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[Unca-Fester]

I have been a fairly active electric RC model aircraft pilot in the past.

Some images of past flying model planes.


 Nieuport 17 from an online free model aircraft builders plans repo, this had an DIY brushless CD-ROM drive motor 28" WS and about 8 ounces AUW.



Sopwith Strutter and Triplane both from my own hand drawn up plans.


1914 AVRO Arrowscout.  Also with my own DIY CD-ROM drive brushless motor. Built from a Peter Rake plan scaled to 1:10 at 27"



 1912 AVRO Type F monoplane  My own plans and build, motor is a rewound Hobby Lobby Czech made brushless



 1911 Farman III  Also one of my own plans, the rudderbar and joystick are all linked via Dacron thread to the control surfaces, it's a bit weird to fly, not for beginners.

[SAS~Ghost129er]

How about Plastic Film over Balsa..

As James and I like to call it, along with other R/C enthusiasts such as yourself; MonoKote! Or Ultracote or whatever everyone else calls it.

[Unca-Fester]

As James and I like to call it, along with other R/C enthusiasts such as yourself; MonoKote! Or Ultracote or whatever everyone else calls it.

In most of these models I'm covering with 1.5 mil Doculaminate, anything more thick would crush their structure when heatshrunk.

   The Strutter and Tripehound are covered in dope and OO grade silkspan. so not all are completely covered in plastic.

   I colored the silkspan ones using an inkjet printer, and the silkspan cut in to 11"X7" chunks and run through the printer tacked onto print sheets.  Unfortunately inkjet ink sun fades quickly, and these are both getting pretty washed out looking.  I used to have a SE5, and a Brisfit.  They were my first small electric WWI scale models, both scratch built  (RIP) both crashed severly,  I didn't save any images of them.  There also was a Austin Tripe that caught a thermal and flew away, I never found it.  It flew awesomely I really miss that one.

[SAS~Ghost129er]

Glad I commented - you learn something new everyday... I've been looking at such small scale modelling and wanted to convert free flight aircrafts to RC (considering how technology grew since the 50's) and always wondered what to use other than dope and tissue.

Got any photos of your Silkspan/covering works? Would be interesting to see how you did it.

[Unca-Fester]

Well no I haven't been doing much with my RC models of late,  the main thing is, if you're going to print silkspan, it has to be the really fine, lightweight, close grained, almost tissue type of silkspan. And you have to treat the models covered with it with kid gloves, as they will puncture just by looking at them.  My Tripe is a mass of patches, it looks like the Flying Circus has had a field day with it.

 You can attach sheets of silkspan to normal sheets of paper with a light smear of UHU sticky on each corner and carefully run it through.  But you have to test your print size image and might have to make several pieces. Printing out a lot of PC10 colors eats through your printer cartridges in a couple models  You have to either refill or buy lots of new ones. 

Doculam is so much easier, it takes cheap spray acrylic paint if you clean it with denatured alcohol and scuff it lightly with fine #1500 sandpaper. You might be able to attach printed tissue to Doculam, I've not tried it but it's pretty good for flexibility, the AVRO F model had working wing warping with Doculam. 

 You know about Guillows and their WWI Laser cut rubber kits? And there's also a small company in New Mexico called Aerodrome RC http://www.aerodromerc.com/ that make a large array of parkflyer and larger sized laser cut WWI and Golden Age kits that you have to supply the stripwood and some sheetwood for.

  Aerodrome's kits are pricey but are beautifully made.   They're designed for electric power RC and they have a lot of different models.   The small ones are a little too heavy for tissue or indoor silkspan, and would be best built with either Doculam or the precolored plastic fiber covering, I think it's called Spun-Span or some such.

 You have to give SpunSpan a coat of sealer, some folks use Acrylic Varnish or One Step vinyl floor gloss.  The aromatic wood sealant finishes are best but not good to breathe.

[VonWaffen]

i have a few old balsa kit but here in canada we cannot find dope anymore , i was thinking using aluminium tape for some ww2 plan as my bf109 ,
someone have all ready try this or it will be to heavy?

