I don't do foam. I'm a crotchety old man, and my art is building, so to have someone squirt plastic in a mold and pop off a few thousand planes and sell one to me--- well, just not my thing. And after more than 50 years of building things, in about every material possible, I've earned my chops.
BUT---- The X8 is a lovely shape that caught my imagination from the first moment I saw it. So life is balance, and I compromise. .I ordered it from HK, and waited. And waited. Forever. It did arrive, or I'd not be writing this. Congratulations to the designer for a lovely creation, and less kudos to the guys who did the rather imperfect tooling, and sympathy for the fact that the shape would be a real female dog to tool.

The design cried out to me-- several things. Things about payload, long range, and gracefulness, and these things:
1.) Help! Somebody do something! Anyone can see my wings will twist!
2.) What can I be when I grow up? A foam overcast?
3.) Please! Aagh! Somebody get this gruesome thing off my chin!

Leading edge damage is the nemesis of foamies. Torsional wing distortion was a virtual certainty as well- by hand, the wing twisted far too easily, the tip foils had a center of effort well above the wing axis, and lift is never free. My suspicions were confirmed. I had to glass it.

But first, I needed to remove the warts.
Injection moulding leaves sprue bumps where the chemical goes in, and they serve no useful purpose.
Get a razor plane, and some old-...Continue Reading

We take Cleveland Avenue under the railroad and out past the old Timken roller bearing plant through an industrial neighborhood of abused streets, and grimy bars of the “Billiards Food” breed. We turn left into a brick side road, and my dad's ancient 1949 Nash Ambassador lists strongly to starboard as we round the corner, it's soggy suspension taking a while to recover what little equilibrium it can muster after the turn, only to lose it again in another destabilizing swoop into the clubhouse parking lot. I wait for my stomach to settle, then get out.
After some prodding from mom, my dad, who wouldn't be caught dead on an airplane let alone build one, is taking me to the Columbus Model Fliers meeting. I'm eight years old, and in love with anything that flies.
The building is a quonset hut- a steel wartime building composed of corrugated panels rolled into curved sections that could be overlapped and made into almost any size building. Stiff enough to be self-supporting, the system produced large structures with almost no internal supports. Dad opens the entrance door, and inside the translucent panels in the roof, plus the incandescent lighting produce an off-color light, a yellowish semi-gloom that takes time to adjust to. Therte's a wooden floor like a skating rink, and perhaps twenty men standing around in one end. A flock of young boys play quietly among the folding chairs, hardly

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