Interesting Bob image

2015-01-13

Have You Seen The Size Of Model Aircraft Nowadays?

If you've read any of my posts and comments on here and other sites, you'll know that I have always had an interest in aircraft, including model aircraft. Perhaps it may seem a little odd, but despite my interest, and my having spent four years in the RAF as an aircraft electrical mechanic, I have never flown in a heavier-than-air craft, although I have had one flight in a hot air balloon. My wife, who has no particular interest in aircraft, has had two ballooon flights, one of which was the same flight I went on, so she has logged twice as many flying hours as I have. Anyway, my point is that I like aircraft.

I recently stumbled across some videos on YouTube showing radio controlled model aircraft in flight, and I was amazed at how sophisticated they have become since I last saw any examples. I was even more amazed at how big they have become. Back in the 1960s and 1970s when I last actually flew a model aircraft, rather than (scratch) building non flying, scale models, the largest plane I ever flew was a glowpug engined free flight Fokker D.VII, which had a wing span of about two feet, and seemed quite big to me.

Fokker D.VII(F)

I know that even back in those days there were some pretty large models about, wing spans on some exceeding eight feet, but today the largest ones seem to be around the twenty feet mark, and that is seriously big. The aircraft that Louis Bleriot used on the first ever crossing of the English Channel by a heavier-than-air craft only had a wing span of twenty five feet!

As I've mentioned dozens of times in various post around the internet, my RAF time was spent on Vulcan B.Mk2s, so I was particularly interested to find a monster model Vulcan B.Mk2, powered by four gas turbine engines, that looks absolutely brilliant. Apparently it has cost about £25,000 to build though, so I'm not likely to try to build one myself.

Check it out here. There are several models flying, but the Vulcan flight starts at about eight minutes into the video.