What's It all About ???

This page is all about the building and flying of radio controlled model aircraft. It's a highly diversified hobby that takes in as many skills as you like to use. Everything from electronics to carpentry, to painting, to drawing and designing with a little bit of metal work thrown in. Some builders even go into doing their own machining, pattern designing, fibre glassing, moulding and engine design. You can use electric motors, 2 stroke or 4 stroke internal combustion engines or even minature turbine (jet) engines for power. My own models use 2 and 4 stroke internal combustion engines and range in size from about a metre in wingspan to well over 3 metres from tip to tip!


Friday, January 21, 2011

A Book Review! ??

Yep a book review. I recently borrowed a book from the local Library Titled Aircraft Workshop. It is written by A Kiwi named Kelvin Shacklock and although it's a few years old it is probably one of the best, and most practical, books on model aircraft I have ever seen. I've been building, and flying model aircraft for well over thirty years and I have a fairly extensive library of Model Aircraft titles but I saw this one on the shelf at the Library and borrowed it more out of curiosity than anything else.


The book is near enough to bloody brilliant! Hold on - what do you mean literature? binding? layout? What do you think I am? A bloody book critic? I'm an Aeromodeller mate, you know, I build radio controlled miniature aircraft and I fly the bloody things. So I'm interested in what the book gives me in the way of tips and techniques on building and flying my models. If it has a few plans of interesting scale models and easy to understand instructions all the better. This one has the lot! Everything from your most basic chuckie (if you build model aircraft you'll know what a chuckie is) right up to a rip snorting, all singing, all dancing 1/5 scale Mk XIV Spitfire, and believe me the exhaust set up on that one is something I'll be copying or  adapting to some of my other scale models. The plans are great and follow a progression from the most simple chuckie, and a rubber powered J3 Cub right up through a basic RC Trainer to some very interesting scale projects including that absolute ripper of a Spitfire. All the plans in the book are one quarter full size and can be copied and enlarged to full size.


The instructions are in plain bloody English (not bloody Chinglish) and cover everything from concise and extensive construction notes for each model as well as information on trimming, enlarging plans, building baseboards and even a bit of basic model aerodynamics. I could rave on a lot more but if you can find a copy grab it, it's well worthwhile. Hereunder the details:-


Title: Aircraft Workshop: 
Sub Title: Learn to make models that FLY
Author: Kelvin Shacklock
ISBN: 1-85486-216-2
Publisher: Special Interest Model Books.
Copyright Year: 2004

Or Google Kelvin Shacklock.
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