Plastic Cox/Testors Fly-em Junque

Sorry for the thread hijack Bob. Yabby, not to take the wind out of the sails but the DR-1 landing gear is the worst design to have on a control line plane. In other words, it will almost immediately rip the gear out of the fuse on contact with grass. Control line gear tends to splay on impact so anything attached to it is going to exit immediately.

        Yes, it's a cool plane. They're extremely draggy which means it needs power. I built this Sterling DR-1. I truly believe a fart offers more power than the #2 Black Widow I have on this. A TD wouldn't be much help here either. The short nose required almost 3 oz's of lead on the inside of the cowling. It flies like a bowling ball and performs about the same. Whenever things get scaled down, they fly worse and this plane barely has survived flying. It's a shelf queen for me. I built it 37 years ago and it's flown about 6 times. I almost didn't recover it one day and called it quits before it re-kitted.
             Just a dust collector nowadays. Sun is fading the color and age has it's covering splitting thanks to the horrific Aero Gloss .

It's not Hijacking Ken, it's expansion, and I love expansion.  It adds flavor and perspective to any post.  I do it all the time and no one has yelled at me yet, at least not to my face.  ''"Flys like a bowling ball", I love that!  Takes courage to dismiss a Black Widow.    Snoopy looks happy.  I'm thinking getting out my olive drabs and painting up Baron Von Richthofen and sticking him in the cockpit, I have already corrupted this Fokker with a mis-matched red tail anyway.  

And Yabby, I could fly it.  I'm sure that it would.  I happened to hit the sweet spot with the elevator control with equal throws either side of center.  

I love the saga of the Baron.



A long read but worth it.  The Baron was found wearing silk PJ's under his flight suit when shot down.

https://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/comment/richt.htm#:~:text=It%20is%20accepted%20that%20Manfred%20von%20Richthofen%20was,where%20an%20examination%20of%20the%20body%20was%20held.

Liked it roddie, but a new group for me.

A little Johnsons Pledge and a compressed air dust off.







And stuffed it into my display case.  

OOooh, Yabbeeee!

Here you go...enjoy WWI:
https://www.airplanesandrockets.com/airplanes/bipes-tripes-mar-1974-aam.htm

rsv1cox wrote:  
I love the saga of the Baron.

I also love the story of Richthofen. when I was about 12 my uncle lent me a hardback cover version of "The Red Knight of Germany" -cassell. I also has the 45's of Snoopy vs the red baron by the royal guardsmen. I had forgotten about that. Lol.

Its a hard split for me between the Dr-1 and the SR-71. I think im a bit biased due to the aerospace company i work for. Both are pretty cool in their own right. The time in which the DR-1 was built and the haste and technology available, it was amazing and then the SR-71, things like the way the USA obtained the titanium from the Soviets for the leading edges of the wings and also the technique used to restart an engine when it flamed out, which happened to some at mach 3. Imagine the sudden yaw when one side flames out. Lol. The cold war certainly saw boundaries pushed in aviation and risks taken! I dont like the period due to the political conflict and things but the stuff that was created due to it was unbelievable! acceptable mission risk profiles were very different to todays, and Im not saying that a bad thing really.

Bit of a hijack also. :-) I get a bit excited about that stuff from that period. like the fact that the saturn V main booster stage had a fuel pump for each of the five F-1 rocket engines, and each fuel pump was driven by a 55,000 brake horsepower gas generator driving a turbine.

Yabby

Sounds like you have the fever Yabby, you need to subscribe to this magazine.



If your a true believer the contents will drive you nuts. (In a good way)



Great cover photo.

Surely a fake photograph!  Doesn't fit the era at all.

rsv1cox wrote:

Custom built for the Baron by Harley Davidson.

I think the date on the picture should read 1977, not 1917.
Sorry, but I will continue in my skepticism.   I'm no bike expert, but even at first glance, the tank, the hi-rise bars, the fat rear tyre are all wrong for 1917- Just takes a quick search for 1917 Harley Davidson and nothing looks familiar.

You're all welcome to shoot me down in flames!

Very strange, I thought so too. Maybe photoshopped but picture is from a very responsible website dedicated to his memory. I looked at his boot, with his signature across it. But nothing about that motorcycle smacks of that era. But he was very popular within Germany, ya never know. Maybe someone that does know will chime in.

Wondered about it myself, to me that looks like a late ’30s Harley flathead engine, I think the gearbox looks like ’50s or later and the whole shebang is a custom build from late ’90s I would guess.

Lola was the name of Ernst Udet’s girlfriend, he had the text ”LO!” on the side of his D.VII, with the famous ”Du doch... Nicht!!” On the elevator.

I wonder if there were another bike on which the Baron was seated in the original photo

Iron cross magazine:

https://m.facebook.com/ironcrossmagazine/photos/a.400198247441011/881428405984657/?type=3&_rdr

with comments!

rsv1cox wrote:Custom built for the Baron by Harley Davidson.  

Or ”Custom built by the Baron for Harley Davidson”

OVERLORD wrote:Iron cross magazine:

https://m.facebook.com/ironcrossmagazine/photos/a.400198247441011/881428405984657/?type=3&_rdr

with comments!

X2

I went through every German WW1 &2 motorcycle on the net, and yeah there is nothing like it.  Found some funny ones though.

I have it on good information that Richthofen was a big
springer front end fan.
Bob

thank you Bob, "Springer fan" --- I just horked water out my nose and all over my keyboard laughing.

nothing about that photo is close to correct. for WW1 era, it would have been a slab sided tank, L, F or J-ish model motor.. etc. etc. etc.

and more importantly, if he hadn't been shot down and killed in 1918 --- he'd have been on that newfangled 1919 BMW R32 the aircraft company started making ....

Had the Baron lived i'm sure that he would be involved in the development of the BF-109 (aka Me-109) first flown about 16 years after his death.  Probably would have blown his mind to experience the advances made in aviation during that short period.  





The most proflic fighter of all time, it's amazing that so few survive today.



In the Baron's stead a pilot by the name of Erich Hartmann picked up where he left off.



The top fighter ace of all time with 352 confirmend kills with the 109 most (345) on the Russian front.  His last, on the last day of the war was a P-51 doing a victory roll after shooting down another German aircraft.  

He surrendered to the Allies, only to be turned over to the Soviets and interned in a labor camp from which he escaped several times.  Arriving back a Russian hit him with a cane and Erich subsiquently hit him over the head with a chair knocking himout.  Expecting to be shot he wasn't and was returned to Germany some ten years later becoming instrumental in the development of the new German Air Force.  He died in 1993.

Making progress on my second piece of Testors Fly-em junque.