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| Fleet Finch, a WW II trainer aircraft. |
Zach Neal
The ability to focus on a
project is a wonderful thing. When I built a 56” wingspan Fleet Finch for radio control, it was sheer luxury
to be able to pin a wing or a stabilizer down to a board and just leave it. I
owned a small house. I did not have a dog, a wife or any kids. If I left
something on the workbench, it would be there a few days later when I went back
to work on the model.
When building from plans for the very first time, the
best thing is to read the instructions and study the plans. It probably is better to begin with Step One in the
instructions. However, with a little experience, a builder might build small
components quickly, without a lot of reference to the manual.
It’s easy enough
to build the stabilizer, the vertical fin, the elevator and rudder components
and just set them aside.
Wings are often built in halves and a biplane has an
upper and lower wing. Before fitting the bottom wing, it’s necessary to have
the fuselage in some advanced stage of framework completion. Yet the motor
mount and cowling don’t necessarily have to be complete to dry-fit the fuselage
to the bottom wing.
The top wing can be mounted and properly fitted to the
fuselage struts in parasol fashion, the N struts on the outer wings can be
built and fitted carefully later.
The wings and fuselage can be covered later, when the
builder is sure everything is installed correctly, everything works, and
nothing has been forgotten.
In short, it’s a process. It’s a process that benefits
from some experience.
When it’s time to make the engine mount, the front bulkhead
is drilled. You need holes in the proper place for mounting bolts, a control
cable or pushrod, holes for fuel delivery and the pressure/vent nipple hook-up.
A smart builder would have all that ready before beginning assembly of the basic
fuselage framework.
At about the hallway point, all of the framework, the
landing gear, flying surfaces, control systems, fuel tank, everything can be
fitted, bolted and slipped together. The aircraft is a fully-assembled skeleton
sitting on the workbench. The builder can turn on the radio switch, plug in the
battery and test all systems. If it’s electric, you can run the motor because
you don’t have to worry about castor oil getting all over it. Even then there
can still be hundreds of hours of labour before the flying model is completed.
The Finch had been designed for an electric motor and gearbox with eighteen
cells.
Never mind that everything shown was ten or fifteen years out of date
and every aspect of electric flight had changed. I wanted to run it on hot
fuel, alcohol, castor-oil and nitromethane. I didn’t have any big problems
modifying the kit and the parts available or making my own. It merely took
time, visualization of a required part, some drawing ability, and a few tools.
Over the course of seventeen years, I built many kits, bought a couple of used planes
and designed about four dozen of my own.
The last plane I designed was a
million times better than the first one. The funny thing was the first one
actually flew pretty well.
My old man wanted to get into radio control, but he
didn’t know anything about the hook-ups—the radio system, the servos and
pushrods. Someone suggested he get a kit or two and build them. Join the club
and learn how to fly them. After a couple of R/C kits the old bugger was back
to designing his own planes. He liked the idea of electric flight and the kits
of the day were all shit, no ailerons, no power, basically clunky stuff designed
by enthusiastic amateurs. My old man’s woodwork and covering were as good as
anyone’s and better than ninety percent of the club fliers, admittedly
kit-builders and sport-flyers, around here.
My old man taught me a lot. I watched that man, and
after building hundreds of rubber band models, he really was a craftsman in the
sense of miniature carpentry, with knife, sanding block, small saws, grinders,
files and drills.
Virtually all of the skills required to
build a flying radio control model are relevant, in fact highly-useful in building and flying a
full-sized aircraft. It’s just a lot more expensive. The stakes are higher
and the price of a mistake goes up drastically. But basically it is the exact same
set
of skills.
One of those skills is the ability to focus, to look
ahead a few steps and see what is required. One of the skills is analysis. The ability
to look at he plans and to realize that they can’t possibly tell you every
little thing that you need to know.
A certain level of skill is presumed with every kit
bought and sold. If a radio-control model aircraft kit is intended for
beginners, it will be advertised as such.
My Fleet Finch was a scale model, the kit was intended
for experts. My skills were such that it was well-built and well-engineered.
The designer of the kit, made some serious errors and I would have done quite a
few things differently. The design was idiosyncratic, and drew heavily on some
techniques that the designer clearly didn’t invent. He was unduly influenced.
My heat-shrink Mylar covering job was very good
without being professional—nine year old kids in China do a fantastic job of
covering some of the new park flyers for example.
As far as professional
scale competition, my plane would have been the most amateurish thing
there.
That really wasn’t my focus with that particular airplane.
All I really wanted, (and I bought that kit for $60.00
at a buddy’s fire sale, from a guy called Ray Duzek), was a big and colourful
biplane to fly. It had adequate power with an O.S. 40 FP and it was fully
aerobatic.
It flew just like the real thing, which is to say it
took a light touch, and coordinating rudder with ailerons, elevator, throttle,
etc. It took a year and a half to build that plane.
Even my old man was impressed.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get back into flying or not.
It’s a question of time, money and commitment.
I still have a Fokker D-VII and all the equipment to
fly it.
I think it’s a question of wanting it badly enough.
Maybe I just don’t have time for it anymore.
End
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