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Showing results for tags 'pss'.
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A while back I received a copy of Ron Collins' original F86 plan and as he was a member of our club and this model flies well in our conditions, it has been on my build list for a while I. I felt a bit guilty not joining in the mass build but I decided I would have to build this one first. It's also much less scale and simpler to build which suits my talents better! (this is only my second PSS and the first one was pretty ropey(!). The plan is basically very similar the the RCME one on Outerzone here except that it is drawn on two A1 sheets which allows the fuselage etc. to be shown complete rather than broken into two halves. At the time I was looking for materials Balsa Cabin had little balsa stock, so I decided to build it out of XPS pretty much one-for-one with the original balsa design (eek!). I have not used XPS much before so this was a steep learning curve especially where glue was concerned. For strength I've added carbon sheet in places made from cheap 6oz carbon weave (£10/m2). I usually take quite a few photos to remind me of the good (and bad) decisions - so will stick some of these up to show how I have got on so far. Wings are conventional veneer over EPS. Fuselage and tail will all be out of XPS - any advice on how to deal with this strange material much appreciated!
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Gents, I grew up seeing bright orange/red and white airplanes out in the 1950s-1960s high desert of Southern California, and with this Skyhawk build I'd like to tap into those vague but absolutely fantastic memories. So I'm wading into the fray here with a California-based A4D-1 Skyhawk, either a Weekend Warrior with the US Navy reserves circa 1960 at NAS Los Alamitos, or one that served as a weapons test aircraft with the US Navy and US Marines out in the high desert of Naval Air Facility (NAF) China Lake and over water with the Pacific Missile Test Center (PMTC) at Point Mugu. So, I'll need to modify the PSSA A-4E/F Mass Build design just a bit to represent an earlier Skyhawk, the A4D-1, a designation that was later changed to the A-4A. These Skyhawks are identifiable by their shorter nose, no refueling probe, and lack of external stiffeners for the rudder. The next development, the A4D-2 (later designated A-4B), incorporated a refueling probe and the rudder stiffeners. Next came the A4DN-2 (later designated A-4C), which brought a longer nose that housed advanced avionics. Next came the A-4E and F variants with the more familiar Skyhawk shape we see in Matt and Phil's PSSA design. Unfortunately the photo here of a PMTC A4DN-2 and A4D-1 at sea off Point Mugu is lo-res, but compare the two nose shapes in that photo and you see the most prominent difference between the two marques, as well as general colour & markings for reserve and test aircraft in California during that era. The AD4N-2 is in the foreground, and behind her is an A4D-1. And I just had to include the early 1960s photo of an Point Mugu A4D-2 (A-4B) because of her fabulous AQM-37 target drones. That's a lot of aero-enthusiast mojo right there!
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Has anybody ever converted a Cambria funfighter to PSS slope soarer?