Volare Products

I’ve been playing catch-up in February.  The month started off with me and my wife visiting her native Costa Rica.  I came back from tropical jungles and beaches to 2 feet of snow on the ground.  And to top it off, this week, we had a swing of over 50 degrees between Thursday and Saturday – and we were still below freezing.  Yes, it was nearly 30 on Saturday…and according to my truck, it was -25 on Thursday morning.

Weather aside, I’ve been putting in extra effort trying to catch up on orders received while I was away.  I am pretty much caught up, excepting some items that I ran out of and am waiting on re-supply.

On the building front, I had a stretch of the doldrums – I hadn’t built in January or February until this week.  I had to practically force myself into building, but now I I’ve got the ball rolling.  Here is a new Embryo I built this week.  I call it the Bad Axe – it is a lengthened Tomahawk.  Bad Axe is a play on the Tomahawk name and a send-up to Michigan (and the Tomahawk’s Michigan origins), as there is a town here called Bad Axe.  I don’t have a weight yet, since I can’t spray it in this cold and it still needs a nose button and prop.

I have kinda spoiled myself as I don’t like to build any model without using laser cut parts.  That’s all good, except I have to spend a lot of time drawing parts if I want to build a new model.  So, I’ve been spending many hours redrawing one of my favorite models.  Here are pieces that I cut today for a 19″ span Keith Rider R-2 Bumblebee for the Greve Race.  I redesigned the fuselage to have a more accurate cross section and it will be built out of all 1/16″ sticks, so it should be fairly light, too.  That will be next on the building board – starting sometime this week.

I drove up to Potterville, MI today for a short indoor testing session on my Chambermaid NoCal.  It was very stable.  I had this outside in December, but under very limited testing.  With light breezes and very low winds, I couldn’t really test it beyond knowing it would fly reliably.

Today was really limited testing also, but with more power and no wind.  I flew one flight with the 7″x7P prop and didn’t care for the way it zoomed up to the ceiling, so I swapped the prop for a 7″x10P prop, gave it some minor thrust adjustments and got some very stable flights

I put in about 1250 turns on the ~24″ loop of 1/8 rubber and watched it cruise around very smoothly.  Here are a couple photos followed by a video.

Between Work, Holidays, and Inventory, I’ve been able to finish up the details on the latest kit:  a Chambermaid NoCal SHORT KIT for outdoor flying.  This was based on Bernard Guest’s Dime Scale (one of our best-selling kits) but required drawing a new plan and new laser-cut parts.

For $10 you get a 13″x19″ plan and two laser-cut sheets of 1/16″ balsa; you supply the stick wood, the prop, hardware, and rubber. Winn Moore and I have built four of these.  Mine have weighed 16 and 14 grams; at least one of Winn’s weighs 9 grams.  My prototype flew OOS on its third official flight (over 6 minutes up and away) and won the NoCal event this fall.

With about 67 square inches of wing area, this produces less than 0.25 grams per square inch wing loading – wonderfully light for Outdoor Flying.  You might even think about putting a DT on this one!

Click CHAMBERMAID NoCal to go to the item in the Basement.

Here are some images:

[gmedia id=25]