Building the (old) FLYLINE Great Lakes 2T-1A kit (29)
Let’s go fly this thing! I’ve added a few more details since the last session in the shop, but I’m going to show them to you as part of the flight report on the completed model.
Category Archives: Model Airplane Building
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The Return of the TigerKitten (8)
The next step in getting this TigerKitten ready for covering, finish and flying is a process generally referred to as “fiberglassing”. That can mean a whole lot of different things…way too many for me to explain them all in this blog entry. Let’s talk about what I want to accomplish on this particular part of […]
The Return of the TigerKitten (7)
The fuselage is beginning to look like it is really going to be part of an airplane, but there are lots of things left to be added, or stuck in place, or sanded, before we can think about heading for the field. You guys who know me already won’t be surprised to learn that the […]
The Return of the TigerKitten (6)
There’s a lot more work to do on the fuselage, but now we’re getting to the parts I find most interesting. Let’s build a top deck. When I designed the TigerKitten over twenty years ago, I used a combination of dowel pegs and a neat little custom made tube-and-wire latch to hold the top deck […]
The Return of the TigerKitten (5)
The TigerKitten fuselage construction is about as traditional as it gets …two identical side frames built up from balsa strips with a few shaped pieces in critical areas…but we get to combine state of the art stuff because those shaped pieces are laser cut. We could also use a more traditional adhesive like aliphatic resin […]
Building the (Old) FLYLINE Great Lakes 2T-1A Kit (Flight Report)
This one was worth waiting for. A couple of weeks ago my good friend Gary Ritchie, who does all the flight photography you see here, called me and suggested that the weather was about as good as it would ever get at this time of year and did I want to go flying? As it […]
The Return of the TigerKitten (4)
On this airplane, the primary structure of each wing panel consists of all the ribs, the leading and trailing edges, the upper and lower 3/16″ sq. spars and the spar web inserts, and the various pieces that make up the wing tip assembly. So far I have built the and right panels in turn flat […]
The Return of the TigerKitten (3)
It’s taken me a bit longer than I would have liked to get this blog entry posted…I bought a new computer and have had to go through the drill of learning a new operating system. Now that’s done and we can get back to building model airplanes. There are a few more details to finish […]
The Return of the TigerKitten (2)
All the good things I promised a few months back are happening. Two of my friends and fellow model builders have formed a new kit production company, Premier Balsa Kits, and their first offering is a laser-cut short kit for theTigerKitten updated for brushless motors and LiPo power. I have agreed to build a new […]
The Return of the TigerCat
Not long after I finished the design work with the TigerKitten and got the airplane to the point where I was satisfied that I had it right, I developed a larger version. Originally this design was called the TigerCat, and was published as a design feature article in Model Aviation Magazine (January, 1993). A few […]