 Airplanes and Rockets visitor Kevin B. requested
that I scan and post this article on the
"Big
Twin" R/C outboard motorboat model. It appeared in the May 1957 edition of
American Modeler magazine. American Modeler was one of the forerunners
of today's Model Aviation (the official AMA publication), and was more all-encompassing
in regards to modeling as it included model boats, cars, rockets, and trains. It
also was known to occasionally have articles on full-size aircraft. Anyway, the
Big Twin is 32" long and is built of traditional model boating materials like mahogany
plywood and spruce. This model's claim to fame is the use of balsa planking on the
hull - which is much easier to form than spruce - and then a layer of fiberglass
is laid over it for strength and waterproofing. An Allyn Twin outboard motor is
specified for power...
 "SpaceX arrived in Boca Chica, TX, in 2014.
Seven years later, thousands of company employees and contractors are working nearly
around the clock to build and launch the most powerful rocket in history, called
Starship. The first launch to Earth orbit could happen within the next few months.
The ultimate destination is Mars. Outside the gates of
Starbase,
as the rapidly expanding facility is called, a mini-press corps of amateur and professional
photographers watches every move. Enough cameras are pointed at Starship at any
given moment that SpaceX founder Elon Musk jokes about going online whenever he
wants to see how work on his new rocket is coming. NASASpaceflight.com runs
a 24/7 YouTube channel called 'Starbase Live.' Most times all you see is a distant
tableau of rocket parts, storage tanks, and gantries..."
 These tips for building lighter, more effective
model airplanes were submitted by Air Trails magazine readers in time for the 1960
Annual edition. They are all as valid and useful today as they were six decades
ago. Free flight in all forms - gliders, rubber power, and gas power - are still
very popular, so if you are involved in the sport, you might pick up a good idea
here. Even the suggestion for using a popsicle stick for a Jetex engine mounting
pad might still come in handy since they can be found on eBay (although with ever-increasing
difficulty). Believe it or not Pliobond is still sold, although by the Ruscoe Company
and not Goodyear. I added a touch of color to the original B&W make everything
a bit more interesting...
 Only
three and a half decades had passed since the Wright Brothers made the first flight
of an aeroplane taking off under its own power when this "Landing
Blind" article appeared in a 1938 issue of Radio News magazine. By
then, an entire World War had been fought with air power having been determined
to be a primary strategic force, and a commercial airline industry was thriving
as travelers everywhere entrusted pilots and air traffic controllers with their
very lives. The main impediment to further progress from an navigational and scheduling
perspective was inclement weather. Pilots had long ago learned to fly by instruments,
and taking off into nearly zero visibility was not a problem, but landing confidently
and safely under the same conditions was still impossible. Aviation researchers
were hard at work...
 For some reason I was never big into building
model cars,
although my teenage years best friend, Jerry Flynn, was. Jerry and I flew lots of
model airplanes and rockets together, but he was the car modeler. Jerry had a bit
of an artist's touch with models and would build top fuel dragster models from scratch
using plastic sheet stock. He won a couple contests back in the 1970s at the big
hot rod show held in the Washington, D.C., Armory. As a body-fender repair shop
technician and eventually body shop owner, he could repair dents so perfectly that
you couldn't tell the repair from the original. The models shown in this 1963 American
Modeler magazine are not too far removed from the kinds of car models on the store
shelves when I was a kid. A lot of the models can probably be bought today on eBay...
 There is a very nice suite of software apps
for performing electric flight calculations your PC called "eCalc." Separate performance and setup programs are
provided for airplanes, helicopters, multirotors (drones), ducted fan jets, weight &
balance, center of gravity, a propeller finder, and battery charging. The demo versions
are free, but for full functionality a subscription ($12.95/year) is required. eCalc
simulations have appeared in many modeling magazines since it first appeared more
than a decade ago. Per the eCalc website: "Since 2004 eCalc provides web-based quality
services to simulate, calculate, evaluate and design electric brushless motor drives
for RC pilots of airplane, multi rotor, UAV, helicopter and EDF jets. eCalc's motor
database is the most comprehensive on the web."
 From what I can remember, this October 1972
edition of American Aircraft Modeler magazine is the first I received after
joining the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA). I was thrilled to be having a monthly
modeling magazine delivered to my rural home because it was rare that a copy of
Flying Models or Model Airplane News would appear on the rack
in our local convenience store. Unlike today's age of instant and ubiquitous information,
getting ahold of desired reading material was not nearly as easy before the Internet.
Somehow, I managed to retain possession of that issue for nearly 40 years now. With
few exceptions, everything else from my childhood has vanished. I remember being
particularly interested in the Charybdis
because it satisfied the desire for a lot of different modeling interests - helicopters,
airplanes, and nitro-powered engines. In 1972 I was 14 years old and didn't have
a lot of walking around money - only what I scraped as profit from my paper delivery
route...
 By 1960 when this "And Aweigh
They Go!" article appeared in the Annual edition of Air Trails magazine, radio
control systems had advanced to where they were providing a semblance of proportional
control, were smaller in volume and weight (thanks to semiconductors rather than
vacuum tubes), and were more affordable and reliable. Model engines, too, were more
convenient and easier to operate thank to the advent of glow fuel and glow plugs
rather than gasoline and spark ignition systems. Some modelers still employed the
older equipment or a mix of old and new, but the serious contenders did then as
they do now by tending to go with the latest and greatest engines, electronics,
hardware, and construction techniques. The model boats featured here are examples
of the latter...
