Conversely...

What is the fastest time you have gone from opening the kit (or unfolding the plans) to first flight?

5 days. Scratch built Giant Ringmaster w/ McCoy 35 Rh, now it has the Johnson 35 CS!
Unless you count the Sterling .049 Zero, 1 day.
Bill <><

What is a GIANT RINGMASTER? As a collector of this series, I've never heard of it. Pictures please!
Thanks
Jim D

>Scratch built Giant Ringmaster w/ McCoy 35 Rh
>Bill <><

Oopps! Should read "Giant 'STUNTmaster'"
Sorry.....
Bill <><

6 days of weekends x 14 working hours. ... actualy my best time.

Having foam wings and stab, and experience with EXACTLY same model and having all parts on paper stickers from computer plan including masking for color scheme. Engine, landing gears, tank and pipe was from previously crashed model.

igor

If we can include combat models, my best was 5 Sneekers, silk and dope, in one 12 hour marathon. All flew the next day. Two survived.

Sterling Flying Fool: 2 16 hour days, silk&dope, McCoy .19

About 1948 my flying bud destroyed his Orwick 64 ship on friday evening. Hit the hobby shop to buy wood etc. and together, we completed it Saturday night. Actually, I completed it while he went out with his girl friend. He then went on to won senior stunt at a contest the next day. This job included wiring the ignition system and building another tank. Using all nitrate dope, we would start a coat at one end and when finished at the other end would start the next coat. Continous doping from first clear to final color! Also,we didn't use plans, just knew how it should look. Built all our wings holding them in our hands! No CA then either, only Comet glue. Wish I could still get Comet, it was really good stuff.

Gosh, if we can count combat models, my best story was from 1984 or thereabouts. I was working at an electronics company and got to chatting with a guy (Rich McConnell as it happens) who mentioned he flew C/L and that there was a combat meet the coming weekend (four days away). He said it was was a "Foxdoo" event, Voodoos only with Fox .35 motors, any fuel system or prop.

I had one crusty old Fox .35, but no planes at all (hadn't flown C/L in three years, had long since cleaned the scraps out of the garage and traded away the fixables... two cross-town moves will do that).

On Thursday he brought one drawing of a wing rib and one drawing of a tail boom. The rest I built from memory (no plans) in two evenings. Just one Voodoo, done up in silkspan and dope (I wanted to be traditional). Too few coats of dope, borrowed gear... it was raining and the thing got soggier and more tailheavy each match. But somehow I took second place with that one plane, losing the final because that darn Fox refused to start. The plane survives to this day. (It now has a Fox .25 on it, and if I can every get THAT motor to start maybe it will fly again, this time with my son at the handle.)

I gotta disqualify combat models. Once you get the wing done, you are way close to done, done.

Biplanes, on the other hand, get extra points because there are twice as many wings.

Bob Mears says he can build a Lighthawk kit in 4 hours, using 3M77.

>6 days of weekends x 14 working hours. ... actualy my
>best time.
>
>Having foam wings and stab, and experience with EXACTLY same
>model and having all parts on paper stickers from computer
>plan including masking for color scheme. Engine, landing
>gears, tank and pipe was from previously crashed model.
>
>
>igor
>
Love the plane and the little blondie pilot

>>>Love the plane and the little blondie pilot<<<

I do not, she crashed in original model.

about 16-18 hours

A friend of mine and I would routinely buy a kit on Saturday afternoon and fly it the first thing Sunday morning. This was because we were very good at rekitting planes on Saturday.

The fastest I ever built one was three days. It was a 35 sized Magician kit. Bob Abernathy gave me the kit on a Sunday evening and I started the next morning. I was on spring break from High School and by Thursday I was flying. The airplane was all Monokote covered and powered by a Fox 35.

The club was having a Mall Show, and the poster stated:
"See this plane being built today and flown tomorrow at the club field during the air show".
The plane was Lew McFarland's "Sharkbat". Look THAT one up in your box of plans!! BTW: It flew GREAT and I still have the plane!
I do remember a "few" years earlier, buying a Scientific kit at the LHS in the morning and flying it that same afternoon!
And don't forget the JUNK YARD WARS at Brodak's where a team builds a plane(without balsa & plans)and then flies it!!
TONS OF FUN!!

Wes

Flite Streak kit, 6 hours from purchase to comp. processing. See the "Dieselised FSARF" thread for the story.

Hmm, a weekend. Maybe 20 hours of work total. Around that anyway.

Had a set of foam wings, stab, elevators and flaps for a Scorpio. Hacked out a box fuse (sorta like a Quickie 500) and a rudder. Stuck on a canopy and aluminum gear. All monokote and an ST 60 for power. Simple red and white scheme. This was about 1985. I had that plane forever, it seemed. It was light, mostly straight and really flew pretty well. By the time I retired it, it had well over 1500 flights on it. Man, the things you remember.

Funny, it's always those planes that seem to last forever.

Well, it is the "original" ARF, and doesn't really count, but my Firebaby from open box to ready to fly about 45 minutes. Spitzy .049. Other than that, about three days, maybe 18 hours on a Flite Streak.

My Tiger - profile stunter. I conceived the idea driving home from the flying field one thursday and flew it the following thursday - that's idea, design (CAD and printed out), build and paint in six days. It still flies a treat.

Years ago, as a kid, I crashed my Nobler and broke the nose off it. This was two weeks before the state champs. I didn't want to rush the repair, so in a week, I built a complete new stunter, probably designed it too though that might just have been a tart up of one of my exisiting designs. Wrote it off on the second or third flight (lead out broke - last time I used crimped lines). This left me less than a week to the state champs. I repaired the Nobler and flew it with sticky paint on the day before the States. I came third ... and last - there were only three of us.

Those are all built up wings too, none of this cheating with foam, solarfilm, purchased tanks or controls - fully scratch built.

9 hours, Junior Flite Streak, "Boxing Day", about '58. I guess I got the steel finned Fox .15 and the kit for Christmas, because the next day, I put that puppy together while Dad was at work. No epoxy, no CA, probably not Ambroid, but it held together for quite awhile, and flew well. Did a much better job on another one a couple years later, and it didn't fly for beans. Steve

4 day's..Bi-Slob 60. Hand cut. SUPER

I scratch built a Voodoo. Started on it Saturday morning and flew it the next day after lunch.

Shear Panic.

Built in 14 days after work and weekends. Painted in 4 hours.

Still flying the poor guy.

When I was about 16 yrs old I remember buying a Sterling Winder and building it the same day. I built it in the kitchen and kept putting it in the oven to dry faster. It was built, doped and ready to fly with a Fox 35 in one sitting. I'll never forget holding it in the oven!

In 1969, I got all the guys at the Porsche shop where I worked interested. We went to Jack's Hobby Shop in Carmichael (near Sacramento, CA) and bought kits, Jr. Ringmasters, Ringmasters, Sterling Mustang, and I bought a Sterling Waco.
My wife found a Sterling Ringmaster at a garage sale, with one doubler glued on. 25 cents, but I made the lady take a dollar.
Ex-wife and I Ambroided it together Thurs. night, papered and doped it Friday night, Aero Glossed the wood in red. Installed engine and tank Sat. morning, flew it at noon.
Present Lovely and talented wife + C.A.+ Garage Sale Ringer: Probably Thurs. night! (Not incl. time out for tete-a-tete, and some of my corny stories!)

I built an Estes Ringmaster Jr. in 4 hours covered with monokote and painted fuse... with Formula U paint that took a week to cure! It had taken me about three weeks to build one just before that so the "puzzle" was fresh in my mind!