French Rubber

pics by KeithAlanK
This is a Coupe deHiver called the Coupe deVille.
Coupe deHiver is French for Winter Cup. We all know that a Coupe deVille is, or was, a top end 2 door Cadillac.

In rubber power competition the king of competition categories is Wakefield  It's been around since the 1930's or longer, and as a consequence, is packed with rules and dominated by guys who've been flying them for decades, or the occasional young aerospace engineer who still has the ability to innovate after 6-8 years of college.  Coupe deHiver has been around since the 1950's or so, and while it has some tight rules of it's own, they still fit on one page.  After going to a few contests, I knew the event I wanted. I bought a 2nd rate kit called Slats and set it on a shelf straightaway.  Not long after, Blue Ridge Models introduced the Coupe deVille and I was hooked.  A truly great kit for it's day. All the rib sets were milled, the propellor blades preformed, and all the wood was 1st rate and appropriate to the task. Another nice feature is that with a couple quick adjustments it can be loaded with as much rubber as desired and flown in Unlimited event as well.  I built it immediately during July-August 1977.  I finished the decorations the night before the first day of my senior year. Too nervous to sleep, I stayed up finishing it by about 3am. The name and shark mouth are all cut tissue, both based on my own sketches. The color on the tail used to be a very nice royal blue.

I had started collecting all the support equipment back when I bought the Slats kit, so I was ready. I took it out a few times that fall and it flew great.  A real pleasure to watch. In October I got my own car.  The car and girls quickly pushed everything else out of mind.  Occasional flying still took place now and then, but weeks long bouts of steady onstruction projects were at an end.  
When I moved back to Texas in 1981. the Coupe deVille made the trip, but the box full of ground support equipment and supplies didn't.  By then I was a mad biker, and flying was even farther from my mind.  I thought about getting the ground support together but it didn't happen soon enough.  Consideration was even given to doing a sacrilegious electric conversion.  By 1990 the tissue covering was already too old and brittle.  It's made 6 moves over the years, and hung from a lot of walls and ceilings, but this is the end of the line.  Now that it's finally digitized, it's headed to a viking funeral.  Like most rockets, the build time far exceeded the total airtime.  This model may have as many as 35 hours construction time, another 15 hours or so invested in the ground support.  At most, the Coupe deVille probably amassed no more than 20 minutes in the air, with only one flight making a full 2 minutes and having the dethermalizer triggered by the fuse.   Pure magic to watch though.

Buzzard, Buzzards, & more Buzzards

This is the cover of Bill Dean's Book of Balsa Models.
The plane on the cover is called  the Buzzard.
I fell in love with the Buzzard from the magazine ads. for this
book long before I ever ordered it. I modified many, many
North Pacific Sleek Streaks into Buzzards over the years. 
And yes, they flew better than stock Sleeks.
After I got the book, I built two accurate to plan Buzzards,
then a somewhat larger one. Finally, my flying partner Steve G.
and I were getting ready for a big free flight contest, hosted by
the Brooklyn Skyscrapers  at an abandoned WWII airfield in
New Paltz, New York, on 4th of July weekend 1976. We got
dropped off, and camped the three days by ourselves, right on
the runway. That was one of the best weekends of my childhood.
Anyway, we wanted something extra to compete with and didn't
have a lot of time, so we decided on Unlimited Rubber [not many
rules] and upscaled the Buzzard to around a 4ft wingspan, but still
using a lot of the same techniques. No landing gear though, since
we'd be flying in tall grass, and the rubber, once unwound, sagged
over a foot below the plane anyway. It flew great!  Unfortunately,
on the 3rd test flight or so, we stuck it in a very tall pine tree.
Oh well, no time to build another.  Too bad too, it would've got
us a trophy in our age class for sure.

Here's the real kicker to this story.
Our Grandmother Nana unloaded her 8mm home movies on us
when she moved south. Eventually we went through those old films
and ran across a family reunion/thanksgiving? from around 1964 or
'65.  There in Nana's backyard, is my cousin Charlie and myself,
both around 4-5, chasing after Charlie's dad, Uncle David while
he's flying a Buzzard!
Haw! No wonder I was so attracted to the design.
I have vague recollections of that get together, but that ain't it. I
never got to ask Uncle David about it 'cause he lived in Chile.

The book was published in the USA by ARCO publishing  which
appears to be out of business. A quick online search shows that it
can still be found, as well as the original British version, which is
called Eagle's Book of Balsa Models. I don't know of any
differences between the 2 editions. Look for it [them] on Amazon.
There are a bunch of cool models in it, including 4 Jetex vehicles
and a sailboat. If you have kids you want to introduce to real model
building, or if you're still a kid at heart, this is a fun book.

Oh yeah, check the typo on the cover. That's supposed to be
Skyray, not Skyway. A profile model of the Douglas jet fighter.
Another great model plan we built several of.