Bellanca Bellonian

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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.

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So, lets take it from the start...

February 2012

fin and rudder structure, 2mm thick balsa

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fuselage sides and box. Quite a fatty one.

Again balsa 2mm

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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

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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

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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.

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fummy engine cylinders, wing struts with a lifting airfoil, also sprayed.

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cowl painted

dummy cylinders glued in place

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Final assembly. April 2012

Alignment by eye mostly, using anything that was available and heavy enough

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and the finished model, looking quite pristine at the time.

Logical, flying had not started yet

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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

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And some early test flights

and more

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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.

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new wings built, covered, registration letters cut and glued, again

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...