Useful Aircraft Modelling Resources

Several useful aircraft modelling resources worth checking

• Batteries [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Remote Control Airplanes Buying Guide [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Making Aircraft From Kits [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Learning to Fly Rc Airplanes Succesfully [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Building Radio Controlled Airplanes – List Of Tools [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Die Cast Model Airplanes [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Electric Model Airplanes [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Balsa Wood Model Airplanes [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• What Is An ARF Plane? [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Warbirds – Classically Thrilling! [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• RC Jets – Taste The Thrill And Speed! [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• A Short Introduction to Building and Flying RC Aircraft [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Aircraft Modelling – Some Historical Facts
• Electric RC Planes [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• RC Gas Planes [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Gas Or Electric! choose and fly the way you like [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Scale Aircraft Modelling Tools Part III [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Scale Aircraft Modelling Tools Part II [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Scale Aircraft Modelling Tools Part I [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Cosmic Flyers – Perfect For The Beginner! [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• Aerobatic RC Planes [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• The Most Popular RC Planes Available [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]
• RC Gliders – Some Cool Facts [Aircraft Modelling Essentials]

How To Get Started With The Aircraft Modelling Tools

A modeller's workspace will consist of different environments for different people. Some may be lucky enough to have a desk, bench or even an entire room dedicated to their hobby - aircraft modelling. Others will need to share space with other members of the household. Regardless, the workspace of all scale modellers should share some common attributes: a clear working space, proper lighting and adequate ventilation.

guest post by Roland Murano

Some of the glues, paints and thinners that you use may be toxic, so make sure that your workspace is close to a window with good airflow. If you are working in a common area of your house, you may choose to organize separate workspaces for different tasks. For example, you might prepare and assemble your kit indoors, but move to the garage when spraying Smelly or potentially toxic paints.
Try to set up your workspace under strong light or near a bright window. Ideally, artificial light should be daylight balanced to ensure that your paint job turns out the way you expect. Unbalanced fluorescent lighting can give you a misleading impression about colours. If there is insufficient light, you can purchase a lamp for your workspace.

Scale Plans & Dimensions in Aircraft Modelling - Part 2

Draw large for accuracy

Drawings that appear in many aircraft modelling magazines are not necessarily in a style that is suitable for direct model working, as they are what is known as 'drawn for reproduction, having some lines thicker than others. Such lines may cover a scale two or three inches in their thickness. The drawings always try to pick out surface detail like skin joints and rivet lines.

But the thickness of the outer lines is something to be careful of, but they are necessary for a good reason. The use of very fine lines, which would be suited to model Working would in any event start to break up and vanish in places during the printing process.

But to draw large? This is a contradiction in many ways. It is quite easy to sketch out a small shape rather than draw out a large one. But in order to get a really accurate small scale plan one must start with a large, very carefully plotted out drawing which can portray all the various small changes in profile and section, by drawing in a fine line and then photographically reducing it down to a smaller scale. However to create the large drawing in the first instance, one must have plenty of manufacturers dimensional data to hand.

Scale Plans & Dimensions in Aircraft Modelling - Part 1

Scale aircraft modelling is perhaps not a matter of working to thousandths of an inch or millimetre, although a micrometer or other gauge might be used on wire or for checking the size of a drill, but again it may depend upon the scale of the model and the degree of detail being incorporated.
Usually we are dealing with Steel rules graduated in anything down to maybe sixty-fourths of an inch, or a metric rule with half-millimetre graduations. But whatever our measuring criteria might be, everything really depends upon a scale or dimensioned working drawing with which to set out the size of the model.

Queries about the accuracy of scale plans, and of actual aircraft dimensions is a matter that has occasionally cropped up over the past twenty years, but has gradually gathered strength during more recent times.

The general theme of modellers' questions has been on the lines of just how accurate are model kits, and how accurate are some of the model plans. Do they really represent true scale replicas of the original, particularly when the modeller may never come face to face with the real thing and only work with a plan as a guide, is it right or Wrong?

Aircraft Modelling Techniques Part 1 - Building & Painting The Cockpit

An awesome aircraft modelling tutorial.