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 Here is another set of model aviation-themed
comics, this time from the November 1953 issue of Air Trails magazine.
Interestingly, the middle comics mentions an "X-115" experimental airplane that
claims to be able to hit 850 miles per hour. It seems to be an obvious allusion
to the North American
X-15
airplane, which on its first light on June 8, 1959 was flown by Scott Crossfield
to a speed 840 kilometer per hour. Mach 0.79 = 522 mi/hr, Mach 1 = 1,235 km/hr
= 767 mi/hr. The two numbers are amazing close, although the units are different.
There is a list at the bottom of the page with links to all the model aviation-themed
comics I have scanned and posted so far. Enjoy!
 "Some 128 of the world's best
drone racing pilots from 34 separate countries are making the
journey to Shenzhen, 'the heart of the drone economy,' for the four-day competition
that runs from 1-4 November 2018. 'At the final count we have 34 national teams
with a total of 128 competitors. That includes 43 juniors and 12 women,' said FAI
Jury President Bruno Delor. Travelling with them he said, 'will be a further 132
registered team managers, helpers and official supporters.' If you're not on your
way to Pomona, California, you're about to miss out on something VERY cool! The
20th annual AMA Expo West will be at the Fairplex Exposition Center in Pomona, California
for the first time on November 2-4 with a new ..."
 A website visitor from Sydney, Australia,
wrote to request that I scan and post the missing portion of this article (it was
originally missing a page). He has acquired a Deans 8-channel resonant reed bank
(photo to the right) and is looking for schematics for a
27 MHz, 8-channel radio control system - transmitter and
receiver - that uses all vacuum tubes (no transistors). The plans for this Citizen-Ship
MST−8 transmitter uses all tubes, but the MSR−8 receiver uses transistors.
A matched Tx/Rx schematic set is needed since interoperability was not a feature
of vintage radio systems. A simple 4-wheeled vehicle will be used as a demonstration
platform for use with his local vintage wireless club. Please send me an e-mail
if you know of a source for schematics. When you see that they were producing 8-channel
units back in 1958, you might be amazed. However, in those days each channel was
a single direction of control. So, an 8 channels in 1958 was equivalent to 4 channels
today. As the schematics show, circuits ...
 Way back in 1975, my friend, Jerry Flynn,
and I assisted Dick Weber in his successful flight on June 14, 1975, that set a
new FAI Closed Course Record of 225 miles in 5 hours and 38 minutes. We were both
flaggers to signal when the Tortoise has passed the distance markers. See the article
titled, "652 Miles Per Gallon," in the November 1975 issue of Model Aviation
magazine. We were not at all involved in all the painstaking effort that Dick had
put into preparing his model for the record flight. This account of
William Bertrand's trials and tribulations in finally setting
a new radio control world endurance record is valuable insight into what it can
take to achieve such a goal. test after test on engines, fuel, airframe, radio system,
fuel tanks ...
 Steve Swinamer, a dweller of the northern
climes of Canada, has a lot of days suited for building model airplanes. He uses
the wintertime indoors days to create magnificent reproductions of vintage .020-
and .049-powered designs. His latest creation is a ½A
Ace Simple Citabria, which
compliments other planes in his squadron like the
Quarter Pint,
the Ace Whizard, and the
Ace Pacer. Thanks again to Steve for making his work available
for inspection ...
 As was probably inevitable, Alain has built
and flown a giant version of his "Alain's
Duck" canard. He did provide the specifics on wingspan of powerplant, but did
send this photo. It doesn't stop there, though. An R/C turbine version is nearly
ready for flight. A video will be posted soon, hopefully ...
 "Although,
winglets have been around since the mid-1970s, there is still
a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and angles. If you've ever taken a photo out the
window of a commercial airplane, you most likely have a great shot of a winglet
- that part of the wing at the tip that angles upward. That little change in the
wingtip's shape does a lot. It reduces drag, which can translate to higher speed
or to allow a pilot to throttle back and save fuel. It also helps to reduce wingtip
vortices that can be problematic for airplanes flying in their wake. Although, winglets
have been around since the mid-1970s, there is still a wide variety of shapes, sizes,
and angles. Analyzing winglets to find the optimal characteristics ..."
