Master electrics flyer

Model Airplane News, Mar 1998

Keith Shaw made his traditional trek to the event and brought along part of his air force. The newest addition to the fleet demonstrated at this year's show was a 36-inch Bearcat powered by one of AstroFlight's new 020 brushless motors. Keith uses a 9x7 prop turning 7,500rpm to provide 8 minutes of very spirited aerobatics including multiple vertical rolls.

I saw an aerobatic maneuver this year that I have never seen before. To top it off, it was done with a most unlikely airframe-a Canadair CL-415 turbo-prop, water-bombing flying boat. Marc Thompson, a pilot for Air Canada, does the maneuver by starting something similar to the Russian Cobra performed by the Su-27. As the plane starts to pitch forward, he continues to rotate it around the axis of the wing by holding full downelevator. In the air, the effect is such that you would swear the entire tail assembly is missing. The maneuver looks even stranger in a wind when the plane drifts 50 feet between rotations. My apologies to scale diehards, but the maneuver is just so cool. Marc told me that until he installed contra-rotating props, the plane could only do a Lomcevak; oh dear, how terrible! The CL-415 is powered by two AstroFlight geared 05s driving 11x7 props and uses 16 cells for a total weight of 6.75 pounds.

Don Belfort had a covey of airplanes with him; he definitely enjoys variety. He has everything from an ARF Bleriot ultralight (imported by Hobby Lobby*) that flies at 4mph (fair weather or indoors only) to a scratchbuilt, bomb-dropping B-24 Liberator.

All flavors of ducted fans abounded; small sport planes generally appeared with their fan units mounted above a shoulder wing. Keith Shaw's aircraft stood out from the group, though; his plane is motivated by an AstroFlight brushless 05 motor turning a Wemotec 480 fan at around 30,000rpm in almost total silence. Keith put on quite an impressive series of flights and clearly demonstrated the performance attainable with the new generation of motors. Scale ships also appeared: a SAAB J-29 Tunan, a Heinkel 162 Salamander, a North American F-86 Sabre and a Grumman SA-3 Viking were but a few.

Strange machines also abounded at the event. The U.S. Air Force may have grounded all their F-117s on the weekend of KRC, but Clay Howe brought his Speed 400 version of the plane to do flybys in the capable hands of Dave Grife. Although Clay's model has a prop on its nose, when the throttle is advanced, it vanishes (the prop, not the airplane!), and the model becomes a stealth fighter in every way. The plane requires a bungee launch to get up to flying speed, but once there, it flies quite realistically. Unfortunately, the wind on Sunday forced a prototypical maneuver: dirt and aircraft mixed in the absence of air, and dire consequences resulted. Maybe they should have listened to the Air Force after all.

Martin Irvine cleaned up in the award department with a gorgeous Nieuport 12 taking the CD's choice, best multi-wing and second in the Scale event on Saturday. This beauty is powered by a DeWalt 14.4V drill motor matched up with a ModelAir Tech 3.6:1 belt-drive unit. Using 18 cells and a 16x8 prop, the plane attains a creditable 40mph. Martin has a wonderful crew of pilot and gunner produced by Pete's Pilots* of England manning the craft. The figures are molded in latex and come in a variety of scales, facial expressions and clothing styles chosen from a menu of possible combinations. Any scale modeler looking for a suitable addition to his cockpit can't go far wrong buying one of these works of art.