Exile182

Hi,

My partner just bought me an Awesome RC waco parkflyer for christmas, Im not allowed to get it until then, but saw that was reading the review in Airborne magazine here in Aus, bought it. Now that I have to wait, I want to get a small lil pilot for it, I dont care if I have to cut an old santa decoration in half to get it lol. Its just that I dont know what size pilot I need, the pilots would have to be half body type, the plane is 990mm wingspan (39inch) and 740mm length (29.1inch). What scale approximently would that be? or better yet what size would I be looking at for a half body pilot?


thanks heaps
Wayne

Exile182

Also, from what i have worked out by knowing another modelers static waco at 18inches wingspan and 1/20 scale, I calculated that a full scale waco would have around 360 inches, then with this RTF waco being 39 inch wingspan calculates to approximately 1/9 scale, am i right?

I also worked on human height being about 175 ish cm, which worked out around 19cm in 1/9 scale, then cut that in half to 9.5cm, so then looked at pilots, saw some around 2inches in height, from the shoulder up, and figure a pilot of around the same height would be fine, maybe a bit smaller.

jetmech05

orginial wing span divided by models wing span euals scale...I believe this is the correct way to figure sclae

JohnBuckner

My Feedback: (1)

Looking at photos of a full scale airplane with a pilot and then estimating the size on your model of the same will most often render a size wildly different than what actual scale dimensions would suggest. The reason is simple the vast majority of models do not have true scale dimensions especially wingspans and fuselage volumn. Attempts at true scaling of pilot size frequently get grotesque to the eye. You are far better off selecting a pilot by eye that looks good to you and this can be a better method when refering to full scale photos with pilot in them.

Scale airplanes are nothing more than an illusion and every detail added to it such as a pilot to be effective must enhance that illusion whether or not that pilot is true scale or not.

John

Exile182

Yeah i did calculate scale from original size, I spent all day yesterday looking for specs on the full scale and really couldnt find anything, so i found a site of a fella who owns a none flying full, and a static model, he claims the model is fairly accurate at 1/20 scale, 18 inch wingspan. I reversed the calculation on scale to get 360 inches, about an hour later i found an original manual online, it stated that the wingspan was 358 inches so was fairly close. I did work out that a figure from the shoulders up, about 1.3/4 inch - inch would work, I then found an older Christmas Decoration of santa that might work well!

skylarkmk1

Exile,

Waco UMF/YMFs have a 30' wing span or 360" (some Wacos have a longer or shorter ws depending on model, the YMF is probably the most popular version that is modeled). At 18" ws, 1/20 scale is correct. At 39" ws the scale would be 1/9.2. A 1/10 scale pilot would work as people back in the 1930's were a bit shorter than todays average hieght.

The National Waco Club and the American Waco Club both have pictures of many Wacos with pilots sitting in them for you to get a visual fit in your model.

The Vintage and Antique Forum has a thread WACO YMF, all about the Pica 1/5 scale UMF/YMF Waco model with references to the Barth, AMR (Genesis), Cox/Pica (now out of production) and Pepino YMF Wacos. The House of Moy supplimental site to the WACO YMF thread has a list of Plans, Kits and other documentaion for Wacos. Good Luck.

Exile182

wow, you went above and beyond, thanks heaps, i have looked at some photos on these sites, never really thought bout visualising tho, thanks.
And I worked it all about right then, thanks very much!

I also just learned that its the exact same, but aussie distributed, type as the Hobby Lobby Waco Ymf