 Bill Hutchinson drew many, many comics for
model aircraft magazines in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s (and maybe the 1940s, but I
don't have any that old). A lot of them have been - and are yet to be - posted here
on the Airplanes And Rockets website. "Competition Daze" comics appeared in the November 1950 issue of
Air Trails magazine, and has a control line theme. Also being about competition,
Mr. Hutchinson integrated a few sports-related ideas into the situation. Control
line stunt, speed, and combat are amongst the subjects. I haven't figured out what
the punch line is on comic #3. Anyone? My favorite is #9 ...
 "It might not the most elegant-looking thing
on the road or in the sky, but an automobile-airplane hybrid that’s being called
the world's first practical flying car is almost ready to spread its wings. The
two-passenger Transition will go on sale in the U.S. next year at an estimated price
of $400,000, according to
Terrafugia, the Woburn, Massachusetts-based firm that makes it.
The Transition has four wheels, folding wings and a rear-mounted pusher propeller.
Powered by a four-cylinder hybrid-electric engine, it can fly 100 miles an hour
at altitudes of up to 9,000 feet, with a flying range of 400 miles. There are controls
for both flying and driving: for the roads, conventional brake and accelerator pedals
and a steering wheel; for flying, the usual yoke and rudder pedals ..."
C-47 That Led Normandy Invasion Found &
Restored
 "The invasion of Normandy, also known as
D-day, was one of the most horrific days in history, but it was
also the beginning of the end of a horrific war - World War II. Most of the hundreds
of thousands of men, women and children who died on that day remain nameless in
the history books. The same is true for the airplanes that led the heroic efforts.
The attacks came from several fronts on that fateful day, with ships dropping troops
on the beaches of Normandy and airplanes deploying droves of people and ammunition
from the skies. Once the war was over, most of those aircraft were destroyed or
recommissioned, and their historic significance evaporated like the fuel that burned
in their engines. Even some of the most notable airplanes fell into the shadows
of the past ..."
 A lot of model aircraft pilots are also full-scale
pilots, so some of the news items on Airplanes and Rockets are topics that are more
directed to them. This story about a software package called
CloudAhoy is an incredible combination of recorded real-time GPS
data and sophisticated post-processing and display that gives pilots a 3D visual
representation of their flight path superimposed of detailed terrain features. I
have seen some post-processing software for R/C airborne telemetry data, but nothing
as detailed as this. Model aircraft don't cover as much ground in a typical flight
as a full-scale aircraft does, but having a detailed 3D representation of the flight
path would be a great training aid to aerobatic pilots ...
 If you have been looking for an unusual project
that should build fairly quickly, cost very little, contain non-standard materials,
and qualify for a vintage design contest, then
Rathgeber's "Minimum" fits the bill. It is a 1/2A control line
speed model with about an 8" wingspan that appeared in a 1957 issue of American
Modeler magazine. It does not appear to have been intended for serious competition,
but given the single-line control and extremely high thrust-to-weight ration and
minimal drag design, it might have been a contender back in the day. Designer George
Rathgeber does not give specifics on timed flights. My guess is that it was a handful
to fly due to lack of tail feathers ...
 "As drones become more commonplace, the need
to secure facilities from the high-definition cameras and potential dangerous payloads
has caused a rapid growth of
counter-drone technologies. DMT, LLC started making radar systems
in 2002, and rapidly grew to build and sell these systems across the globe. The
commercial radars produced by DMT employ pulsed-Doppler technology. Pulsed-Doppler
radar is perhaps the most versatile of radar technologies and is known for its ability
to operate in a wide array of environments and applications. DMT uses Doppler radar
to track objects on land, sea and in the air. In 2015 it began testing its pulsed-Doppler
radars against commonly available drones. Today it produces the longest-range, drone-detection
radar systems on the market ..."
 This
1969 Camaro SS was my pride and joy as a teenager. It was
purchased in 1975 for $3,500 from a fellow named Mr. Cavey, in Bowie, Maryland (I
lived in Mayo, MD). He had ordered it custom from the Chevrolet factory with nearly
every option available in 1969. This was not a Z10 model, but did have most of the
options. The 1969 Indy 500 pace car was a Camaro SS convertible with a
396 engine and a white and orange paint job. As you can see in the top photo, my
1969 Camaro SS came with a white vinyl top, the ducted hood, rally wheels,
hounds tooth upholstery, foldaway headlamps, 3-speed automatic transmission, 350 cu.in.
V8 engine, electric windows, air conditioning, folding rear seats, sport side view
mirrors, and full instrument cluster ...
