It was back in 2012, the good old SFA was then still the main active forum for most free fight modellers.
Cookups were pretty common at the time. So, at some point Roman Groener suggested to organise one for Bostonian models. I do not remember how many people participated. Maybe Roman can.
What I do remember though is that in the end it was my own designed "Bellonian" which won the cookup and the prize donated by Roman, a Swiss Army knife.
The Bellonian was a carricature model of the Bellanca WB2 "Columbia", which flew two weeks after Lindbergh over the Atlantic, from New York to Berlin. It only made it to Cottbus, slightly short of Berlin. The history behind the two flights is a most interesting and intriguing one. Suffice to say, Lindbergh initially wanted to use the Bellanca for his flight but Juseppe Bellanca did not agree, probably not trusting a young inknown pilot for such a feat.
The model has been flown very much the following years, in Greece but also in Germany and Switzerland where I was living for a number of years. Especially in the Swiss Olten meetings it had quite an adventurous career with high long flights and some tree landings.
After acummulating enough damage I decided at some point to repair/rebuild it. This was helped by the fact that I never managed to retrieve one wing from a tree. If I remember correctly, I posted the repairs in HPA, a few years back.
So, it kept on flying. Until last Sunday all was well, when it unexpectadly met a wall in our gym and then crashed nose first to the floor. Nothing new or major but the nose did come off (in pieces). So, being in the process of repairs once again, I thought I 'd post the pictures from the original thread of SFA.
So, lets take it from the start...
February 2012
fin and rudder structure, 2mm thick balsa
fuselage sides and box. Quite a fatty one.
Again balsa 2mm
The nose block was carved from thick balsa and then hollowed out. The struts were a worry with so much mass so soft balsa was chosen.
An interesting looking frame
covering time.
Silver tissue was chosen for the fuselage and tail, white for the wings. The silver was a bit of a failure, as the pigment proved sensitive to the thinned dope
the fuselage cowl would prove impossible to cover properly with all those double curvatures. So it was sealed with multiple coats of dope and then sprayed with the closest looking aluminium lacquer paint.
The wing registration letters were done with black tissue paper, the rest was drawn and printed on waterslide decal paper.
fummy engine cylinders, wing struts with a lifting airfoil, also sprayed.
cowl painted
dummy cylinders glued in place
Final assembly. April 2012
Alignment by eye mostly, using anything that was available and heavy enough
and the finished model, looking quite pristine at the time.
Logical, flying had not started yet
and on the green floor of our gym. Last picture, with the Swiss Army knife prize won for the cookup, sent by Roman end of May. Accompanied by, what else, a Swiss chocolate bar. Better than the knife
And some early test flights
and more
The model was flown extensively in the various swiss outdoor meets, as already posted. It surely appears in some videos made by rubberfly, I 'll have to search.
Well, that didn't last long, did it...
Fast forward to October 2022, one crash too many, or one tree landing too many. I wonder wher the other wing is.
new wings built, covered, registration letters cut and glued, again
...
as good as new... in 2022...
For a long time I had been asked by Jacques Cartigny to prepare an article for his great CERVIA journal.
Eventually I did preparre something, quite fitting, a plan for the Bellonian.
Do to some missunderstanding and some delay on my part, he printed an intermediate draft and not the final version, in #98 Cervia.
Which is now available here:
https://www.peanut-scale.fr/cervia/98p2450.pdf
https://www.peanut-scale.fr/cervia/98p2451.pdf
But since I did finish the "proper" one too, even if after the other was published, here it is too, for anyone who might want to try his luck with it.
Found a video by Andreas "rubberfly", Olten 2021, at about 1' 44".
Roman is holding, I am winding
That is such an attractive model - and flys very well. It could just start things stirring with me as I have lost interest over the last year so. I must pay a visit to the shed and see what I have by way of materials etc. Congratulations George.