Guillows sheetwood flying models - the Zip nocals.

[kittyfritters]

OK, here is another DC series model. This time it's a Bf-109. I took the landing gear off, added nose weight and glued in a wedge to give it enough left thrust to fly a tight circle and got some satisfying flights in the gym. At the Blacksheep meeting, Wednesday night, I saw some other models being prepared for the Battle of Britain contest on Friday and deviations from the original plans are allowed (Thinner fuselage, oversize elevator, 1/32" ribs and tail surfaces, etc) so the ones I will show up with at the contest will be considerably lighter than the 12 grams of this one. If you look carefully at the in-flight photo it is just missing the light fixture in the center of the picture.

[simpleflyer]

Thank you, Howard, for posting the pictures of your DC series Bf-109. It looks good and appears to fly well. Looking forward to reading about how the Battle of Britain contest turns out.

Al

[kittyfritters]

Here is a photo of the entries in the Blacksheep Squadron Battle of Britain contest for Guillow's DC series profile models. In this case the RAF outnumbered the Luftwaffe. The typical flight times for these models was 25-27 seconds.



The winning flight was 51 seconds by championship modeler Jim Sprenger. I videoed the flight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Hh2jiUA54&feature=plcp

[Phugoid]

Wow Howard that is a cracking flight! I built one of these from the plans on HPA Friday evening (the ME109) and my little boy and I had fantastic fun with it on the field near our house yesterday. Flights were a bit erratic due to the wind but he had a lot of fun....

Great stuff......

Andrew

[simpleflyer]

Thanks, Howard, for posting the picture of the models of the participants in the BofB contest. Looks like you had a good turn-out. Nice looking models.

Al

[simpleflyer]

Here are a couple of new pix of the profile Mustang. We are still enjoying mild flying days here in TX. After some outdoor chores we were able to make a few flights at dusk.

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This next picture shows another of the beauties of flying these backyard 'swingers'. The swing pole shows the landing site of the Mustang, about 6 feet from where we were standing while flying the model. If conditions are not too windy we are now able to routinely land the models at this distance. Allows for rapid repeated flights with a minimum of activity between the flights.

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[r wheatley]

what a great thread, Ihave enjoyed reading it very much, brings back lots of memories. its sad to me that young kids dont seem to care for the good simple fun any more, I bet i have chased those little hand tossed gliders a hundred miles lol.

[simpleflyer]

Thank you, Mr. Wheatley for reading the thread and for your comment. After returning to model airplanes, I rediscovered these simple swing control models and have immensely enjoyed the model airplane experience ever since. In my opinion, nothing beats simplicity and in material things, less is best.

Al

[simpleflyer]

A little past 3 PM this afternoon we had pretty clear sky and got this pic of the profile A-26.

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A while later the sky changed to this.

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And before the flying session ended at 4:30PM, the Mustang was flying beneath this.

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Supposed to rain the next couple of days, clearing and warming up over the weekend

[simpleflyer]

Today is December 17, 2012, the 109th anniversary of the Wright brother's first powered flights at Kitty Hawk. The brothers and their remarkable achievement have impressed me. Four years ago, I built the Guillows kit of the Wright 1903 flyer as a remembrance of their work.

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Each year we try to fly a model on December 17. Today, we flew the profile P-51 and the profile Monarch 26. Much nicer day after the overcast of yesterday.

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[Scott]

Great aircraft and flying pics.

[simpleflyer]

Thanks, Scott, for your comment. We had intended to respond earlier, but then we became involved with a series of household chores, culminated by a broken indoor phone line that serves our phone and computer. As I write this, we have to run a phone cord thru a window to the ATT service box just outside the window and plug into it. Finding a local phone guy that works on residential systems has been a bit of a challenge so far. Isn't progress wonderful???

We are currently building a 'Zip' model of the Lockheed XP-80, Lullu-Belle. It will be a swing control model.

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For those new to the thread and would like to know about 'Zip' models. Click on pages 1 and 2 of this thread.

[simpleflyer]

We found a nice 3-vu of the XP-80 drawn by Bjorn Karlstrom in the Kalmbach book "World War Two Jet Fighters" by Don Berliner.

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[simpleflyer]

After a bit of manipulation of the 3 vu in Paint on our computer, we arrived with this letter sized page of airplane shapes.

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[simpleflyer]

This page was printed to card stock. Some lines were drawn in to determine flying surface location and alignment and to finalize the doubler shapes.

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