Jason McGuire's Ryan Pistachio

Here is one of Jason's magical models, a Nickel Scale Ryan ST. I have seen this beauty go, and it is amazing. Flying right/right, straight off the board, it is a delight in the air, and on the ground. It is especially handsome when circling with George Benson's Ryan. While the photos don't show it, there is panel detail in the cockpit!

A few thoughts...

The model was built from a Comet 5 cent plan with no intentional deviations. The wings are simply butt joined to the fuselage sides and I ended up with 1/4" more dihedral in each wing than shown on the plan. Prop is 3.25" x 5" and was my first attempt at carving a balsa prop. I had to resist a grave temptation to change the landing gear to more closely resemble a Ryan STA.

Weight is aprox. 3 grams and it flies on a 9.5" loop of .036 tanII rubber.It makes beautiful,stable flights(albeit brief) and has needed no adjustments whatsoever. Flight duration is averaging 30 seconds indoors from R.O.G., but it has gone close to a minute outdoors.

Tissue for the flying surfaces is white japanese tissue that has been run through an ink jet printer. Markings and base color are all printed on. Oh yes, those stars on the wing are quite crooked. I didn't catch my mistake until after I had applied most of the covering to the airframe, so chose to just leave them that way. The fuselage was covered with blue japanese tissue,shrunk up tight with a mist from an airbrush, then brushed with two coats of SIG Lite Coat dope. Flying surfaces have one brushed on coat of dope as their only treatment.

There you have it, probably more than you ever wanted to know about a nickel scale model.

Jason


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