TIPS & TRICKS

Model Airplane News, Dec 2004 by Babisch, Dick, Goodrich, Jack, Lindsey, Rob, Lange, Stewart

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You bet your booties

Commercially available hot-sock covers for covering irons work great, but they can be rather costly. An inexpensive alternative is to use cotton baby socks. Socks sized 0 to 6 months will fit almost all covering irons, and they're available in any department store. Buy socks with the highest cotton content you can find; 85 percent and higher works great. A package of six pairs of socks will yield 12 iron covers at an average cost of 32 cents per sock.

Dick Babisch, Shelby Twp., MI

Free hardware

How many times have you lost or misplaced a servo control-arm screw? Probably more than once. If you replace the lost screw with those from spare servos, you'll soon run out of screws. Most of us have VHS tapes that are damaged and no longer usable. The case halves of the tapes are held together with screws that make excellent replacements for lost screws. The screws may be of different sizes and lengths, so check them before you use them. Jack Goodrich, Sterling Heights, MI

Nose job

If you fly from an asphalt runway and your 4-stroke engine is mounted inverted, you know that on less than perfect landings, this combination can sometimes result in damage to your spinner and valve covers. Head to a local home-improvement center for a length of 10-32 threaded rod. Bend the rod into a U-shape, and install it on the front of the engine mount. Make appropriate cutouts for the "nose guard" in the cowl, and you're ready to go. The guard is almost invisible and adds very little weight; the benefits are obvious.

Rob Lindsey, Las Flores, CA

The squeeze is on

Sometimes you need a secure platform that's compact yet large enough to hold a wing or fuselage assembly as you work on it. Use your bench vise as a big clamp to hold a 1x2 that's attached to a 1x6 piece of wood that's 24 inches long. You can clamp the wood for a nose-up or nose-down attitude and rotate the vise to various angles for easy access. Add a layer of �-inch-thick foam to the board for protection. Small bungee cords work great to secure the assembly to the board.

Stewart Lange, Lake Orion, MI