 The Northrop Gamma was as close to a one-size-fits-all
aircraft as you would come by in the mid 1930's. It is pretty incredible to ponder
the rapid development in aircraft and engines in the short three decades since the
Wright brothers made their world's first powered flight in 1903. Airspeeds went
from 30 miles per hour to more than 200 miles per hour. Engines went from 12 horsepower
to nearly 1,000 horsepower in that timespan. The
Northrop Gamma appeared in more than a dozen different versions
including an air racer, a military bomber, a trainer, a high altitude weather research
platform, a military attack airplane, and a seaplane. It was one of the first production
designs to incorporate a completely enclosed cockpit - a welcome feature to pilots
in cold weather ...
 "The US Air Force's unmanned
X-37B space plane has passed its 400-day mark, inching its way
toward setting a new flight duration record for the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) mission.
The spacecraft, the fifth of its kind, was initially rocketed into orbit on September
7, 2017, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, according to Space.com. All previous OTV
missions established new flight records, with the fourth spacecraft spending 718
days in orbit. Though details of the space plane are kept on a need-to-know basis
by officials, it has been reported that the craft is carrying in its payload an
Advanced Structurally-Embedded Thermal Spreader. In August, the space plane was
spotted by Marco Langbroek ..."
 "A novel insect-inspired flying robot, developed
by TU Delft researchers from the Micro Air Vehicle Laboratory (MAVLab), has been
presented in Science. Experiments with this first autonomous, free-flying and agile
flapping-wing robot - carried out in collaboration with Wageningen
University & Research - improved our understanding of how fruit flies control
aggressive escape maneuvers. Apart from its further potential in insect flight research,
the robot's exceptional flight qualities open up new drone applications. Flying
animals both power and control flight by flapping their wings. This enables small
natural flyers such as insects to hover close to a flower, but also to rapidly escape
danger ..."
 Very sad news arrived
in my e-mail today that told of the passing of former AMA president and executive
director
Dave Mathewson. Dave's contribution to the Academy of Model Aeronautics
is immeasurable, in my opinion, having followed his service over a couple decades.
He was the District II VP when my family lived in Syracuse, NY, in the 1990's.
Dave was the major force behind the AMA modernizing to adapt to the reality of contemporary
modelers who opt for ready-to-fly models and electric power more so than traditional
build-it-yourself modelers using glow fuel power. Although I am a member of the
later category, the need to include and encourage the former category of hobbyists
was obvious for the sake of organized aeromodelling survival. Many thanks to Dave's
family for allowing him to pursue his passion for all our benefit. Dave Mathewson,
1/20/1952 - 10/21/2018. RIP ...
 "The Boeing Co. on Thursday secured a hat-trick
of Pentagon contract wins after it was awarded a deal worth as much as $9.2 billion
to build new trainer jets for the U.S. Air Force. The Wall Street Journal reports.
The contract to build an initial 351
T-X jets and supply training services is one of the largest Defense
Department programs awarded in recent years, with the work helping sustain engineers
and production equipment while the Pentagon considers the next generation of combat
aircraft due to come into service in the 2030s. Analysts had favored Boeing in the
long-running contest, expecting the aerospace giant to bid aggressively to secure
the future of its main military jet ..."
 Flettner rotors were at one time believed
to be the next big thing in air-driven propulsion. They would replace cloth sails
on boats and fixed wings on aeroplanes. I remember seeing such fantastic contraptions
in magazines like Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Mechanics back
in the 1960's and 1970's. The nouveau sails and wings were actually built on experimental
vehicles which can be found in a Google search on Flettner rotor. They operate on
the Magnus effect, which is where a lifting force is generated by a spinning sphere
or cylinder moving through the air (or water, or any fluid), thereby causing an
unequal pressure to build on opposite sides. I had a Magnus rotor kite as a kid
in the late 1960's that was made of thin, molded plastic ...
 The
Wee Bee
was at one time considered the world's smallest man-carrying aircraft. It had an
18-foot wingspan and weighted 215 pounds without pilot. Lloyd Hunt's model of the
Wee Bee is designed for either free flight or control line. For C/L it is powered
by an .049 engine, and for F/F it uses an .020 engine. Its 22" wingspan makes it
about 1/10th scale. Construction is built-up fuselage, wing, and tail surfaces with
balsa sheeting over all. If you are looking for an unusual scale model that will
not require a lot of detail to make it look authentic, the Wee Bee would make a
good subject ...
