[E-Challenged]

I would like to see a lot more 40"-54" w/s balsa kits for the following classic aircraft designed for or convertible to geared S400. There are scads of 24-30" kits that are a too small in wing area for inexpensive electric R/C hardware:

1.Cessna 140, 170, 172
2. Stinson Reliant SR-7, Stinson Voyager, Stinson Sentinel
3. Piper Cub
4. Aeronca Champ
5. Stearman and Waco Bipes
6. WWII fighters and bombers.

Guillows, Dumas, Pat Tritle,

[max z]

RBC Kits Bristol Beaufighter = 2 x speed 400 + gears + cheap gear = WWII fighter 54"

www.rbckits.com

Max.

[ChrisP]

Great idea, but as soon as they read 6. it will be :
Spitfire, Me 109, Corsair, P40, Zero.........

I'm waiting for the manufacturer who has the sphericals to start with something like this :

Vultee Vengeance
Bell Airacuda
Blohm & Voss 141
Bristol Brigand
Commonwealth Wirraway..........

But it'll never happen. That's why I'm scratch building my own Heinkel 177.

[max z]

Chris,
Bristol Brigand = post WWII
CAF Wirraway = (A)T-6, Harvard, SNJ-something.

Max

[max z]

Hey, I am just nagging. I do agree with E-challenged that we should see more 30's civilian planes in small sized kits, and I am also in for an out of the ruth fighter!

Max.

[ChrisP]

Originally posted by max z
Chris,
Bristol Brigand = post WWII
CAF Wirraway = (A)T-6, Harvard, SNJ-something.

Max

Max - you NEARLY caught me !!! Bristol Brigand first flight December 4th 1944 (i.e. WW II if you squint a bit).

Wirraway - Yes I once faked one from a Texan kit as I LOVE those stringers and the open rear cockpit with the 'pea shooter.'

Thanks any way for the 'spiritual' support !!

[Rotten Robbie]

For a kit manufacturer to produce these kits takes a sufficant market to make it possible to make a profit.

I use Cleveland for the basic plans for my planes.

http://www.clevelandairline.com/ASP/LIST.asp

I scan the bulkhead and rib patterns and then print them on teeshirt transfer paper. Then they are just like working with printwood.

If you want to see a variety of plans check their site. I have several of the Stinson and Waco plans.

And:
Boeing P-12E 1/12th scale.
Boeing F4B-4 1/16th scale.
Boeing P-26 1/12th scale.
Curtis P-6E 1/16th scale. This one is in process of being built.
Curtis A-8 Shrike 1/16th scale
Curtis F11C 1/12th scale.
Curtis P-40C 1/12 scale.
Grumman Duck J2F-5 in 1/12th scale.
Grumman XF5F 1/16th scale.
De Havilland Mosquito 1/16th scale.
Junkers JU-88 1/16th scale

Plus more I can't remember right now.

If you want to build something different, plans is really the only solution.

Try it. You might like it.

There are also the Earl Stahl plans that are free and are good for conversion.

Robbie

[Jim Ryan]

Originally posted by ChrisP
I'm waiting for the manufacturer who has the sphericals to start with something like this :

Vultee Vengeance
Bell Airacuda
Blohm & Voss 141
Bristol Brigand
Commonwealth Wirraway..........

Well then Chris, why don't you step up and start designing kits to fill the burgeoning demand for these aircraft? Thanks to the twin miracles of CAD and CNC laser cutting, you too can be a kit manufacturer.

Harold Hester of Sig Mfg. once wrote an article that was a sort of primer on getting into the kit business. He made a comment to the effect of, "If you're going to start a company to sell kits of a particular aircraft you love, whatever OTHER kits you offer, you'd better ALSO have a Mustang and a Cub." His point was that no matter how much you might want to offer a kit for a Miles Martinet or a Yokasuka B4Y, you're never going to even cover your costs if you don't have a popular kit to act as a cash cow.

As a garage operation with no ad budget, no employees (other than me) and a day job that keeps me plenty busy, I'm about as non-market-driven as any kit manufacturer you're ever likely to find. I choose each new kit subject less on the basis of market demand than on the basis of "What airplane do I want to build next?" Note that Harold's Mustang and Cub are two airplanes that are conspicuously absent from my product line. Certainly, I hope that I sell enough of a new kit to justify the time investment, but I have to love that airplane enough to spend months working on it.

I'm lucky if I can release one new kit per year. And releasing a kit takes many many hours of my supposed "hobby" time. At least my CAD time isn't on the clock; a truly commercial kit business would lose it's ass trying to market FM-1s and Vengeances.

But if you want to offer a range of such seldom-modeled subjects, I for one sincerely wish you the best of luck. But I would caution you that part of the reason these airplanes are desirable is their very rarity.

Jim

[temacc]

I'm curious what your garage looks like. I'm embarassed about mine, and I don't run a model company out of it!

Terry

[Ron Daniels]

As a very small manufacturer, I totally agree with Jim R. To draw and build a plane for oneself takes only a small fraction of the modelling time that it takes to produce sellable quality drawings, instructions, sort, inspect and package the kits, maintain some form of advertising, and support the products. This cuts well into ones own modelling time.

Because of the very low volume, it is not practical to try to reduce the time or costs required to produce such kits.

