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Nieuport
"Nieus"
Hi,
my name is Russ Kuhn and I’ll be your tour guide through the Nieuport
project.
Before I get into relating my experience with my Nieuport, perhaps a short
bio is in order. The earliest
recollections I have of model planes is that about age four or five I shredded
the tissue and dope covering off one of my Dad’s Free Flight planes…
didn’t do that again!
Fast
forward ahead about 10 years and we had graduated to U-control.
That Jim Walker Firebaby with .049 power could really move.
During Jr. High and High school, flying was sidelined in favor of
cars and girls.
Another
10 years elapsed and included graduation, a hitch in the U.S. Navy,
marriage, etc. In 1966 I had
what I felt then (and still do) was a unique opportunity to work at Camera
and Hobby Shop (in Columbus, IN) as Hobby Dept. manager.
For the next 12 years I learned to fly R/C, learned a lot about the
retail business and met a lot of people who are the “Old Timers” we
know now. Guys like Joe and
Glenn Grube, Charlie Abbott, Mike Bealmear, (editor’s
note: Old timer! I was one of
those 15-16 year old kids that hung around bugging him for hours at a
time.), Dwight and Steve
Percifield, Bob Bills, and Jim Sachleben, just to name a few.
These are friendships I have valued over the years and still do.
So
now we come to the present. Again
I felt the Nieuport project was a unique opportunity to renew old
friendships and begin new ones.
As
with any scale project, the first thing to think about is the aircraft.
Is there a reason you like this particular plane?
Does it represent a certain period in history that you enjoy more
than just casually? Does your
wife just think it’s cute? Hey
it happens!
My
personal preference has always been WWII aircraft, mostly Pacific Theater.
The Nieuport project interested me because I have never built a
bi-plane, and also because I already had an engine and wheels.
My direction at this point is to take you through the beginning and
subsequent stages of building and flying this plane. I invite you to give
me your input, ideas, and suggestions so that I can include them in these
articles. What is easy for you
may be difficult for someone else. I
think we can share our ideas and experiences to make this project a really
fun thing to be involved in.
OK,
lets see, at this point you have decided to build a Nieuport17 or a
variant thereof. The next thing you will want is not glue, sandpaper
or a modeling knife. Documentation. That's what I'm talking
about. Admittedly we're probably not going to go to Top Gun or the
Scale Masters, but most modelers want to build a model of something that
actually existed. That's why they call them "models".
I along with others in the "Nieuport Project" have photos and
3-views of not only French aircraft (a.k.a. Freedom Aircraft) but also
many other countries that flew them. Several of these countries also
built the aircraft under license. Another option to consider would
be an aircraft that had been captured by the "enemy". This
usually involved painting the "enemy" markings right over the
originals. This was mostly done in the field and neatness wasn't a
priority. Many aircraft had the personal markings of a particular
pilot. Also, all squadrons had their own unique markings.
Fuselage bands, painted cowlings and other personal touches were common.
Documentation can also provide details such as location and type of
instruments in the cockpit. Did this plane have machine guns or was
it a scout or a trainer?
Should
you decide to try a contest, your documentation will be the first thing a
judge will want to see. As you probably know, static judging and
flight judging scores are combined to determine how you finish in the
contest. Just to clarify the term documentation. For our
purposes most of us probably won't be concerned with rivet counts, super
detailed cockpits, paint chips and the like. For the Dawn Patrol,
documentation will only be a reference to determine a particular color
scheme or squadron marking, much like that needed for AMA Fun Scale.
Enough to prove that airplane existed with those colors and markings.
Two
books that I have are Squadron Publications #167 "Nieuport Fighters
in Action": this book begins with the Nieuport 10 and goes through
the Nieuport 28. The second is Osprey Publications #45 "British
and Empire Aces of WWI". This is mostly a profile of pilots,
but it does contain a good cross-section of British aircraft used in this
war including several Nieuport models built under license from the French.
The Nieuport Project website also has a selection of aircraft photos to
choose from.
Moving
on…. Plans? Building a garage? A deck, an airplane? Gotta
have 'em. That will be the topic of the next article on the Nieuport
17 project.
Until next time...
Russ.
Russ
can be reached at 812-342-3031
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