I have come to consider creating that same level of anticipation and excitement for my readers the standard by which I must measure my own writing. With your help, SCALE VIEWS can reach that level of excellence. I'd like to invite you to send me information on what you are planning or building, as well as about those unique flying field events that you can't wait to tell someone else about. With your input, we can all enjoy reading about our special interest, building and flying scale models, and share aeromodeling experiences that go beyond just lists of dimensions and performance calculations.

Let's begin by having a look at some of the projects that are going on right now "in the shop". Elsewhere on the site you will see information on two designs for which CAD based plans are now available, and several others that are still being worked on. A couple of these are my scale designs, the prototypes of which are still on the building bench. These include the 1/4 scale Aeronca "K" and a 1/5 scale BT-13 that you'll get a glimpse of soon. I am also working on plans for Randy Smithhisler's 1/4 scale Piper J-4 and one of Ray Atkinson's delightful little 7-10 cell lightplanes. Both of these are already flying and need only my time to translate the original "pencil and paper" working drawings to CAD – based plans that can be offered to you here.

As I prepare this material for the opening of the FlightImages site, it is late October, 2000 and I have just returned from the US Scale Masters Championships, which were being held this year at the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio. As you can imagine, this was a pretty exciting trip. I flew my ol' reliable 1/4 scale Taylorcraft "one more time", as the new Aeronca "K" that will be my primary competition airplane for the next year or so was not anywhere near being ready. I spent a lot of time last year on another model that turned out to be a real museum piece, but not a good competition flier, with the result that it wasn't suitable to take to Dayton and the Aeronca, having been "on hold", was nowhere near ready. I'll share some details on that "other" model next time.

Just being at the Air Force Museum was a memorable experience. Randy and I agreed that we could easily spend several days going through the place in slow motion, and then probably going back again for another look!

As most of you understand, there is no "electric class" at any Scale Masters event, and we were flying right alongside the glow and gas reciprocating engines as well as several turbine powered jets. This year, however, there were THREE electric powered airplanes at the Masters...both Randy and I were there with our 1/4 scale J-4 and T-Craft, and George Maiorana showed up with his immaculate Tupolev TU-4 (Soviet B-29 copy) powered by four geared MaxCim Neo 13Y's...and took 3rd in Team Scale along with the Pilots Choice and Engineering Achievment awards. MANY of the "hard core" fuel power crowd were coming to all three of us with well considered, serious questions about electric power applications for a variety of future scale model projects.

There is another really interesting project on the bench in my shop right now. A while back Philipp Gardemin, editor of the German magazine AUFWIND , asked to do review a of the new Astro Micro 010 brushless motor. Rather than do just an "amps and ohms" review of the new motor, I chose to install it in an appropriate model (scale, of course) in order to be able to fly it and talk about the performance figures that most aeromodelers really want to know...how does it work in an airplane? I ended up with one of Tom Herr's neat little laser cut rubber power scale kits, the 30" span Ryan ST. I built the airplane essentially stock, added reinforcement to the wing center section and landing gear, included control surface separations to the horizontal and vertical tail surfaces, and then had fun with the fuselage by using the old time technique of inlaying very light sheet balsa between all the formers and stringers followed by some extremely careful sanding to produce a super light, smoothly contoured fuselage. When it came time for covering and finishing I chose colors and markings to turn the airplane into a little known variant of the ST series, the PT-16. As I write this, the airplane is ready for first flight, and I'll have a report for you along with a few pictures as soon as I get back from the Scale Masters Champs...probably just before the end of October.

I'd like to be able to share info on really interesting electric powered scale airplanes that you are working on, and that can happen only if you tell me about them. A couple of good sharp .jpeg images, or photos via snailmail if you don't have a scanner, and some background info is what I need, and I'll share the best of it right here.