Prince by Frank Maguire

After purchasing Jim Newman's Collected 3-views in your publication A View from Here I became interested in the "Prince", a Pierre Robin creation from France.  Never having actually scratch built a model starting with just a 3-view, I decided that now is the time! I began by getting the 3-view enlarged at Staples to a 44" wingspan, which looked about right for a .25 engine.  Then I made working plans by drawing in the details of spars, wing ribs, formers, etc and started to build.  Sixteen months later (with time out for other projects along the way) I have the results - what I think is a pretty good replica of the original. And I have a whole new respect for the modelers who do this kind of thing all the time.  The amount of calculating, measuring, fitting, and trying again until you get it right is amazing. I vacuum formed the canopy on a foam core, made the engine cowling of fiberglass and epoxy also on a foam core, built up the wheel pants of balsa and designed a central control horn system for the all-moving elevator. The color scheme and outside detail is from a photo I found on the internet of a Prince registered in Switzerland, hence the HB registration numerals, which are cut out from MonoKote, also used for covering. The trim colors are all painted with LustreKote. It's powered by a Thunder Tiger 25 and controlled by my Spektrum DX6i radio system.  It hasn't flown yet but I'll bring it to our field as soon as the wet spring we have now improves a bit. I can't find a contact address for Jim Newman, so maybe you could forward to him my thanks for my inspiration for this project.

Yard Stik by Brian Amato

Tom Binkley's Yard Stik (From the February 2012 issue of Flying Models) looked like just the thing to satisfy my itch to scratch build something again. I'm an avid park flier pilot so the Yard Stik looked like just the ticket. A call to the FM office and the plans were on the way. Building the Yard Stik is fairly straight forward: balsa and ply construction with light weight height shrink covering. I took Tom's suggestion and made the fuselage and wing pylon out of an actual yardstick for a bit of whimsy...

...I used a 2204-14T outrunner, matching ESC, 360 mAh Li-Po, 2-6 gram servos, a miniature receiver and GWS prop, per Tom's instructions. The only change I made was to beef up the ply motor mount to 1/8" to give the motor mounting screws something more to hold on to. The CG came out nearly on the money; a tiny piece of lead in the nose and she balances spot on. The Yard Stik builds up to be a perfect little lady either in a gymnasium or back yard flying on a very calm evening. If it's been a while since you've hauled out the pins and building board and chewed glue off your fingers, I highly recommend Yard Stik to you!

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