 "When World War One broke out in 1914, the
airplane was barely eleven years old and was nothing more than a plodding, noisy
kite barely more dangerous than an observation balloon. As a weapon, it was difficult
to take seriously. Four short years later it had been transformed into a multi-dimensional
weapon system of awesome potential and the
Royal Airplane Factory’s SE-5a is a classic case in point. It
showed clearly that in time of war man quickly finds more efficient ways rain death
on his enemy. The Scout Experimental 5, (SE-5) was designed specifically to eliminate
the awful short comings aircraft such as the Sopwith Camel, while at the same time,
giving it a combat edge over Germany's lethal Fokkers ..."
 Air Trails magazine ran a regular
feature called "Airmen of Vision" that was a deign idea contest where readers submitted
futuristic designs for everything from small homebuilt aircraft to military jet
fighters and large commercial airliners. The 1950's was an era when young men were
totally caught up in the dawning age of jet propulsion, transistorized electronics,
flying cars, interplanetary flight and moon landings, wind-powered ocean liners,
robotic home servants, and even - get this - personal computers! If you search the
Airplanes and Rockets website for some of the other aircraft and automobile design
contest entries, you will be amazed at how close some of them come to ones that
have been built over the years. Check out this SpaceShipOne lookalike ...
 Although not involved with Scaled Composites
these days, remember that famed Burt Rutan, himself a model airplane enthusiast,
was the founder. "The
flying rocket launcher enters a crowded field, leading some to
wonder if it could end up flying classified missions. Seven years ago, Microsoft
founder Paul Allen started a company with a bold idea: build one of the biggest
aircraft ever to fly, and then use it to launch satellites into orbit. Now just
months before the airplane flies the first time, some are wondering where the customers
are for such an aircraft. Could the airplane end up flying secret missions for the
military and intelligence community? Built by aviation firm Scaled Composites, Stratolaunch
is the largest aircraft in the world ..."
 "Even as drone technology advances, power
constraints limit the amount of equipment unmanned systems can carry as well as
the time they can stay in the air. Some drone systems, like the
Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications drone from
CyPhy Works, deliver power through a tether to keep a small drone aloft for an entire
week. The Army, however, is developing a system to supply power through a laser,
according to reporting from the New Scientist. The drone would be outfitted with
a photovoltaic cell that could take the light beam from the laser and turn it into
electricity. The Army has still to determine how to get the benefits of photovoltaics
without the extreme heat damaging the drone, according to Futurism ..."
 "The US-1, from Impossible Aerospace, can
fly for 2 hours. A new electric drone from Impossible Aerospace can fly more than
four times as long as other battery-powered drones, the company announced today,
potentially bringing the world closer to fully electric passenger aircraft. The
new unmanned vehicle, dubbed the US-1, is a quadcopter that is 'essentially just
one big flying battery,' says Spencer Gore, founder and CEO of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based
Impossible Aerospace. 'Most drones are designed with the philosophy that once you
are done figuring out the payload and propulsion, you add the battery pack,' Gore
says. 'Instead, from the very beginning, we designed a battery pack that was meant
to fly' ..."
 As a kid in the 1960's, following America's
progress in the Space Race was a big part of my life. I built and launched as many
Estes rockets as my meager newspaper route-funded budget allowed. When John Glenn
made his historic Earth-orbiting flight in the Mercury Freedom 7 space capsule
on February 20, 1962, I was a mere 3 years old, but my parent say I was an ardent
aerospace fan beginning at a very young age. Most American households probably had
at least one View-Master stereo slide viewer, and ours was amongst them. I
loved the 3D Peanuts slide sets, and especially any with an airplane or space exploration
theme. My originals are long gone, but fortunately I was able to buy this near-perfect
set titled, "America's Man in Space," on eBay ...
 "In the UK, the testing of a
flying taxi made the news this week. We can set sight on a new
day in vertical aerospace with the company of the same name. A full scale electric
vertical take off and landing aircraft has flown and takes it place as 'the UK's
first full scale fully electric vertical take off and landing aircraft.' This startup,
Vertical Aerospace, is building technology (1) to change how people fly, (2) to
expand your notion of air travel as now an 'intercity' option, and (3) to offer
people carbon free journeys. The Telegraph was already showing awareness of possible
use cases with its headline "Bristol start-up launches UK's first electric 'flying
taxi ..."
