I think of "building", as it applies to other modelers, of at least completing a kit for which most of the parts, but especially wings and tail pieces, require assembly.
"Building" as it applies to me, has a stricter sense, which for most of my life has meant scratch building everything but hardware from raw materials. The last few years, though, I've used Les Horvath prepared foam cores to do carbon cloth covered vacuum-bagged wings and have finally succumbed to using composite fuselages. However, I did make the plugs from which molds were made and from which fuses are being made. I suspect everyone who reads this knows about my 145-1/2" span, big Genie design. If not, see http://genie.rchomepage.com/ about the Genie line of scratch-buildable, competition airframes. I've just finished the 28th one and this one for another party with some custom features for F3J high stress towing. I built it liesurely and with special care over the last several weeks. Ready fly, the all up, RTF weight is just 80.7 oz. on the 3 piece, 8.75 sq. ft. wing ship. This is not a butterfly, floater type ship. It is rugged and more aptly described as a dreadnaught or juggernaut. As is always used, wing cores are blue Dow High Load 60 foam, has the usual Kevlar wrapped, double tapered CF spar system, overall 4.7 carbon cloth, plus 1.4 oz glass on a bias, real wood LE, glassed-over before bagging and that beautifully engineered composite fuse made by Keith Smith. On this one, though, an 8.2 oz. 5 cell 2000MAH airborne battery was to be carried, heavy duty blue-tempered, clock-spring steel blades used for tip support, a heavy duty Hoopes Harness installed and a stab set reinforced with CF capped spars. I just got back from doing some initial hand tosses amid soccer clutter at the Community College field. 200 feet from a gentle hand toss. What a glide and so straight and true! . .wow!. .Wow! . WOW! Tomorrow, I'll drive where I can do big launches, do some fine trimming and then reluctantly put it away for the buyer. I absolutely have to have one just like this one for me for next year. Cores for #29 have been ordered. Oh, yeah, the composite fuse for the 10' span Genie LT/S is shortly to be in production. With it, the all up weight should be 56-58 ounces. This is another rugged ship that will do a most-spirited deep dip and zoom launch. Now is the time to get serious about a project for winter and it's a far better thing to do than watch bad news you can do so little about. RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off. Email sent from web based email such as Hotmail and AOL are generally NOT in text format
