Notched Leading Edge

Here's a technique for building a notched trailing edge by Tandy Walker. In addition to the Cloudster, it could be adapted to the Taibi Hornet, and the Garami Molecule among others.

2012 SAM Champs Videos

Finally figured out how to get these off my new camera and on to Youtube.

Building the Lanzo Bomber's Pylon

Do the isometric drawings for the Bomber's pylon construction leave you with a headache?   In report #27, Tandy Walker gives some step-by-step hints.

Today, I completed planking the Bomber's attached pylon structure, except for some final finish sanding.  To repeat myself, planking this structure is undoubtedly one of most difficult task I have ever done.  I want to walk you through the Bomber's pylon planking process in the following pictures.

As you recall from my Report No. 25, this is what the unplanked pylon structure looked like.

To jump to the end for a moment, here is what it looks like planked.  Notice the complex intersection of the bottom edge of the planking with the fuselage as you move from the LE aft back to the TE.

On my previous big Bomber, I made the mistake of using medium soft balsa for ease in planking the pylon.  At the contest flight line, when I hit the big Edco Sky Devil .65 with the electric starter, my crewman (Joe Percy) punched his thumb through the soft rear pylon planking while trying to hold the Bomber in place.  Since I am going to power this Bomber with a hot Series 20 McCoy .60, this time I selected medium hard balsa for the pylon planking, which makes the planking even more difficult.

In the picture below, you can see the "hour glass" effect of the forward planking.  The problem arises when trying to shape the bottom edge of the planking to make it fit properly where it intersects the fuselage's sheeting.  To achieve "Fit Properly" requires several iterations, trial fittings, and loads of patience for each sheet.  This picture also shows the internal alignment tabs on the aft sheet required to properly interface the planking vertical joint. 

This picture shows the above planking joint completed.  Note that the pylon cross section goes from a varying width hour glass at the LE to a constant width along the pylon vertical brace.  Also notice the complex intersection starting to form of the bottom edge of the planking with the fuselage as you move from the LE aft.

This shows a close up of that intersection.

Before Planking

After Planking

Front View

Aft View

Right side View

Left Side View 

I thought this was a nice shot of the top view.  Even though

quite large, this built up structure is surprisingly light weight.

The 1/16" planking really adds the final stiffness to the pylon and securely attaches it to the fuselage.  Don't ever let anyone try and tell you that a Bomber is easy to build!  Those of you who have built one know what I mean.

This completes all of the Bomber's basic structure now except for the wing.  However, I think my next step will be to install the ignition system, radio equipment, servos, and control linkages.

.............................Tandy.......................

Larry Davidson's improvement on the Lanzo plan includes dropping the core of the pylon down into the fuselage.  The top corners are reinforced with large gussets and the pylon core replaces the top longeron which is cut away.

Tandy Walker's Christmas display

Sue's daughter Kathy and her husband David have this huge Christmas store in Arlington called Decorator's Warehouse. This year I took two if my radio control models down to their store and hung them up over the Christmas tree area. The picture below shows the Speed 400 electric powered 54 in. span Korda Wakefield RC model hanging from the store's ceiling.

Over on the opposite side of the Christmas tree area, we hung the 65 in. span FUBAR 600X Nostalgia RC model from the ceiling. It is gas powered with an Italian SuperTigre .35 engine.

David told me I had better come up with a price for each of these models because before the Christmas season is over there will be several people that will want to buy them.........................Tandy Walter

Tandy Walker's New Website

As most of you know, I have been building and flying model airplanes most of my life. After I got a digital camera, I started documenting my model airplane construction projects by taking pictures of my work at various stages of construction as I went along. Then I started adding some descriptive narrative to the pictures, which ultimately became a sort of informal progress report that I e-mailed out to a few of my close modeling friends. The distribution of these reports quickly grew as I begin to receive requests from modelers all over the country as well as abroad to be put on my distribution list. Since I do not consider any of my work proprietary, the reports of several of my past projects have been collected and posted on other web sites, including the official Society of Antique Modelers (SAM) web site.

Recently, I approached our grandson (Steve) who graduated from Texas A&M in Computer Science Engineering this year, to helped me set up a simple web site that I could use to share my work with other modelers. For a guy like Steve, almost anything is possible on the computer and in a very sort time he had developed a preliminary web site for me. We still have a few features that need to be worked out, especially with posting all of the reports of previous projects, so it is a work in progress at the present and will continue to be for some time.

I have begun work on my latest project for the new SAM Electric Scale Duration event using a 6 volt Speed 400 canned electric motor. I am building a scale model of the 1941 Piper J-4E Cub Coupe shown below with a 49 inch wing span and 330 sq. in. wing area. Its beautiful vintage lines makes it an ideal candidate for the new SAM Scale Duration event. So far I have written and posted nine (9) progress reports relative to the construction of this model, which are under the category of (Projects). Some additional material has also been posted under the categories of (About Tandy, Pictures, and History). Cureently there is nothing under Articles. You can visit my web site by going to http://tandyw.byethost31.com/ . After you have had a chance to visit the site, I would appreciate any comments you might have.

Link to Tandy's web address: http://tandyw.byethost31.com/

A tribute to Eut Tileston by Tandy Walker

Laser Cut Gaskets

Tandy Walker's Model Room (Arlington, TX) part 2

Thomas,

This is the window on the south wall of the model room. That is a tray of balsa strips and sheet wood at the bottom. Also notice the long horizontal picture between the pith helmet and stop watch. I found this picture rolled up in some of my mother's things after she passed away.

 Here is a close up of that picture. It was taken at a contest on August 15, 1950 out at the Two-Lakes Airport in Oklahoma City. If you read my book on Ray Matthews and his free flight designs, you will recognize all of these modeler's names as they were mentioned in the book. The two most noteworthy of course is Ray Matthew's himself and Gene Jackman who was the national junior champion at the Dallas nationals the very next year............................Tandy

Tandy Walker's Model Room (Arlington, TX) part 1

Thomas,

After I finished posting the Cloudster's report No. 71 a little while ago, I went in and took some pictures of my model room (or shop as you called it) as per your yesterday request.

Tandy Walker