I feel that it is sad that we start people building in the horse and buggy days. Worse yet we suggest expensive materials- balsa wood, monokote, and CA. What a strange group CA the most recent extending all the way back through to balsa. Surprised someone doesn't suggest bamboo.
By far cheaper and better airfoils if you taught your friends foam templates spruce and brown paper then extending to spar of carbon and vacuuming and glass. The first plane would cost about the same but from then on the cost would spiral down. The labor too would soon be much less. I find it so archaic of us to steer our friends backwards. Now if you wish to buy either one the expense is in the labor. Bottom line I feel almost left out when I realize "built up" to most is balsa. Too bad you wouldn't move in your building to foam; instead, everyone gets rich and buys foam etc. Now if you want a good low tech version in foam of RES. (I would never add the spoilers in my section of the woods.) You can easily cut the fuselage of the RES Max with a bandsaw or kitchen knife and cover it with white glue and brown paper. Now move on and put some spars in and some brown paper for skins on the wing and you have outclassed most of the RES planes. Next step while you are perfecting the flying look up the bagging equipment and do it in glass then next time do it with carbon spars and glass. In this model the "cost item" will be the spruce spars. Of course I am assuming you will have to buy a couple of servos no matter what. Interesting I give my monthly magazine "Microflight" to one of the kids in our club and what does he do but show up the next month with an electric helicopter. My biased opinion. Rick "with the best design available for the class. RES is a bit more competitive but I think the planes should still be built up to keep the costs down. I think Visalia has the right idea here--their RES contest in May is for "Builtup Bentwings." I may be a bit "pollyanna" here but I hope RES and Nostalgia become popular for the pure joy of flying the planes and not the competition. Mike Clancy LSF V 92" RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
