All posts by Darcy

What to do on a Sunday morning

Outreach

I was invited to a breakfast-model plane yesterday morning. There were a few adults and a few kids. Just enough to make it easy to get some planes flying.

We flew some balsa and tissue Squirrels as well as a few prototype Foam Squirrels.

With this group of children I decided to try flying only rather than a build and fly session. I think this might be a great way of starting younger children.

They get a sense of what it is and may want to make them in the future.

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Balsa model airplane industry

Media

Model aviation got a mention over at Make Magazine. Laura Cochrane mentioned the next issue being on toys and games and the following interesting quote from Andrew Leonard:

I soon learned that while the golden age of the model airplane hobbyist scene belongs to the distant past, and nearly all the competitors that Guillow’s battled for market share in
the 1930s, 40s, and 50s are as dead as the dinosaurs, Guillow’s is still independently
operated and chugging forward. Remarkably, the firm still operates in the same Wakefield, Mass., warehouse complex that Paul K. Guillow, its eponymous founder and World War I Navy aviator, moved into back in 1933.

The more complex models require a lot of mentorship and/or a lot of time. So they have declined with so many other things that are more immediate. Computer games, television and other means of more immediate gratification have been very hard on the hobby.

But simpler models such as the Squirrel are just the opposite. Squirrel is putting model aviation back in the classroom and is bringing it to many other audiences including cub-scouts, air-cadets, churches, community centers and much more.

The Squirrel was covered by Make Magazine back in July 2009. It was described as an easy-to-build model plane.

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