Originally Posted by
sutipekka
Hello RCU!
Does anybody know if there are any balsa/wooden kits available nowadays..? If there are some, please give some links...
Mostly I´m looking for F3A or smaller (110-size) kits all wooden construction (no foam wings etc.) and good quality.
There are a lot of ARFs, RTFs and so on on the market but those traditional kits have disappeared - or are they...?
Once I built KATO Arrow but that is history... I remember that quality was very good!
Greetings from Finland!
Welcome to the forum & RCU.
I have been working on producing CAD plans of some of my favourite F3A classic designs over the last few years. Some of these have made it to laser kits which I offered to those who wanted one. The latest ones are a Bridi Dirty Birdy 40 and a Kato (MK) Super Chipmunk 120. The former was an all wood kit like you are looking for while the latter, although originally an all wood kit, had the flying surfaces and top decks made from foam. This last was done on the Chipmunk to expedite the build a bit, improve its accuracy and reduce the design work needed.
I am currently working on several other designs in sizes ranging from 32 to 45 to 60. I mainly focus on sizes which aren't 60's as several of these are now available as foam/glass kits. At the moment I have the following designs in different stages of preparation for laser cutting:
- Tiporare 30 (48" span)
- Mach-8 40 (48.5" span)
- Arrow 40 (56" span)
- Citation 45 (59.75" span)
- Cutlass 50 (62" span)
- Bootlegger 60 (64" span)
- Brushfire 60 (66.5" span)
There are also three in production classic kits:
- UFO 25 (52" span)
- Dirty Birdy 40 (58" span)
- Super Chipmunk 120 (71.5" span)
There are threads on all three on both RCU and RCG including a protoype build of the UFO 25. Builds of the DB40 and SC120 should also be forthcoming.
Most of my re-design efforts have focused on making the models lighter than the original, easy to build and use interlocking construction. I have also taken some small liberties such as changing the scale slightly from the original - either up or down as best suited for my purposes. The 40 size kits (Mach-8, Arrow and Citation) are faithful to the original planform. The others have slight deviations either in scale or in design elements but not much in terms of planform. The drawing below is the latest effort and is almost complete.
There are a number of small companies producing laser/CNC cut wood kits including:
- Eureka Aircraft
- Lazer Works
- BlueJay Models
- Home and Hobby Solutions
and others. There are sticky threads if I'm not mistaken on both RCU and RCG with company lists.
David