By now, as you probably
assumed, we are well into the foggiest regions of scratch-building. Not
only there are no kits, but there are also no plans or three-views. Fortunately a few images can be grabbed here and there, and, most
important, fellow modelers can guide you when the light becomes too dim.
To say that the Johnson’s Uni-plane of 1934 was once offered by his
builder to a hamburger company to make flying advertisement will
completely make the case. The builder, though, couldn’t: due to an
unfortunate crash upon take off -one in a series of them, if I may add-
sponsorship was unplugged.
At a mere 14 feet span (about 4.27 meters) massive it is not, but oozes
charm. A Church Marathon of 42 hp took the plane to the air, but since in
its first incarnation it had only control in two axis (no ailerons), it
was extremely difficult to make it stay there. Further development
included a single vertical tail and the missing ailerons, but this lovely
machine stubbornly refused to stay aloft. It made, though, a series of
straight-line long hops and eventually –err, after some crashes- reached
plane’s heaven, wherever that may be.
Some info can be consulted at
http://aerofiles.com/_j.html
looking under the plane’s name.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Given the
above-mentioned conspicuous absence of plans, the modeling approach for
this one was rather simple, trying to capture an almost decent resemblance
while not complicating matters a lot. Or even a bit.
While on the subject of building, I would like to make a call using this
wide forum to manufacturers, inventors and entrepreneurs in general for
the case of the decals. Boyz and Girlz, we need to invent something that
doesn’t look like a layer of translucent pancake on the model surface,
or something that doesn’t force us to incur in elaborate alchemies just
to make those *&%&--## registration numbers/images blend easily on
the surface.
Oh, behold the
strange shape of the Uni-plane! Any resemblance with the “Voyager” of
“Star Trek” or the nose of the “Seaview” from “Voyage to the bottom of
the sea” is a mere coincidence.
The (not so much) flying hamburger is another proud member of a long lineage of
airborne food items like the Lee-Richards annular wing –aka flying doughnut-,
Charles Zimmerman’s “flying pancakes”, B. I. Cheranovsky’s “flying
croissants” and so forth.
With this one, the expression “piece o’cake” reaches new heights.
Enjoy!
Gabriel
Click on
images below to see larger images
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