...Not much material has come in since last time, so I'll fill out this Posting with some stuff of my own.

My son David reported a while ago that AeroDyne seemed to be back in business. He said that Allen Heinrich's son Dan had recently taken the old Aerodyne "portable hobby shop" to meets at Taft and Lost Hills.

I tried contacting Dan by e-mail. My first try was evidently to an obsolete address, because I only received an "automatic reply" referring me to another address. But when I tried that one, I got another "auto-reply", saying that "problems prevented a personal reply" but that I'd hear from Dan later.

I never did. A couple of other SMALLsters reported similar results in trying to contact the "new" AeroDyne. Therefore it looks like that good old hobby supplier really is out of business.

David also reported that the Taft free flight site has been sold. That leaves Lost Hills as the only FF field in the area between Fresno and Los Angeles. Yes, there's still FF flying at Perris, California -- well east of L.A., past Riverside... [JW]

...Bob, I've often wondered why & how this "3D" term originated. It seems to me that almost all our model airplanes fly now -- and always have flown -- in not merely "3 Dimensions", but TEN.

Think about it. When dimensions are used to define the location and attitude of an aircraft, no less than TEN variables are involved.

Those are altitude, north-south location, and east-west location; bank angle, nose-up/nose-down attitude, and yaw angle; turning rate, rate of climb/dive, and roll rate -- plus velocity.

"3D" ? -- As Nero Wolfe would say: "Pfui. Utterly meaningless." Seems to me that "3D" merely refers to the ability to hover. [JW]

...Bill, among the last e-mails I received from George Aldrich was a brief discussion of model car fuels vs. airplane fuels. George said that the car guys were running their engines with 16% oil content, most of that synthetic.

I don't know from my own experience if that holds true. But even the airplane glow fuel being sold today is mostly quite skimpy in oil content. I routinely add extra castor to ALL my glow fuel, except for my RCV engines. Those work on such a different principle than "our usual model engines", extra oil in their fuel harms their idling performance a lot.

As for the suction problem you had with your (Cox ?) reed valve 1/2A, stock Black Widows and the like have quite low suction at the fuel orifice. That's mainly because of airflow restrictions caused by the inlet screen and the extremely small clearance between the edge of the inlet and the firewall face.

I've always reworked my Black Widows etc., by removing the intake screen, radiusing the inlet edges where the screen was, and also scraping away all the irregularities in the air passage, such as the molded-in "nameplate data".

Besides that, I radius the bottom edge of the air passage. That's to avoid the "inlet stall" caused by a 90-degree change of airflow direction past a sharp corner.

With these changes, my Cox .049's start and run quite reliably with the 1/2A fuel I feed them: Byron's 25% nitro, all-castor lubed -- with extra oil added to bring the total up to between 28% and 30%.

(They do suffer from sticky reeds at times, though.) [JW]

...Here's an article I wrote several years ago for another on-line forum. I've updated it slightly, and am putting it into this Posting in the hope that SMALLsters might find something of interest in its paragraphs...

AUTHENTICITY IN COLOR by Joe Wagner

The purpose of any type of scale model airplane, whether it's a "No-Cal" indoor rubber-powered craft or a quarter-scale R/C project, is to resemble the full-size original well enough to "look real" to spectators. And the first aspect of that resemblance that anyone notices is the color scheme of the model.

Trying to achieve a realistic model airplane color scheme has probably led to more misunderstandings and misguided effort than any other aspect of scale model building.

Let's consider the way "real" airplanes are painted.

Other than thinner, any kind of paint consists of two major elements. Those are called the Vehicle and the Pigment.

No, the Vehicle isn't a machine with wheels. It's the "liquid plastic" that coats the surface, and in which the Pigment is suspended. And Pigment is the coloring agent.

Up until a few years ago, all paint Vehicles tended to become yellow with time. Some (such as linseed oil, varnish, and shellac) were yellowish to start with; then darkened with age. Others, such as lacquer and clear dope, were relatively clear when new -- but yellowed with time and exposure to sunlight.

