It’s time to finish putting this airplane together ! As I write this, my Stinson SR-9 is actually finished…built…ready to go. It has been “out in public” at a static model show at the Seattle Museum of Flight, but I have not yet had the airplane anywhere near a flying field. It’s November outside. […]
In the review of the Sig Dornier DO 217 kit that I posted a while back, I explained that I was going to depart from what the instructions told me to do when it came to covering (and finishing) the model and use traditional dope-and-silkspan materials in place of the plastic film that’s recommended. I said […]
Peeling Paint? I got a question the other day from reader Dale Thomsen. He reports that: “I got a Stinson SR-9 from another modeler. My problem is the paint that was on the plane is pealing off. I’m sure it is Stits covering and don’t know what to do. the paint is Sig Supercoat […]
Building Those Old Kits – Not Enough Information? On lots of the plans sheets that came with those old (stick-and-tissue, printwood, rubber powered and maybe sort-of-flyable) model airplane kits pretty much all you got was plans. Instructions that actually helped you figure out what came next were not always part of the deal. For a […]
Now we get to one of those places where “doing scale” starts to get a higher weird factor. I can guarantee you that the many hours you may spend doing what I’ll describe this time will never make your model airplane fly better. What a well done stitch-and-tape job will do is guarantee that your […]
Before we get started on this month’s installment of our Building the Stinson story, I want to invite any and all of you who are reading my rcmodel.com blogs to participate in deciding where they will be going next. I have been working on the big Top Flite/Great Planes Stinson SR-9 for over two years, and as […]
This is no small operation! What appears to be most of the VPW crew turned out for a group photo with their building in the background. Over the years that I have been involved with the world of aeromodeling there have been increasingly frequent occasions when I was given the opportunity to represent […]
Yes!!! It’s finally time to put some covering on the Stinson SR-9. When we’re dealing with a traditional “built-up” structure like this one (as opposed to a box structure made of sheet balsa or perhaps molded composite) you might say that all the work I’ve done so far has been leading up to this moment. […]
The Stinson SR-9 project is getting very close to the time for me to begin covering and finishing, but there are a few installation details to be completed before I will actually be ready for “closing up” the structure. In the case of this airplane that means putting on a fabric covering. For me this […]
The Stinson SR-9, like most high-wing single-engine monoplanes of the 1930’s, relies on external strut bracing to stay together in flight. The SR-9 uses a single, large strut under each wing rather than the multi-strut assemblies like the ones you’re familiar with on Pipers, Aeroncas, Taylorcrafts, and so on, and it uses a pair of […]