74 J-3 Cub Trip
Over to See Mike Midkiff
The Flying Aces Club (FAC) is a
society of unique individuals with a common interest to preserve and promote
the traditional building and flying of free flight stick and tissue scale
model aircraft. The national headquarters of the FAC group is based in Erie,
Pennsylvania and is headed by a Mr. Lin Reichel. Across the nation there are
flying aces "squadrons" of record, including three squadrons here in Texas.
The one in the north Texas area is called "The Lone Star Squadron," and the
squadron leader is Mike Midkiff. Mike is the spark plug of rubber powered
scale models with years of building, flying and judging experience. He is
always ready to help the new comer in FAC modeling and share his experience
and skill. As you read in my previous reports, Mike has be advising me all
through the construction of the J-3 Cub. Since I had pretty much stalled out
on the J-3 Cub's window trim, Mike invited me over to his house in Hurst,
Texas, to give me few lessons on
"making the Cub come alive" as he put it.
Using a J-3 Cub 3-View, he
showed me how to paint and cut regular card stock and glue it to the
windshield as shown below to achieve the appearance of the Cub's three piece
windshield. Mike says in scale, perception is everything. He also cut out some
holes in the nose block and colored them black to represent the Cub's cowl
intake air openings also shown below.
The next thing Mike showed me was how to bend up
a S-Hook on the end of the prop shaft as shown below. He said this
provides for self centering of the rubber motor behind the prop.
This shows the end view of the S-Hook he bent up
out of piano wire.
Next, Mike filed and reshaped the Herr kit's
plastic prop blade profile so that maximum width of the prop blade occurs
out about 50% of the prop semi span as shown below.
Using a Sharpie pen, Mike drew on some cowl panel
lines shown on the J-3 Cub's 3-View. He thought that the windows looked good
enough as they were and did not need any added card stock perimeter trim.
However, he did feel that an outline of the top of the door needed to be
added. I added this outline using black striping tape after I got home as
shown below.
I picked up quite a bit of useful FAC scale
information from Mike yesterday afternoon and his willingness to openly
share his techniques, skill, and time with me was most generous. Thank you
Mike. Oh yes, one thing I forgot, he checked the model's balance and it was
only slightly tail heavy. He said a little bit of clay would take care of
that. He also commented on how light the model's weight came out. Once I get
it fully assembled, I will weigh it and report on the final weight.
Today, I will begin the task of attaching the
wings and fitting, painting, and adding the wing
struts..................Tandy
