I've always been an RC enthusiast; lately though, I've found myself wanting to return to the traditional roots of model aviation - free flight models. I find that the electric RC models, while delightful, are too lacking in my favorite part of RC - the building process. Moreover, they are rather cumbersome to deal with - charging batteries, which last for only a brief time, before needing to be recharged, a controller, and so on.
As such, I've turned to what is now a new passion for me - free flight (FF) models - particularly, rubber-band powered, balsa models. Last week (or the week prior, I cannot quite recall), I'd bought a Guillow's Piper Super Cub 75 Balsa Plane kit. The entire thing took me approximately two days to build, or a total of about 8 hours. While I'm sure a seasoned balsa plane builder could cut that time in half. Still, I'm rather pleased with myself, and how the plane turned out. Particularly enjoyable was the process of assembling the frame, and the tissue-wrapping process.
The first thing one will notice about a balsa plane is how remarkably light it is - lighter than the lightest foam, it's an elegant construction, made of an assortment of die-cut, or hand-cut balsa parts. This wood, highly valued in the model hobby for its light weight and relative structural strength, is used to construct a plane using many of the same techniques as were used to build real, early-flight-era aircraft, albeit at a smaller scale.
Construction is done by pinning cut-out parts onto a paper set of plans. I advise using some sort of foam, or in my case, cardboard, to pin the parts. While I used CA glue, I advise a dedicated modelbuilding cement, as I had quite a bit of trouble with the thin glue being either too poor at filling gaps, or too good at sticking the model to the plans. Much of it had to be constructed by holding it upright, while applying glue - a tricky process!
Still, CA glue is cheap, plentiful, and can be found practically anywhere. For the tissue covering process, I used dilute wood glue / white PVA glue and a brush, to first "prime the components" with glue, let it dry, and then cover with tissue after applying a second layer (needless to say, tissue while the glue is still wet.)
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