[Unca-Fester]

i have a few old balsa kit but here in canada we cannot find dope anymore , i was thinking using aluminium tape for some ww2 plan as my bf109 ,
someone have all ready try this or it will be to heavy?

If that's the duct tape stuff yeah it's really, really heavy.

  You know if there's a Mylar party balloon place in your town, the backside of these balloons, the silver parts of party balloons, can be cut away and heat stuck and shrunk onto light balsa structures.

  I built one of Comet's rubber powered freeflight Mk-9 Spitfires years back before there were any micro RC gear, I think they're about 20" WS, (These old Comet kits are getting harder to find, Comet has been out of business for ages..) I covered it with a couple of cheap, mylar silver balloons.

Here's a link to a build of this kit from RCGroups,  there's even a link within the thread for a free plan for the kit for printing out, if you want to tackle cutting cut out all those fussy 1/16" formers and ribs    https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?1254652-Comet-Spitfire-Build

 The key to using balloon mylar is to use as little heat as needed to stick it down around the wing and tail outlines first before tacking it to the ribs and formers.

  It flew great with 4 loops of 3/32" contest rubber and an 7" North Pacific plastic propeller.   I'd think any of these early Comet or some of the lighter Guillows WWII kits would fly great with a 250 mAh 2Series lipoly cell, GWS micro IPS gear drive motor and prop and ESC, micro receiver and 5 gram servos. 

  I'd set them up as 3 channel with throttle, rudder and elevator and use generous amounts of dihedral  Leave them without landing gear and belly land them in tall grass. Small RC taildragger planes are extremely tricky to takeoff and land.

[VonWaffen]

thanks for the trick and yes most of mine are old Guillows kit

[Unca-Fester]

So  I'm taking a chance with bumping this old thread.   There's a balsa kit company that's been around for a a decade or two,   Steven's Aeromodels, that have a substantial number of some miniature scale classics on their website.  Small enough to be displayed on your desk or model shelf, yet light enough when equipped with really light RC gear to be flown indoors.

https://www.stevensaero.com/product-category/laser-cut-model-airplane-kits-balsa-wood/model-airplane-kits/rc-ultra-micro-indoor/




There's also this Canadian model company that is selling through Brodak Model Supplies, Spirit of Yesteryear, they're reissuing Old Time Free Flight rubber powered kits as laser cut, there's some nice GA scale models in the mix as well as Dare has expanded their kit line to include many Peanut sized and larger scale FF rubber laser cut kits.  Lots of golden era bipes and GA classics.

I've built their Satin Doll, it's a little hard to describe, it's from the desk of Dave Platt, who is better known for his 1960 and 1970's Pattern and sport RC glow engine powered models  The Satin Doll is a rubber powered free flight cabin bipe with a heavy DeHavilland design influence.



  I built mine back in 2003 and the price of the kit hasn't increased at all!  Their kits are bargains and all are laser cut.

Dare has a 28" Halberstadt CL.II      I don't think I've ever seen a Halberstadt CL.II as a plastic kit model.



https://brodak.com/

[vonofterdingen]

Wait, did you say you can fly them indoors? Holy smokes this will drive my cat nuts!

[Unca-Fester]

Well indoors in this case is at a indoor public venue like a sports hall or arena, or a school basketball court, Unless your house has a massively large living space it might be a little hard to fly even the tiny Steven's Aero models inside your average house space.

Our club had contacted the local grade school and got permission on certain weekends to fly in their Basketball court  wich was fine for little foam models like the GWS Tiger Moth.  Something that can easily fly at about a moderate jog/run..( roughly 5 to 8 mph..)

[SAS~Ghost129er]

So  I'm taking a chance with bumping this old thread.

Very nice to see you again! Hope all is well and so glad to hear you're still on with RC stuff and aircraft too - unfortunately, I've gone to the dark side and now slide my car sideways where I can and have gotten into car sim racing and etc thanks to a supportive friend, but scale car kits are something that might be my next to do. Tried to get back into RC with a Micro RC P-40 but have been unable to complete and import parts due to a whole lot of drama here locally due to a certain incident but ah well, c'est la vie.