 "It is one of the most bizarre looking aircraft
ever to reach production. Its conception occurred in Australia, its gestation in
New Zealand, and its growth and maturation back in Australia. This geography, and
unfettered thinking about the
TransAvia AirTruk's mission, drove the airplane’s unusual appearance. In the
mid-1950s, the largely agricultural country of New Zealand found itself in need
of new aircraft for 'topdressing' - spreading soil enhancers and fertilizers by
air - what we on this side of the world call 'cropdusting.' The old airplanes they
had inherited from the British Commonwealth, mostly converted de Havilland Tiger
Moths and Piper Cub-like Austers, were wearing out. A few new American designs were
imported, but currency restrictions of the day made them very expensive. New Zealanders
needed a locally built airplane specifically designed..."
 This
cobbler's bench
has been in Melanie's family for a couple generations. We don't know whether it
belonged to a family member who used it for as a cobbling tradesman. It was in pretty
rough shape when it was given to us a couple decades ago. It is constructed of pine
wood, with the main surface being about 2 inches thick. I chose to sand the
finish off rather than use chemical stripper because it was fairly brittle and came
off easily, and also because the wood is somewhat soft, so I did not want to risk
gouging it with a scraper. One of the legs had been broken and needed repair, and
some drawer joints needed re−gluing. All of the square strips on the work surface
were removed for sanding to avoid dark residual finish in the corners...
 The July 2013 edition of IEEE's Spectrum
magazine had a really good article on a high tech study that is being done on the
manner in which an
albatross
manages to fly great distances and for long periods of time while rarely needing
to flap its wings. As shown in the thumbnail (and in the article), an albatross
performs a series of rapid climbs into very strong wind, turns, and dives leeward
nearly to the water's surface, then repeats the process over and over as it makes
its way to its destination. The process is called dynamic soaring. R/C soaring pilots
have been doing the same sort of thing for a few years now. Obviously the albatross
figured out how to fly like that long before mankind was able to mimic it, but the
researchers in the article seem to not have knowledge of the R/C soaring technique.
They are capturing albatrosses in their nests and attaching GPS-based sensors with
data recorders to the birds' back feathers and retrieving the units when the birds
return to their nests...
 Phantom Motors, out of Los Angeles, California,
was one of the early manufacturers of ignition motors for model airplanes, boats,
and cars. This full-page advertisement appeared in the November 1946 issue of Air
Trails magazine. This particular ad had a Christmas theme, as did many of the other
ads in that edition. If you do a search on eBay for vintage Phantom Motors ignition
engines, not much shows up, so that probably means there were either not too many
of them made, or they were not sturdy enough to survive hard landings and frequent
usage so that the engines were trashed. Oh well. The $14.95 price tag in 1946 is
the equivalent of $288.31 in 2021 per the BLS inflation calculator...
 Prior to the advent of commonplace high-speed
digital computers, designing advanced aircraft structures required a lot of effort
building scale models and testing them in wind tunnels and, when possible, in
actual flight. The process was both expensive and time-consuming. As computer simulations
have been fine tuned, the need to build models have been nearly entirely eliminated.
Modern aircraft can go from computer monitor to production with the full-size prototype
being the first actual version of the plane to be built. This article from a 1957
issue of American Modeler magazine reports on some of the very labor-intensive
experimental and scale models built for testing and concept verification. Many of
the technicians who did the planning and building were hobbyists who were fortunate
enough to gets jobs to get paid for engaging in their passion...
 This
particular article from a 1940 issue of Radio News magazine touches on
two of my hobbies - airplanes and Amateur radio. Whereas most of my flying experience
is with all forms of models, here is a group of Hams who provided logistical radio
communications during the
3rd Open American Soaring Contest, held in Lockport, Illinois. W9USB was the
call sign granted by the FCC especially for the event. Such a contest requires administration
and coordination of air and ground aircraft movement, tow winch operation, pilot
status, event scheduling, and emergency services if required (fortunately, none
were). Being an all volunteer effort, the "Prairie Dogs" subdivision of the "Hamfesters
Club" of Chicago. As pointed out in the article, the highly successful operation
was a great public service demonstrating the capability and utility of Amateur radio.
Many major Ham equipment manufacturers...
 When I run across articles like this "CAR:
Coupled Aileron Ruddered System for Radio Control" which appeared in the 1960
Annual issue of Air Trails magazine, I am in awe of some people for the
genius, creativity, and willingness to do the hard work involved in advancing the
state of the art in a given field. Not surprisingly, Maynard Hill is the author
and progenitor of this - at the time - breakthrough method of combining aileron
and rudder control to enable at least some semblance of coordinated turns with radio
controlled model airplanes. Mr. Hill was a metallurgist in his day work at
Johns Hopkins' Applied Physics Laboratory. Distance and altitude records for R/C
models were among his many accomplishments. Looking at the complication of the electromechanical
coupled aileron-rudder control system...
 Here is novel idea from well-known free flight
modeler Bill Hannan and hobby shop owner Russ Barrera. It appeared in a 1970 issue
of American Aircraft Modeler magazine. The pair converted an
unused transmitter case into a handy field box for use with free flight models.
In addition to adding a hinge and latch to the cover, the retractable antenna sports
a small wind sock for judging launch times and even a compass in place of the RF
power meter to note the direction of your model as it drifts off into the wild blue
yonder when the dethermalizer fails to trigger. Without the convenience of eBay,
finding an unused transmitter would have been a bit difficult for most free-flighters
back in the day...
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