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My first balsa airplane kit

O

OBIO

Retired SOH Admin
The folks who lived in the other side of our duplex moved out and I offered to help the landlord get it ready for new tenants. Pulling nails from the wall, patching nail holes, cleaning the place up...maybe throw on a fresh coat of paint. A little while ago I took over my hammer, a screw driver set and a couple tubs of spackle to begin the work. I checked all the cabinets and closets to make sure they were emptied out. One closet had a long green box up on the shelf. I pulled it down...and my eyes about bugged out of my skull when they saw what it was. A Guillow's Athentic Scale Balsa wood kit of the Cessna 170. And it's flyable...using either rubber band power, a .020 gas engine or a small electric motor (rubber bands, gas engine or electric motor not included). Once built, it will have a 2 foot wing span.

Yep, going to build it. Won't be flying it though. It will become a really nice piece of decoration of my office/sim room. And I am going to wrap it with aluminum foil to give it that nice polished aluminum look. I just hope the decals will stick to the foil...may have to spray it with some model clear or something first.

Will take pics of the progress and post them.

OBIO
 
OBIO said:
The folks who lived in the other side of our duplex moved out and I offered to help the landlord get it ready for new tenants. Pulling nails from the wall, patching nail holes, cleaning the place up...maybe throw on a fresh coat of paint. A little while ago I took over my hammer, a screw driver set and a couple tubs of spackle to begin the work. I checked all the cabinets and closets to make sure they were emptied out. One closet had a long green box up on the shelf. I pulled it down...and my eyes about bugged out of my skull when they saw what it was. A Guillow's Athentic Scale Balsa wood kit of the Cessna 170. And it's flyable...using either rubber band power, a .020 gas engine or a small electric motor (rubber bands, gas engine or electric motor not included). Once built, it will have a 2 foot wing span.

Yep, going to build it. Won't be flying it though. It will become a really nice piece of decoration of my office/sim room. And I am going to wrap it with aluminum foil to give it that nice polished aluminum look. I just hope the decals will stick to the foil...may have to spray it with some model clear or something first.

Will take pics of the progress and post them.

OBIO
Click to expand...

Cool Tim! Go to an R/C model shop and get you some aluminum monocoat, much better and stronger than aluminum foil. You glue it on and taught it with a hair dryer like real skin.

Caz
 
That is pretty cool. I built one of the helicopter kits (Trex 450) a month ago. Is pretty fun when you actually manage to keep it in the air. Very expensive though. So far have about 4 crashes under my belt with about 10 minutes of actual flight time. Pretty durable though. Just those darn tail drive gears keep stripping cause they're made out of nylon. After my parts came in Wednseday just finally got it back together today. Rigged up a light kit on it. Should do that for your display as it would look cool. Could just have it battery powered with a switch. Photo is blurry but ah well.
 
the Guillows models are fine...when you take your time and do a little extra work beyond the plans...

here is a pic of a 170 I pulled from the Guillows forums
 
Looking through the kit, I found that the tires are missing. Well, I have half of a front tire. Will have to rig up some tires for the bird. Maybe grab a set of mags and tires out of one of my old car models....or some truck tires and make this a Tundra ready bird. Heck, if my crafting skills were any good, I'd whip up a set of floats for the bird and rig it for water ops.

I will try my hand at crafting a nice wooden prop for the bird. This is going to be a display only bird, so the prop does not have to be perfectly balanced and pitched. Just something that will look better than that red plastic air mover.

OBIO
 
The parts for a lot of aircraft are actually pretty cheap at your local hobby store. Some stuff be had for just a couple of dollars. Suppose though if you are good at crafting with wood it wouldn't be much trouble to make a prop.
 
you can make one from laminated sheet balsa 1/16" thick or....you can take that red plastic one and carve and sand it to a decent size and shape...and paint it.

you can mail order scale rc aircraft wheels in any size and type from most rc shops
 
OBIO said:
Looking through the kit, I found that the tires are missing. Well, I have half of a front tire. Will have to rig up some tires for the bird. Maybe grab a set of mags and tires out of one of my old car models....or some truck tires and make this a Tundra ready bird. Heck, if my crafting skills were any good, I'd whip up a set of floats for the bird and rig it for water ops.

I will try my hand at crafting a nice wooden prop for the bird. This is going to be a display only bird, so the prop does not have to be perfectly balanced and pitched. Just something that will look better than that red plastic air mover.

OBIO
Click to expand...

Hey Tim - I think have one of those kits living somewhere in my closet. Let me look, and if I can find it I'll send it to you so that you'll have all the wheels and a bunch of other stuff as well. Stand by for a PM. LA
 
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