Model Aviation in the News
- Archive -  How Wings Really Create Lift
 Flying People in New York City - Look Familiar?
 D.A.S.H. Goes to War - UAV Heli c.1962!
 Aerospace Scientists Return to Big Sky for Annual Conference 
Tiny Budget Spy Plane Made from PCBs  AMA and the Civil Air Patrol - Learn More! 
FAA Reps Speak to AMA Members About Coming Restrictions  57 Student Rocket Teams to Take NASA Launch Challenge
 Check Out the RC Flight Source Phone App
 Helicopters Go Electric
 Microsoft Offers Free Flight Simulator This Spring
 U.S. Army Unveils 1.8Gpx Camera Helicopter Drone
 Model Airplane News' Best of 2011: Your Favorite Posts
 e-fest 2012 - February 11 & 12, Champaign, Illinois
This NATS Was for the Birds - NARAM 4  In 1962 when this Fourth National Model Rocket Championships was held, I hadn't quite flown my first Estes model rocket; I was only four years old. However, it wasn't too long thereafter that the bug bit me and I was building and launching (and often losing) as many model rockets as my meager budget allowed for. I remember seeing pictures in model magazines like this 1962 American Modeler of big, open space where a body could launch the largest model rockets available in the day, and stand a reasonably good chance of recovering it without having to climb a 50' pine tree or <more>
TheSkyX First Light Edition Update Really Nice  If you are an amateur astronomer who received a copy of Software Bisque's TheSkyX First Light software with your telescope, you will definitely want to download the latest update (v 10.1.11, on 9/16/2011). It not only fixed the issue with some labels not being displayed when "Smooth Text" is enabled, but added a few nice features, like now being able to pan around the sky using the left mouse button. I don't recall if it was there before, but now there is a "What's Up" function that lists all the objects in view for your location/time, and when you click on something in the list, a green laser points to the object for easily finding it in the map!
Adding Power to Plastic Scale Planes  It's an interesting concept, but one inevitably doomed to failure simply due to the lack of structural integrity of the airframe. You might argue that some of the Cox plastic control line models were not much more robust than these converted static scale kits, but at least there was some flexure inherent in the Cox models. Author Don Pratt approached the project from an engineer's point of view, calculating wing and power loading, stall speed, and flight speed, and beefing up the structure in key areas. Still, he found that while success can be had on a limited basis, in the long run it just is not worth the effort (IMHO). One of today's powerful, lightweight brushless motors and a LiPo battery might work out better since <more>
SSP-5: 5th Generation R/C Heli  Gene Rock was a pioneer in precision radio-controlled helicopter design. His 5th generation SSP helicopter (SSP-5) is detailed in this article form the March 1973 American Aircraft modeler. Fixed pitch on the main rotors was still de rigueur in R/C copters, but Gene did yeoman's work on dynamic tail rotor compensation, model helicopter flight dynamics, system minimization (the KISS principle), balance, fuel delivery, and much more. Still, just as the brilliance of IBM's engineers who designed the Selectric typewriters have largely disappeared from memory due to the invention of computers, with only the keyboard as the surviving remnant, so too has a lot of this hard-won technology been replaced with <more>
Navy Host to Most Exciting Air-Model Nationals  "Though 1962 will be remembered as the year R/C Scale came of age, it is also the year which saw fine improvement in C/L scale." That statement was made nearly 50 years ago. At the time, the number of channels for an R/C airplane was counted as double; up and down elevator was 2 of the total channels. So, when you read about Joe Martin's 10-channel Boeing XB-47D, it does not mean the same as it would today, where channels above 4 implies retracts, flaps, bomb drops, brakes, navigation lights rotating turrets, etc. The article boasted 26 models entered - about the number of backup models the typical national-level modeler brings to each event today.
Guillow's Spitfire in Flight  Tom Eastlake just sent a few more photos of his Guillow's Spitfire in flight - very cool. It's hard to believe this is Tom's first attempt at free flight scale.
NASA Engineer Develops Servo-Tab Control
for Rubber-Powered R/C  A couple years ago I experimented with adding rudder control to my Comet Sparky via a radio control system salvaged from an Estes Sky Ranger model... This article from the September/October 1965 edition of American modeler proves that the idea has been around for a long time. Even in 1965 people were lamenting the disappearance of wide-open spaces for flying free flight models (unless you live in the Midwest or Southwest deserts). Mr. Phillips' airborne system boasted <more>
Milestone in Mankato: Ninth Rocketry Nats  Update: Every once in a while I'll get a surprising letter from somebody that found himself/herself or somebody he/she knows in one of the old articles that I publish on the Airplanes and Rockets website. I always ask for permission to reprint all or parts of the letters on the associated page. This time, it was Mr. Doug Ball, who, with NAR membership number 9338, has been involved with model rocketry for quite a while. Doug is now an engineer at Boeing. Read his letter that answers the question I posed above. "Kirt, on your website you ask about where some of those young rocket <more>
A Day in the Life of a Hobby Dealer  This article from the November 1962 edition of American Modeler, a time when local hobby shops were still the rule rather than the exception, is a humorous "day in the life of a hobby dealer." You can just imagine how plausible the scenario might be. Not all days could be that bad, however, or they would have all shut their doors.
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