That's why all painted aircraft finishes (up to the introduction of acrylic lacquers around 1965) had at least a faint yellowish tinge. And that's why stark white areas in model aircraft insignia never look quite realistic. "Real" airplane "insignia white" was always faintly cream-colored.

Now for the Pigment! Here's where misunderstandings proliferate. First, there are several completely different types of Pigment used in airplane finishes. Only a few are "permanent" -- that is, unaffected by time or sunlight. All others eventually fade or change hue. None intensify!

I once owned a fire-engine-red station wagon. In less than two years of exposure to southern California sunlight, the finish faded to a dull brick red. According to Col. Robert Johnson (the WW2 Thunderbolt Ace), exactly the same thing happened to the Oklahoma-built Wiley Post biplane he learned to fly in.

When new, that machine was as brightly red as a ripe tomato. But after a year or so the finish had lost its vividness. Col. Johnson described it in a letter to me as a dark, rusty red...

Most of the "stable" pigments are metallic oxides. "Earth colors" such as Siena (made from soil found near that Italian city), Umber, Yellow Ochre, Aquamarine, and Lampblack are permanent. They've been employed by artists over the centuries for just that reason.

Permanent reds, yellows, oranges, greens, and blues exist. However, those have always been far too expensive for painting large objects. Aquamarine, for example, comes from finely-pulverized semi-precious gemstones.

Cheaper pigments are common. Speaking of reds alone, there's cochineal, carmine, rose madder, oxblood, red lead, red iron oxide... But the bright, vivid reds (such as cochineal) are "fugitive". They fade into obscure pinkish browns. Red lead and iron oxide are permanent all right -- but nowhere nearly as intense in hue as catsup...

The point I'm making here is that the pigments used in airplane paint were chosen more for low cost and ready availability than for permanence or stability.

Not only that: few paints contain only a single pigment. Except for black, white, and aluminum, nearly all colored aircraft finishes contain a blend of miscellaneous pigments, with varying degrees of permanence.

And that introduces another variable! Until recent times, paint colors were blended "by eye", or by formulas about as precise as a recipe for sourdough bread. Pigment quantities were measured by the pound or by the bucketful. Imprecision in mixing was especially common during wartime, when getting the job DONE took precedence over perfection.

Also, in wartime and in peace, the most highly-skilled aircraft workers (and maintenance personnel) were the airframe, engine, armament, and instrument technicians. People who couldn't make the grade in those departments were the ones who ended up doing paintwork.

For all the reasons described above, in general THERE ARE NO RELIABLE COLOR STANDARDS FOR PRE-1960 AIRPLANES.

Yes, there WERE "Official Standards" -- both military and civil -- but no penalties for failing to meet them.

Lots of modelers use color pictures of airplanes to authenticate the decor of their scale models. After all, photographs don't lie -- or do they ?

Unfortunately, they do. Without belaboring the issue, we've always known that colored photo prints can vary a LOT, depending on processing variables. And as for color SLIDES, Kodachrome and Ektachrome rendered the colors of the same subject quite differently.

(Kodachrome had a color-enhancing effect, like the original Technicolor used in movies such as "Wizard of Oz" & "Robin Hood". Ektachrome came out closer to reality, but could still vary, depending on the age of the film when it was used, and exposure & processing variables.)

As for color illustrations in books and magazines, the best that can be said for those is that they're approximations of approximations.

The dyes used in color photographs are utterly different from the inks used in 4-color printing. To compensate for that, magazine & book publishers can use filters and other techniques. But trying to reproduce a full spectrum of color, with only three colored inks plus black, must end up with some shortcomings. (An obvious one: depicting polished metal.)

.... Hey ! Only 2 weeks and 3 days before the annual Little Rock SMALL meet ! I've gotta get CRACKING on my preparations for that -- how about YOU ?

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