Or, maybe some big bush wheels. Cheaper than a paved runway and way more fun.

Almost as boring as one of your maidens Andy. Did you see after the flight, he wasn’t even shaking. Great Bruce Tharpe design.

@@Capgains7777 love his designs. This weekend I get do maiden a Jerry Bates Boeing F4B biplane, should be exciting

@@n1114vGotta love a busy summer!!!! Jerry has a bunch of great designs. I’ll have a few of them coming across my table in time. Kind of excited to see your Cap take form. Mark and I are gathering up a bunch of parts for a team build Sarpolus Prime Cut. Raw foam stock takes up a lot of space!!!😝

@@Capgains7777 I had a prime cut with a G45, fantastic flyer!

@@Capgains7777 I did the Choice Cut back when Dick first published the plans. Did the double tapered wing and powered with a Quadra 52. Fantastic flyer. Even got started in some basic 3D with it. Have plans for all the "Cuts". Have wanted to do the Prime Cut for years. May get around to it before I hit 90. 😂

Fair dinkem. Someone told me that means the equivalent of “you betcha” in NZ. Thanks for watching mate.

Thank you! Cheers!

At one point right about the time Mark finished it, we joked that it could carry one of his grand children. 5 years later, and even a few more grandkids, that boat has sailed.

I’m glad he is selling plans. His kits, if you can find one in the wild are truly the best documented instructions, plans, and the quality and completeness of the contents is first rate. Plus they are great flying machines.

It’s actually a three piece. But Mark didn’t want to mess around with trying to connect wing panels at the field, so he built a shelf that goes the full length of his trailer to carry it fully assembled. It’s a two manner, as I don’t think he can either load, or unload the beast from the trailer and mount the wing by himself. It’s just huge. In addition the tail feathers are removable for transport, but he ties the fuselage to the floor of the trailer for transport. Takes up a lot of the trailer. I hope he never breaks that prop. He’ll probably cry about having to buy another.

We are in the Cascade mountains in southern Oregon.

Ultracote film

Mark loves Bruce Tharp designs. He has 2 of the standard sized Flying Kings, a Venture 60, a Vortex, and several of the planes that Bruce designed for Sig back in the day. He says that this is probably the biggest thing he will ever build, however, a Balsa USA Ercoupe just sauntered into his life, and it’s pretty close in size.

Amen 🙌

The cool thing about this hobby today is, we’ve all come from different start ups. So if you got your start in electrics, going over to a fuel can be intimidating. Me however, I started up in glow fuel engines. Electrics now that they have evolved from the days of can motors and Nicads to lithium and out runners, well that intimidates me. What speed controller rating? What battery size, what prop size so the whole thing doesn’t catch fire? And that pop, the big batteries make when you connect them to the ESC… makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Gas engines are easier if you have used glow, just a different carburetor to tune. I’ve gotten used to the way that electrics sound now with bigger props. I think it’s kind of funny the way some guys put sound systems in their electric planes though.

@@Capgains7777 Started off over 40 years ago with glow. Now like electric at 1200 to 1600 span. Fit a couple in the car, with one piece wing 1200s go in one piece. At the field a couple of bolts and plugs, connect the battery, a flight check and in the air.

The mountains of southern Oregon, altitude 4000 feet…. Saaaaaaaaaaallllllllutttttt. Sorry, that was an old Hee Haw reference… yeah shows my age.

Ryan’s Rebel

Kits are hard to find anymore, and sadly there are very few still producing them. After ARFs became all the rage, the kit makers kind of quit. As far as I know, BUSA is probably the last. Sig Manufacturing has been sold to a new owner that has fortified lines of Sigs classic planes that were all kits, to ARFs now although he has vowed to start making kits again. The word on the street is he is having the Something Extra, and LT40 kits being produced and plans to bring them all back…. I’d love to see it, but the marketer in me wonders how feasible that is, when the glut of the market seems to still be chasing the ARFs. I really wish there was a place that had a replicator like on Star Trek. You could call them, and they could with the stroke of a few keys, custom cut any kit to order with all the parts, hardware, balsa, plywood and hardwoods, instructions and rolled plans and in the mail. Ah crap, I am rambling… I did find Legend Hobby has a few kits available. I have a feeling Seagull Models may produce a few actual kits as well. Good luck.

