*VINTAGE AIRPLANES*

[Kloverzero]

I have had a bit of nostalgia going on lately. My father, who was flying RC long before I was born, used to love the Sig King Kobra series of airplanes. No matter how many times he would crash them, he would always have one to fly. I just ordered myself a King Kobra kit for my birthday, and I was curious to see how many of you Squawkers ou there still have and fly any of the vintage balsa kits. Looking forward to seeing your responses!!!

[Stringbag]

Not exactly a balsa kit, but I have recently un-mothballed my dusty and well broken/poorly repaired VM1W. It still flies like nothing I have found since. I have flown this on 4 different wings, and with incidences from -5 to +5. Its been .19 powered, .25 powered and .32 powered and a .26 4stroke for fun. Its been on floats, wheels and with no U/C at all....a GREAT all round fun beast, that is almost too easy to make. My dad used to knock one up in a week, and that was before fast setting glues. All 24 hour cure stuff, but it would be built and painted and flown in under 7 days. And YES I mean a wing aswell.

I learned to fly on this design in 1977 at 7 years old. 3 channels no mixer's and no flight aids.....

Link to the interesting nostalgiariffic article on it is here : http://pulling-gz.blogspot.com.au/20...-and-plan.html

[KitBuilder]

Lots of older kits being built on RCGroups under Balsa Builders \ Builders Workshop or RCScaleBuilder.com

[rifleman_btx]

Yeah I went from the first hobby zone cub, to a gws corsair, then their p51 and then a p38 on an futaba 4sport radio self taught flyer, I didn't even know buddy box systems even existed when I first started.

[Boots Whirlygig]

I have a Midwest Attacker kit, a Midwest Tri-Squire kit, a Balsa USA Phaeton II bipe that I've framed up, a Jemco/Mark's AT-6 kit, and a Hobby Hanger Uravitch OV-10. I've also some 2 stroke engines. I don't think I'll go back to that oily mess, I'll probably stick to electrics now.

[yorkiepap]

A few years back, I was at an outdoor RC fleamarket & spotted this gem sitting between several beautiful large scale 3D sport low wingers. It looked like an ugly duckling amongst them, although it caught my eye & I really liked the look of it. I asked the owner what it was & some history if he could tell me a bit about it. He said was a Jasco Flamingo his father built in the mid-late 1940's as a free flyer that was rubber-band powered. It has a 72" polyhedral wing & when his father gave it to him in early 1960, he took it to a hobby shop & had a 2S geared brushed motor installed turning a 12 x 6 APC prop. He related how well it flew because it was so light & could glide as well as any glider available. He told me how much he was asking & I told him I would think about it as I wanted to look at all the other models for sale there. After an hour of browsing, I walked back & he told me he'd take $20 less than originally quoted & I bought it. It had a Futaba Rx in it & I use JR so I gave the Rx to my bro' who flies Futaba. I put in a Spektrum AR400. The maiden for me was a bit hair-raising as it was really tail-heavy with a 1300 2S battery, although once airborne, it did glide nicely. I decided to leave well enough alone once I got it down & would take some time to go over all the control surfaces & adjust the travel of the RUD & ELEV as they seemed a bit minimal & could use a bit more. I decided to go with a 2750mah 2S as I needed the additional weight up front, moved the ELEV & RUD clevises to the innermost holes for a much better travel.

The next outing I took it to the field & the re-maiden went flawlessly & the Flamingo easily climbed to altitude at the 30sec timer, & when I powered off, the glide ratio was absolutely superb as it could have stayed airborne for hours in the light breeze. It glides as well as my Radian & this year I'm going to set it up with an FPV unit. I fly the Flamingo at home on the farm adjoining my property almost daily & that's the reason I want FPV. My best time aloft has been 1hr 13min. Anyway, here's a couple pics.

Denny

[Alpha]

Looks like a tried and true design, and that wing will be very friendly at a wide speed range! I love the look of planes like this, they're simple, understated, classic. I think most of us have had planes like this over the years.

73 minutes of flying time is very impressive! I'd probably fall asleep halfway through :)

[dkalwishky]

As a kid I had a Buzzard Bombshell that I built, I enjoyed flying it. If I'm not mistaken the original design was a 1930's free flight plane later converted to R/C. I picked a kit up off of eBay last year, I''l get it built one of these days,

https://www.google.com/search?q=buzzard+bombshell&espv=2&biw=1280&bih=890&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi9tK2BhsPSAhWH1IMKHbhjDOsQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=_