MAAA Wingspan

20 21 WING SPAN NOVEMBER MAY WING SPAN For Warrnambool aeromodeller, Scott White, living in Victoria has meant he hasn’t been able to take his planes sky high for many months. To keep his passion of aeromodelling alive, he has been busy day and night in his workshop, rebuilding and scratch building model planes. “I have been building from scratch a Golden Era Racer, which has been great therapy during these trying times,” said Scott. “I’ve been scratch building model planes for 30 years now. I just love the hobby and originally started flying rubber powered models and chuck gliders when I was just 5 years old. “At around the age of eight or nine, I tried radio control planes with some local flyers and have been hooked ever since. “My passion is building the big planes. They are much easier to build and fly than smaller aircraft. “The Golden Era Racer has been scaled up from a .46 size and has taken me about 6 months to build. I’m normally building multiple planes at once. “While the glue dries on one, I work on the next. I originally built a smaller model of the Golden Era Racer of the standard size but was inspired to go even bigger. “This one has a 9-foot wingspan and will be powered by a ROTO 70cc twin cylinder engine.” Build details: • The aircraft has been built using traditional balsa, ply and spruce construction with all parts being glued with either epoxy or white glue (weld bond) with a very small amount of CA used for tacking. • The fuselage is mainly constructed of 4mm balsa with light aircraft grade ply formers and spruce stringers. Firewall is laminated 16mm ply. • The tailplane is made from laminated balsa strips with hardwood hinge spars and is fully wire braced. Controls are cable and carbon pushrods. • Wing construction consists of light ply ribs that have been further lighted considerably with these glued to 19mm upper and lower spars that have light ply sheer webs fitted. All wing sheeting is 2.5mm balsa along with 2.5mm cap strips. • Landing gear blocks are 2”x1” pine, epoxied and braced into the wing with these and the centre section foam filled for added strength without a large weight penalty. • Once completed, the model will be covered with Sunny Silk and doped, then painted to give an authentic finish. Finished weight will hopefully be in the 9KG range and so far, that is looking to be on target. All control servos are 20kg metal geared units. Scott hopes that by Summer when he covers and paints the plane in its traditional colours, he will be able to take it for its maiden flight. “A lot of people have been doing it tough during COVID-19 due to the restrictions put in place and because we haven’t been able to fly, it’s been a great opportunity to work on these planes and get projects done that were on the backburner,” he said. “I’m a theatre technician at the private hospital in Warrnambool and my weeks can be very stressful. “I find that going home and working on my planes after work provides great therapy for me. I have five new planes that I’ve been working on and I look forward to taking them for their first flight in the coming weeks.” “I find that going home and working on my planes after work provides great therapy for me.” FEBRUARY WING SPAN Member Story: Scott White IT’S BEEN A TOUGH, TRYING YEAR FOR MANY MEMBERS WHO HAVE FACED COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS THAT HAVE CEASED OR REDUCED FLYING TIME.