."
 Rick Rabe's rubber-powered free flight "Pogo," not to be confused
with Bob Morse's glow fuel-powered R/C 1/4 Midget racer "Pogo" that appeared five months later
in American Aircraft Modeler, is a quick-building stick and tissue job for modelers
of all ages and interests. Rabe adds a little pizzazz to the craft with a "V" shaped vertical
fin. The flat, stick-framed wing and stabilizer are built directly on the Jap tissue, which
speed the already minimal construction time ...
 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 ...
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 "Our small
electric plane, which uses light and powerful batteries and motors, is
less costly than its gasoline-engine rivals. When you first sit in the cockpit of an electric-powered
airplane, you see nothing out of the ordinary. However, touch the Start button and it strikes
you immediately: an eerie silence. There is no roar, no engine vibration, just the hum of
electricity and the soft whoosh of the propeller. You can converse easily with the person
in the next seat, without headphones. The silence ..."
 Here is an interesting bit of history. According to
this article from a 1952 issue of Air Trails magazine, the reason British model engine
designers switched from ignition type engines to
diesel was due to
a shortage of copper element wire and other components brought about by World War II.
Diesels are still very popular in Europe both for model airplanes and full-size automobiles.
The Alternative Fuels Data Center claims that diesel fuel has a 13% greater energy density
that gasoline, which jives with many other independent sources, some of which say overall
efficiency is up to 20% greater. Diesel just has never really "caught on" here in the U.S.
for some reason - maybe its the stinky exhaust. One nice aspect ...
 "There are many iconic photographs from World War II:
An aircraft spotter standing atop a London building with St. Paul's Cathedral rising in the
background, taken by LIFE photographer George Strock; Alfred Eisenstaedt's photo 'The Kiss,'
shot in Times Square the day Japan surrendered. They're all powerful - and they're all in
black and white. While color images of the war exist, they aren't extremely common. Yet official
photographers serving with the British armed forces shot nearly 3,000 color photographs, using
Kodachrome film obtained ..."
 The "AT" Interceptor is a very nice
control line twin. Designed
for a pair of .049 engines, its 30" wingspan and tricycle landing gear provides a solid platform
that could easily be adapted for twin brushless motor setup. A common fuel tank feeds both
engines. If you are trying to decide whether the "AT" Interceptor is a takeoff of the P-38
Lightning or the P-61 Black Widow, you'd be right in either case, since both inspired the
model, per Walt Hughes. Both tail booms, the fuselage, and the wings are built-up construction
with balsa sheeting over all ...
 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 ...
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 - Archives -
Drone Hits Army Helicopter Flying over Staten Island
Tragedy of Americana: California Wildfire Destroys 'Peanuts'
Creator's Home
Drones Deliver Storm Response
Vintage Aviation Publications Acquires Warbirds News
'Strega' Dethrones 'Voodoo' at Reno Air Races
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)
 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 ...
 "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 ..."
 "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 ..."
 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.
 "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 ..."
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