Featured News Archives - Model Airplane News

Monday Mustangs — RC Fighter formation at its best!

When it comes to giant scale warbird excitement, nothing can beat high speed passes by P-51D Mustangs. And when you have two Mustangs burning up the skies in formation, then you really have a show! These two 20% scale P-51s put on an amazing display at the annual Willis Warbirds Flighter meet in the UK. […]

Scale RC Pilot Figure Painting — Add life to your fighter driver

I put a huge amount of detail in the helmets of my Best Pilots pilot figures because its the topmost thing that’s viewed when your pilot is sitting in the cockpit. Most flight helmets are leather and that’s what’s shown here. The following technique works like magic in replicating leather of all kinds, but it […]

Secrets for How To Fly Scale

Model Airplane News has devoted many articles and columns to the improving of static scores in scale competition. This score however, only represents 50 percent of your total, and taking the time to improve your model’s documentation material between events can definitely help you maximize overall score. But for this article, let’s talk about improving […]

LAND NOW! 9-11, A Date Worth Remembering

We at Flight Journal consider it to be an honor to present stories of those who were directly involved in the events of 9/11 as pilots or flight crew. This is yet another view of the event that has shaped our present and our future. “Our plane has been hijacked. Flight attendant #1 stabbed. Flight […]

Giant Scale Fokker D.VII

Built from the 1/3-scale Balsa USA kit, Mike Gross Sr.’s aircraft has a ready to fly weight of 46 pounds, including the 3 pounds of lead ballast added to the firewall. Its 3W-85xi-CS engine, equipped with a 3W header pipe and canister muffler system, easily turns a Xoar 28×8 propeller. Mike’s radio is a Gen […]

WW I RC Jamboree is Here!

It’s almost that time again! This coming weekend September 6 – 8, the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome will again be the venue for the Mid-Hudson RC Society’s WW I RC Jamboree. This amazing Fun Fly and Mission competition will be drawing modelers from as far away as Canada and Florida, as well as all across the […]

Hangar 9 Tiger 30cc ARF

The new Hangar 9 Tiger 30cc delivers the classic looks and performance of the popular Tiger series in a larger 30cc platform for common gas engines and electric power systems. Taking its cues from the Tigers of old, this sport plane is streamlined with a complete fiberglass cowl requiring no additional work to get ready […]

Cutting Vinyl — Make Custom RC Vinyl Letters

The Stepcraft-2 420 CNC desktop system is more than just a one trick pony. The system is designed to accept a whole range of additional attachments for doing precision operations in a variety of ways. I just tried out the Drag Knife attachment and I have to say it works like a charm. Removing the […]

Warbird Wing Sheeting

When it comes to sheeting the wings, you want to do it right with any airplane, but for giant scale warbirds, you really need to do it correctly. I like to start once the retracts are setup and the plywood support ribs and the mount rails have been epoxied into place. We used the landing […]

Easy Weathering Tips: 5 Pro Secrets

So you’ve finished painting your new scale airplane and it looks nice and shiny and brand new. You check your model one more time against your photo documents of the full-size plane and there’s something just not quite right… What is it? Well, it would be a safe guess that your full size subject airplane, […]

Soloing in a P-51 Mustang

Story by Flight Journal Editor in Chief Budd Davisson. It was 1971 and I was again at the Flying Tiger Air Museum in Paris, Texas, hiding in the back of a North American SNJ-5, for my second session of Junior Burchinal’s how-to-be-a-fighter-pilot course. If things went according to schedule, I would get another couple of hops […]

Wing-to-Fuselage Fillets

Advice from expert scale designer and builder Nick Ziroli: Instead of adding the fillet after the wing and fuselage are built, I make the shape of the fillet areas as part of the fuselage formers themselves. This requires having at least the wing center section built and attached to the fuselage, but to make sure […]