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Anybody else here building balsa and tissue airplanes?


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I used to build gliders ( FAI F1A class) when I was in high school (more than 35 years ago) and have unfinished Guillows kit for like 15 years or so. Not sure whether I'll ever finish it.

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Well......ages back i used to have a balsa rubber propelled FW190 with a friend, we tried it out in a "obstacle clear" area, and it flew very well, untill the eventual fatal crash, all these little pieces found at the crash site was putting us off for the time being..............

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Ha well as a kid I did - I think the Guilows kits? I had terrible luck trying to fly them though. I still remember spending a couple weeks on a biplane (maybe a nieuport?) and it really turned out great. I think the first time I tried flying it, it nosed over and smashed into a zillion pieces. Probably the 10 coats of gloss testors enamel from a spray can might have had a negative effect on the flying qualities lol....

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1 hour ago, Rick Griewski said:

Been there, did that, done with it.  

 

:piliot:  Yep, me too.  I was into building the IMAA giant scale stuff.  But only seemed to fly small stuff I felt financially comfortable with.  And didn’t have time with 4 little one’s in tow every weekend while the wife worked.  Gave it all up back in 1999.  Got deep into plastic at that time.

 

FWIW, I still have one old Coverite GeeBee kit in the cornet of the basement.  I probably need to get rid of it before worms eat it up. 

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I have happy memories of my father building tissue and balsa models when I was a child, we’re talking 1953/54 here! He was meticulous and his gliders were particularly successful. A smell that transports me instantly back 65+ years is (I think) nail varnish remover (used by my wife of course!) which smells like the “dope” used to tighten the tissue. Marvellous. 

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In the UK we had Keil Kraft. I had a large 2m wingspan glider (Chief) and a rubber powered high wing monoplane (Gypsy) that had something silly like 30ft of rubber inside of it. There were several others that didn't last long enough to even be memorable. The rubber powered aeroplane exploded when I overwound the elastic band in a fit of teenage enthusiasm while the chief caught a thermal and went up and up and is currently residing somewhere in the high levels of the troposphere (and hopefully not in the engine of a 747). 

 

All great fun and got me outside chasing errant models across fields and country but there was always a lot of repair work and I had to build with the knowledge that eventually it would end in tears and a pile of balsa, tissue and dope.

 

One other interesting free flight was a electric high wing monoplane that had certain flight profile that were determined by putting in a round plastic disc. 

 

Oh the nostalgia!

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