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Modeling for Money at Chance-Vought Aircraft
1955 Air Trails Hobbies for Young Men Annual Edition

Annual Edition 1955 Air Trails
Annual Edition 1955 Air Trails Cover - Airplanes and RocketsTable of Contents

These pages from vintage modeling magazines like Flying Aces, Air Trails, American Modeler, American Aircraft Modeler, Young Men, Flying Models, Model Airplane News, R/C Modeler, captured the era. All copyrights acknowledged.

It is a dream job that very few aircraft modelers ever had the opportunity to hold - working in the model shop of an airplane manufacturer crating scaled-down versions of full-scale aircraft for use in proof of concept testing. Back in the days preceding sophisticated computer aided design software, slide rules, tables of values, nomographs, rules of thumb, and wind tunnels are all that were available to engineers when creating and testing new aircraft designs of modifications to existing airplanes. A high degree of precision in the models was needed to be useful during the design and manufacturing of production planes. Whereas with a computer a relatively simple change might take only minutes to incorporate and re-analyze, a hand-built physical model could take days or weeks to modify and re-test in a wind or smoke tunnel. I am amazed that so much progress was made given the crude tools available at the time, and I'm equally amazed at the rapid advancement in aerodynamics and powerplants available from today's designers. Most, if not all, modern aircraft designs still go through some level of scale modeling prior to building the first full-scale prototype, so these jobs do exist even now. Snagging one of them, though, is as unlikely as it was half a century ago.

Modeling for Money

Out in a secluded corner of the big Chance Vought aircraft plant in Dallas, Texas, is a group of men who get paid for doing what they enjoy most-making model airplanes. These are not models that fly, but ones that are used for wind tunnel testing of the big jets which CVA makes for the Navy, such as the F7U-3 Cutlass, the guided missile Regulus and the XF8U-1 day fighter. Other models are used for exhibition and sales promotion purposes. Half the men still build and fly in meets.

Chance-Vought model maker at work - Airplanes and Rockets

Chance-Vought aerospace engineer - Airplanes and Rockets

Chance-Vought model shop worker - Airplanes and Rockets

Chance-Vought airframe engineer - Airplanes and Rockets

Chance-Vought model aircraft - Airplanes and Rockets

Chance-Vought modeler - Airplanes and Rockets

Chance-Vought vacuum mold aircraft component - Airplanes and Rockets

 

 

Posted April 26, 2014

Espresso Engineering Workbook
RF Cascade Workbook 2018 by RF Cafe

Academy of Model Aeronautics Government Advocacy Coalition - Airplanes and Rockets

Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) - Airplanes and Rockets

Academy of Model Aeronautics

Tower Hobbies logo - Airplanes and Rockets

Tower Hobbies

Horizon Hobby logo - Airplanes and Rockets

Horizon Hobby

Sig Manufacturing - Airplanes and Rockets

Sig Mfg

Brodak Manufacturing - Airplanes and Rockets

Brodak Mfg