kit availability

(First &) LAST EDITED ON Sep-19-00 AT 07:32 PM (EST)

>Hello, out there! I'd given up ever finding people interested
> in U Control any more. Feels just like coming home!
>After a long hiatus from modeling, I'm about ready to try
> it again. A lifetime or so ago, when I was in college, I was
> building a semi-scale stunter by Top Flite, called the "Black
> Tiger".
>Graduation and a move halted it in mid-project. I think I'd
> like to give it another go. Where might I be able to find
> this probably long out-of -print kit?

Very rare now. They go for anywhere from $50-80 at eBay, and about the same in the classifieds of the model forums. But it was Berkeley's P40-style kit of the Bill Elliott stunter that was called the Black Tiger! (I've had one of each and see the new PS I have just added at the end.)

>... All the kids in my neighborhood learned to fly my
>Scientific "Little Devil",with an O.K. Cub .049 on it. My
>buddy, having more disposable income, shoehorned a K&B 32
>onto a Flying Clown, a 1/2 sized Ringmaster, if I recall.

Close enough, at least. Has a 28" span and a Rungmaster (I should leave it misspelled that way, I think, just come back with this edit to show I spotted it afterwards and it wasn't on purpose like "Wrongmaster" might be) has a 42" span.

>He wouldn't fly it till I checked it out. Fast!! (At least,
>compared to my little Cub)!

There were quite a few overpowered smaller planes like yours; I had a Ringmaster Jr. with a Torp 19 on it that was so nose-heavy it took 90 degrees of sky to loop..

Kiwi

P. S. I believe the confusion on kit names could be this: TF may have called theirs a "Tiger Shark," which was actually the kind of teeth that were involved, even if some PR flak screwed it up and referred to the scheme as a "Tiger Mouth" painted on the first to use it. And a bit of trivia on that, it was some Brit crew who first applied the teeth to a P40 in North Africa in 1940 or 1941, a year before the first AVG P40 ever flew.

>Hello, out there! I'd given up
>ever finding people interested in
>U Control any more.
Greatcircle,
whydontcha let us know where you are and someone probably knows someone there, That is how I found the club where I am now. And after feeling like the lone ranger too,
Gary Grimstad

God Bless,

Tom McClain

>Tom McClain

Thank you for your input and suggestions, Mi Coronel. Gonna contact Flying Models,and see what is available.

I disagreed on the name.

See my original answer and the PS just added at the end about why there might be some kit naming confusion!

K.

As noted previously, I had one of each. But the Berkeley kit, like almost all of their stuff, was not well engineered nor was the wood much good. A couple of the other Old Timers (yes, that is what I am, also) at Iskandar's C-L Forum have held onto all the old AHC catalogs and can pinpoint from those when kits were introduced. I had the magazine that the original design was published in (Air Trails), and still have a record of when that was, if it's important.

>I was probably thinking of the Flite Streak I built in my young,
>innocent days.

Most of us were young & innocent when we started in this hobby. I built & flew my first Mongram SpeeDee Bilt kits when I was 8 years old..

>Re:the Brits thinking up the teeth for the P-40: wasn't
>that what lend-lease was all about? They thought up the
>cool ideas, and we "borrowed "em?

Because of the unions in their industries and the problems with the class system they've held onto, it's almost impossible to modernize any business or factory there. A great many things they were able to design were completely beyond the state of the art that their industry was able to produce. And that was 50 to 60 years ago. It's far worse now!