Ray;

Thanks for explaining the differences in the Nimbus airplanes. As far as a NIMBUS 3 is concerned, I may have misunderstood Ms Brett, and have contacted her asking for clarification. I'll let you know.

I just looked over the Perigee article Ray spoke of above. Just for a little background, when Tom made the USA W/C team for 1962, he fully intended to fly Nimbus, but when he saw the schedule of maneuvers, he concluded he would need more power and a smaller, lighter airplane....this was the birth of the "Nimbus Apogee and Nimbus Perigee", (he needed two planes for the W/C, and he named them for the close and far points in the orbit of an object. Even in the article he retained the Nimbus roots of the design, but eventually the "Nimbus" was dropped, especially when the kit came out.

Willie McMath told me "all Tom's planes, (Nimbus,Perigee/Apogee/Cirrus), flew like carbon copies of each other". The primary difference was size with some engineering changes that are detailed in his article. All Tom's planes with the exception of Nimbus-2 had the same characteristic blue-on-blue with yellow transparent silk. To add to what Ray said earlier, Tom at least partially attributes the difference in flight between Perigee and Apogee to a wing warp in Apogee that might have been the result of the repaired wing. He states that Perigee never required trim of any kind, and was the best flying of the two. Apogee required some corrections to fly some of the maneuvers...it was not flown in Europe, but was there as a backup if needed. It points out the truth that no two planes are built identically.

The article speaks of Tom's frantic building schedule, especially after the crash of Apogee on the maiden flight, (cause was never determined). An interesting side note to this was something contained in a scrapbook Helen kept of Tom's R/C career. In it there are two calendar pages showing January and February of 1962. (To put this into a time reference between Tom and Ed Kazmirski, the planes were built prior to, and Apogee was first flown successfully DURING Ed's trip to Africa). The calendar shows that Tom worked on the planes (at least a little), seven days a week. In the corner of each day was a description of what was done that day, (ie started silk and dope...finished silk and dope etc). To me this was a very interesting way to relive the birth of these planes, and shows the attention to detail in Tom's work. There is also a picture of the ill-fated first flight...really interesting stuff.

BTW-Tom is a very good author, and writes in a very interesting, conversational way with bits of humor and personality throughout. It is well worth the reading to follow Tom's thinking process in creating the Nimbus and Perigee/Apogee. You can get a print-out of these articles by contacting Jackie Shallberg at AMA HQ).

Pictures coming soon.

Duane