MY FIRST MODEL AIRCRAFT
Flying the Beech Craft baron, Lear Jet or the Bombardier CRJ700 was not enough for me, I decided to get into the building a flying machine. Though I use the demo version of a popular flight simulator for my flying lessons, there are skeptics – of course mislead, misinformed and narrow minded – who insists that anything you play on a computer needs to be a video game. I have time and again explained the nuances involved in flying an aircraft, most importantly a jet in the class of CRJ700, to these terrestrials, but in all counts have miserably failed. I took videos of difficult landings, take offs, stall-spins, and acrobatics I performed to convince these bipeds. But alas! Their adamant stand of the simulator being just another video game always prevailed. This was when I decided seriously to get into aero modeling business, though I would admit that the thought has always been there, in the back of my mind, waiting for a trigger.
As the first step I bought “How to build and fly model aircrafts”. Then I decided that I would build a small, very basic, spartan but able to fly model aircraft. I scoured the internet for an appropriate model and I saw that people have built perfectly flying models from things as simple as juice straw, cardboard and rubber bands. I decided that my first model aircraft will be made of straw and Styrofoam disposable plates. I paid a visit to the general store near to my house and bought all the accessories.
Now I was ready to build my first airplane, with wings, with a fuselage, with vertical and horizontal stabilizers. I cut the vertical and horizontal stabilizers first from Styrofoam plate and pasted it to one end of the straw. But these were too heavy for the stabilizer. The center of gravity was almost on top of the horizontal stabilizer, that I had to cut out another much lighter alternate from paper. I placed this arrangement at one end and checked the center of gravity, but still it was very near to this stabilizer, though better that the first attempt. Then I remembered reading on the internet that the nose can be made heavier to change the center of gravity further to the forward section of the fuselage. I took a tissue paper, twisted it and inserted it to one end of the straw (a very good modeler has already done this technique and had published the same on the net. I got the inspiration for my project also from this guy), still the center of gravity was not up to my satisfaction. I inserted a long needle to the twisted tissue on the nose, and was now satisfied. This also gave the aircraft the look. I pasted the wings cut out from the plates and my first aircraft was ready.
I was little apprehensive, I was not sure whether this will fly. I tentatively threw the model over my head, and then did an Archimedes. I screamed Eureka! at the sight of my model soaring up in the air, flying exactly 1/4rth of the time the Kitty Hawk did. But I was ecstatic, my first model, on the first attempt, flew. Becoming confident, I increased the dihedral and the flight lasted a couple of seconds more. I hope to do more experiments on this model and build others too. I have pasted a picture of my first model. I have painted some insignia, flaps and aileron for the effect.
Now I hope that all those skeptics will be convinced that “mans love for flying, for soaring high, to be free” is inherent, true and cannot be quenched.
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