Show Team Special (oz6794)

About this Plan

Show Team Special. Radio control sport model. Uses a foam-core wing. This plan can be built up into either a P-51 or a ME 109 design.

Quote: "Your imagination and a few cosmetic changes to the basic Show Team Special design allows you to build a wide variety of Stand-Off Scale aircraft. By Darrel C Stebbins.

Good grief - not another Me-109! Not really, but it kind of looks like a Me-109. It also sort of looks like a P-51C. And resembles a Hawker Hurricane, or maybe a P-40, or a MiG-3, or a Lavochkin LaGG-3, or a Kawasaki Ki-61 , or a Dewointine D-520, or a Yak-1, or...

The attrition rate of planes used in the 'dogfight' segments of our Barons Flying Circus Air Shows is quite high, and we simply cannot afford the time and money required to field high-quality scale models for this activity. Since the spectator appeal lies mainly in the excitement of spirited pursuit and near mid-air collisions, the configuration of the planes can stray quite far from true scale without detracting from the performance. Colors, markings and general outline can convey the scale impression adequately - we really don't need true scale models for Air Show combat.

Consequently, I was searching through the old files and magazines for something suited to our purpose and happened across a construction article by Danny Reiss entitled Two WWII Fighters for Sunday Flying' (oz9348). Danny presented a basic airframe that could, with merely cosmetic alterations, be either a Kawasaki Hein 'Tony' or a ME-109. These were very attractive models, with no pretense of being exact scale, and designed for easy building and upon flying. He called them 'semiscale." (Editor's note: Romey Bukolt designed the Warbirds (oz7023), a three-in-one 1/2A powered model that appeared in RCM, April 1973.)

With Danny's plans as a jumping-off point, I developed the plans into what we needed for the Air Show Team - a basic plane that could, with minor modifications and appropriate color schemes and markings, resemble a ME-109, a Hawker Hurricane, a P-40C or even a P-51C. This gives us the planes we need for our Normandy Invasion Segment - the Bad Guys bomb our tanks, then are set upon and driven off by the Good Guys. These aren't Scale airplanes, they are Son-Of-Scale. Even that terminology must be regarded as a broad-stroke description.

For our purposes, the planes are completed with an absolute minimum of sanding and such. Painted with flat or low-gloss camouflage color schemes, with all the identification markings we can reasonably find room for, from 50 ft away they exhibit all the authenticity the uninitiated eye requires - they are indeed Messerschmitts and Hawkers and Warhawks and Mustangs. There is almost no expensive balsa or aircraft plywood used in the construction, they go together very quickly, and they fly very, very well. A plane that is quick and easy to build, cheap, attractive, identifiable, and flies well. Exactly what we needed for our Show Team. You may find a use for one, too.

Materials: As some of the materials used are not commonly found in kits, a brief discussion of materials is in order:

Basic construction material for the fuselage and empennage is 3/16 foamboard. This material is an inexpensive, lightweight laminate of 1 lb per cubic foot density foam core with glossy coated paperboard on both sides. It can be found at art supply houses, some hobby shops, or can be ordered from Sig if you don't have a local source. It costs about one-fourth as much as balsa. Using it will require you to learn some new building techniques, but it is easy to work with once you get used to it.

The wing is made of cardboard-covered foam cores, also very easy to build once you understand the process..."

Article, thanks to hlsat, JHatton.

Supplementary file notes

Article , thanks to hlsat, JHatton.

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