@Capgains7777 Thank you, I find kits very hard to find. So, I started a scratch Built, No Instructions. So you take the print and you make a decision on What size wood, an interpret how to build the plane. Much harder!! I am currently scratch building a 1/3 scale Piper' Tri-Pacer pacer P22. Hard but FUN!!

@@josephkerkau2520you are correct, building with no instructions is harder and requires more interpretation. But typically there are three different assemblies that take place. Wing(s), Fuselage, Tail feathers and then sticking them together. If you find a set of plans that was published in a magazine sometime in the past then often there is an article that can be printed for more clues and that may be an answer as well. Model Aviation has a vast plans service that will sell plans that will come with the article. Some designers like Jerry Bates plans will also provide a set of instructions that are informative yet brief. There is Meister aircraft which have plans and kits but bigger and mostly warbirds. Hostetler plans, Zirolli plans are other designers that have agreements with cutting companies like National Balsa, and Precision kit cutters that can provide a complete or short kit. Bob Holman cuts kits for several designers. You can look at their website and backward find a set of plans. So you do have some options that provide you with what is essentially a kit.

Thanks Mike

Definitely depends on how complex the kit or plans are. You would be surprised how much you can get done with a few hours a day to build. I’m not into the staying up all night building either. Good way to make a mistake that could cause a setback, redo, or start over… nobody likes that. I forgot injury too.

Oh man, you just setup the easiest reply for me of all time. But I'm not going to say it.... But yeah thats something I have been working on. It's hard to cover a lot of topic in a short time. The guys in editing are still working on it.

I will do that next time. Quite honestly most of the time when I am doing this there is rarely anything more than what looks like a couple grains of sand in that screen. This was pretty out of the ordinary.

Yep as I was working on the other side of the carb I thought to myself... Did I see the metal frame as I was sealing it up? Luckily I was videoing it so it was easy to look back. Also as I was cleaning up the second side with a cloth I didn't see that the cloth had picked out the new screen I dropped in until I was editing the video. So I had to open that up a the again. The new screen was in the wipe cloth😖. Luckily I was videoing it all again.

Depends on which plans you are looking at. If you are printing off the copy from the original magazine, those were pretty....furry for lack of better description. They will work but are blurry. At the Aerofred.com site there is a version of the plan, someone redrew using CAD and it is very sharp. I suppose it is possible that zooming in on the plan. Could cause distortion, but the CAD plans came out crisp and sharp and the scale is already set in the file properly. Hope this helps.

@@Capgains7777 Thanks Cap!!!👍

Glad you like them!

@@fgirolami11 Go Beavs

Thanks RJ, come by and see it some time.

@@lifuranph.d.9440 brittle doesn’t really come into play on balsa wood because it soaks into the wood so well and fuses the fibers. Most of the joints in the airframe don’t need flexibility so brittle isn’t an issue. There are some places I don’t use CA because it is a joint that needs to be flexible such as firewalls, and landing gear plates. Recently however I bought a bottle of medium viscosity glue from Starbond that says it is a flexible formula. We’ll see I guess.

Right on!

Right on!

Thank you so much for the kind words. I will be getting back on the Spacewalker II shortly as well as a few other topics. I would like to talk about that radio as well. There is a ton of videos out there about the Fr Sky radios, but they attract modelers that are really into radios. Mark and I are switching to them because they are somewhat easier to set up and program. So I do plan to share that in a video. Field days are something I want to share more of as well. I think I finally have a camera combination figured out where the airplane isn’t a tiny dot, which has been my objection to doing flight videos. Additionally Mark is getting better at shooting my planes flying as well since I can’t really video myself flying. So these are coming. We did a float fly last month. My first ever. That was fun. Anyway, thanks again for your comments they inspire me to keep shooting.

I have done that myself. I hate pinning the sheeting down to the rib. So hard to tell if it is flat, solid against it or if the pin has backed out. At least CA ing it down to the front and back it may pull the sheeting tight the entire span.