I work in the automotive industry, and I see daily how inexpensive a part can be produced in high volumes, with the use of special equipment costing $ thousands. For example, if you are building 500 000 $10 widgits each year, then a $5000 machine that saves you 1 second/widgit will decrease your labour and process operating costs by 3.61%. Assuming that this is 25% of the selling price, then $45,125 savings are realized each year. The machine is paid for in 5.76 weeks.

I can't see ever recovering a $5000 capital equipment cost when producing 100 or 200 copies of a kit each year.

Luckily for the R/C flier, most specialized manufacturers are hobbiests who don't bother to calculate their time into the equation when determining if a project has cost them money or made them money (AKA bought them more R/C stuff for their own use....).

If they did, most would be lucky to make 1/10 of what their day job pays them hourly for each hour spent kitting specialized model airplanes. From an emotional point of view, nothing feels better to a modeller than to see some other modeller bring to life another copy of an airplane that they liked enough to make the effort to produce a kit of.

Because of this emotional reward, there is a huge and growing library of kits on the market. Very few specialized manufacturers can afford to advertise in the normal sense, so some may be hard to find, and may require follwing some related links to find them. Try this some night. You may be surprized at what is available.

I think we all owe thanks to places like Sig, who support specialized kit makers with parts and materials that we could not afford if they did not share them with us. Many, many kits outside of thier own line-up would be impossible if it was not for them.

In electric, I think we should also thank places like EAM for taking the financial risks to stock many of these specialized, low volume kits in "no wait" numbers.

Finally, I think we should thank Jim Ryan. Jim brings some really neat kits to market and supports them to a super-human level. Come to think of it, he supports even non-customers to a super-human level.




Ron Daniels

[ChrisP]

Originally posted by Jim Ryan

Well then Chris, why don't you step up and start designing kits to fill the burgeoning demand for these aircraft? Thanks to the twin miracles of CAD and CNC laser cutting, you too can be a kit manufacturer.

You read minds !! If I take early retirement in 5 years I might just do it.

[steve lewin]

You just might want to consider that perhaps some of the less popular planes are less popular as models because...well they're less popular i.e. very few people like them. There were/are very many ugly, poorly designed or just plain uninteresting aeroplanes. There will always be a few people who build them just because they are different but aiming kits at a known audience of "a few people" is just a compliated way of throwing money away. Planes like Vultees and anything by Blohm&Voss are what scratch builders were made for

IMO Cessnas are simply boring. If you need a boring plane there are plenty of Cubs around .

Steve

[Graham]

Wow Rotten Robbie

I love that cleveland site, what are the plans like (I could see a sample on the site, but it does not include:-)

Do you get a wood list ?
Are any suggestions on power plant on the plan ?
ARe they aimed at Electric ?

Tell us more

[Bengtson]

Well, I think it is time for me to talk about my plans in this area. I have looked at the scale electric marketplace for some time and I believe that there is a real gap here. It seems that what many electric modelers want is to have S400 versions of many WWI, Golden Age, WWII models in the 33-50" WS range. Look at all the interest in conversions of the Guillows and Dumas rubber kits. My web site has many free flight plans which are candiates for conversion and I can tell you that there is strong interest in these plans. However, I know that these plans are mostly rubber power and are for small wingspans. Yet the download activity is very great. Consider the fact that while the Guillows kits seem to be dissapointing to most modelers, they have been selling them for decades. Imagine a series of kits of similar planes but designed with laser cut quality and for Speed 400 power.


I am working with Peter Rake to introduce a kit of his Bristol Scout ~ 34"ws for Speed 400 power using the Mini-Olympus 2.33:1 gear drive. I plan to introduce it as a laser cut kit complete with laser cut wheels with Neoprene foam tires. I also plan to have a very complete set instructions and a CD with building tips, decal designs for inkjet printout and historical information about the plane. I believe that really good instructions are what the other kit makers seem to be missing. We hope to release the kit early next year.

Our emphasis will be on semi-scale planes that are true enough for the visual experience but are easy to build and fly well.

This kit will be followed by others, based on interest. Suggestions are welcomed.

We also will be introducing a series of balsa/ply/neoprene foam tire wheel kits for vintage planes. ( 1.75" to 3")

We will sell these kits on my companies web site.

These kits are to be flown rahter than as museum display. They will be priced reasonably.

I realize the pitfalls of the profitability as mentioned here. I have a golf company that my wife and I started from scratch 10 years ago. We have found that it is not possible to foretell which product will be profitable and where a new idea will take you. It is a journey and and an adventure. An adventure without risk is just sightseeing.

[Rotten Robbie]

Graham,

Cleveland used to be a kit manufacturer, I beleive pre WWII. Most of these plans were origianlly for 1/16th scale. But most if not all would fly verywell. But they were mostly for rubberband power. But not all.

There is no wood list or any other kind of list. The wood is called out on the plans and pattern sheets. You need to adjust the wood size relative to 1/16th scale in most cases. I am building some 1/12th scale airplanes. I am building some 1/12th scale airplanes. I change anything called out 1/16" to 3/32". It is really pretty simple.

But you need to have some experiance in adapting RBFF airplanes to power. Starting with a Dumas or Herr kit is a good experiance. Then take on a more complex project.

Robbie