In his retro column Shaun Garrity fettles some basket case models
A silk purse from a pig’s ear? Yes, I know it’s a strange proverb. Originating from Scotland, its first recorded instance was apparently in 1699: "Ye can ne make a silk purse of a sows lugg (ear)”.
Shaun Garrity converts Gordon Whitehead's 24-inch model of the French WW1 single seat sesquiplane fighter, nicknamed the Bébé, to electric power and modern lightweight R/C
The Bébé is my favourite of all WW1 aircraft. Designed by Gustave Delage, this single seat sesquiplane fighter was one of the reasons the Fokker Scourge ended.
Shaun Garrity offers up a few ideas for adding simple but effective effects to your latest scale creations
A modelling pal of mine Ken had a simple philosophy regarding the art of scale detailing model aircraft. His planes always looked realistic, yet he took an uncomplicated approach to achieve great results.
Shaun Garrity returns to the 1980s with the low-wing classic design from David Boddington
The high wing Whisper and low wing Excellence were designed by Dave Boddington in the mid 1980s for the new breed of small four-stroke engines that were starting to appear, specifically the latest O.S. FS-20.
Shaun Garrity takes advantage of the lockdown to have a clear out and uses some rediscovered plumbing parts to make some model racks
Lock down has actually had a number of benefits in the Garrity household. With all this time spent inside the home, I had finally run out of excuses for all those jobs I’ve been repeatedly putting to the back of the queue for far longer than I would care to admit.
Shaun Garrity updates a plan for a small pusher, jet style model that doubles up as a stiff-wind slope soarer
What has a Jaguar XJ6 (with the roof cut off), a steel pole and Octopussy got to do with this month’s free plan? Back in 1967 Jim Bede and his chief designer Paul Griffin sharpened their pencils and started creating a design for an aircraft that would become the BD-5, also referred to as the Micro.
Shaun Garrity looks back to early R/C helicopters. This time in Retro Ramblings we have something a little different - retro helicopters. It’s hard to believe it was the early 1970s when I first came across them (I suddenly feel really old). R/C helicopters were actually flying prior to this but they were mostly constructed by pioneering modellers having to figure things out for themselves, because as far as I know no commercial products were available.
3Dprinting may seem like a fairly recent innovation, however it’s been around for longer than you might perhaps imagine. The first 3D printers appeared commercially in the mid 1990s, but priced in the region of £75,000 they certainly weren’t cheap - you were in Ferrari and Porsche territory.
The technology was developed in the 1980s, Chuck Hull being accredited with demonstrating his SLA-1 printer as the first commercial example some 34 years ago on March 9th. His intention was to develop a machine that would be capable of speeding up the time it took to create prototypes as using a one-off machining process was expensive
in terms of both time and money;the ability to print an item in just a few hours represented a major breakthrough as you can imagine.