  "Today, the
Senate passed the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018, and we expect President Trump
to sign it into law soon. This bill includes significant modifications to our hobby.
While some of the changes are positive, and include provisions that AMA has championed,
overall the bill is problematic, such as a 400 AGL altitude cap in Class G airspace.
Please note: None of the provisions included in this bill will go into effect immediately.
The status quo remains - and you should continue to fly in accordance with AMA's
safety guidelines until the FAA creates new rules, which could take some time. We
will let you know as soon as we have more information on this process and timeline.
In the meantime, we are already working behind-the-scenes ..."
 To the left is Melanie with her
gaf View−Master "Tour Theatre" set that she had as a little girl.
She took better care of her stuff than I did, so a lot of her toys and dolls are
still around decades later. It came with a Standard 30−watt projector and a hand−held
stereo viewer. Also included was a nice case and a few reel sets with various places
around the world*. Being a Peanuts fan like me, she had a couple 3−reel sets: "Snoopy
and the Red Baron," and Peanuts." We have a "Little Drummer Boy" and "Dennis the
Menace" set, too. The others are long gone. I had just a hand−held viewer. The hand−held
View−Master viewer that created a 3D scene by using a pair of stereoscopic images
fed individually to each eye. One of the Peanuts reels has a frame showing how those
stereoscopic images were ...
 Here is another round of nifty model airplane
building ideas, aka "Sketchbook,"
submitted by readers of the Academy of Model Aviation's (AMA's) American Modeler
magazine. I'm not too keen on the "rubber mold" idea of using a thin layer of silicon
rubber, trimmed to the design outline with a razor knife - especially over an open
wing bay or between fuselage longerons. Controlling the depth of the cut is tricky,
especially in a layer of silicon that is not of uniform thickness. Mr. Itter
must have a steady hand. Using a length of brass tubing with the end filed or sanded
to a sharp edge is a handy trick for cutting holes I have used many times over the
years - probably after having first seen it in American Aircraft Modeler,
R/C Modeler, Flying Models, or Model Airplane News ...
 "The Academy of Model Aeronautics is rallying
its members to lobby congressional representatives to vote against the latest iteration
of FAA reauthorization, the
FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018. The bill includes modifications
to the Special Rule for Model Aircraft, also known as Section 336, modifications
the AMA claims will put burdensome restrictions on the use of model aircraft. The
FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 restricts model aircraft operations to 400 feet
AGL. This limit 'kills many of our operations that have been safely conducted for
decades,' said AMA's interim executive director, Chad Budreau, in a video on the
AMA website. AMA claims this limit will inhibit AMA competitions ..."
 "Van's Aircraft is set to begin manufacturing
RV–12's in 2018 at its headquarters in Aurora, Oregon, the company
announced. The factory-built special light sport aircraft (SLSA) will use fuel-injected
Rotax 912 iS and iST engines instead of earlier carbureted models. Van's employees
will build the new airplanes - not Synergy Air of Eugene, Oregon, a separate company
that previously assembled SLSA RV - 12's from kits that Van's supplied. 'We've got
a new, dedicated work area at Aurora,' said Greg Hughes, a Van's spokesman. 'All
the parts, expertise, and components will be in the same area, and that's sure to
enhance efficiency ..."
 If you are a current member of the Academy
of Model Aeronautics (AMA), online access is available to every issue of
Model Aviation
magazine back through the first issue in July 1975. March 1975 was the final edition
of the predecessor magazine titled
American Aircraft Modeler (see full list). The
AMA Plans
Service can provide you with plans for nearly all of the models in American
Modeler and American Aircraft Modeler either at the original size
or scaled up or down. There is a new wave in scratch builders occurring now, and
this would be a great resource for those folks ...
 Cal Smith covers a huge amount of turf in
this article about the Academy of Model Aeronautics' (AMA's) control line
Navy Carrier event equipment, airframes, engines, and flying techniques.
Back in 1961, when this article appeared in American Modeler magazine,
the U.S. Navy was still sponsoring the AMA National Competition as a means of encouraging
young men to consider careers in the Navy as pilots as well as all the other disciplines
needed to keep the fleet afloat, so to speak. I always wanted to try building and
flying Carrier, but the opportunity never presented itself. There have not been
local clubs with a carrier deck, and I have neither the land area nor the money
to build my own. It sure seems like flying Carrier shouldn't be as difficult as
it really is, but I have watched competitions at Brodak and snagging one of the
arrestor lines ...
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