Hi Alan

Dave Davis here. I have a soft spot for the Telemaster as does Ed Cregger. I even import them into the UK, go to www.telemastersalesuk.co.uk to see what some of my customers have done with their TMs if you like, but let's get one thing straight, the Telemaster was not designed to hover.

Brief History Lesson. Let me take you back to the 1950s when I was a child. Most model aeroplanes then were free flight. That is you "trimmed" the model to glide, you put a little fuel in the tiny fuel tank, started the unthrottled engine and the model climbed until the engine stopped, then it glided back to earth. If you were clever you trimmed it to fly in circles so that you didn't have to chase it too far. Radio Control came in in the late 50's and initially the only flying surface which you could control was the rudder and even then you only had the option of full left, full right and neutral. These early single channel models were more or less free flight designs with a great deal of automatic stability and larger fuel tanks. You started the engine launched the aircraft and guided it round the skies. If you were very brave you held the rudder on to provoke a spiral dive but that was about the extent of the aerobatics. By the early 1960's multi-channel radio was available but prohibitively expensive in England at least and most people flew single channel right into the Seventies.

Enough of history! When the Telemaster was introduced in 1961 or 1963 depending upon which story you believe, it was influenced by the earlier free flight designs, the small rudder, dihedralled wing and that huge lifting-section tailplane give that away. It was designed to fly slowly round the sky powered by a 61 two-stroke as stately as a galleon, it went where you put it and it was robust and very stable indeed so that your extremely expensive radio would stand a chance of remaining undamaged; and that's what it does to this day, and that's why it makes such an excellent trainer.

Oh you can make them loop and roll but to me they don't look right doing that.

And you want to make one hover[X(]

Well you'd need put a huge motor in it and you'd need to increase the size of the rudder quite dramatically and what effect that huge lifting tailplane would have on procedings, I have no idea. Then the ailerons are pretty puny....so what's the point?

Allen, if you want a model which will hover, there are all sorts of fun fliers, foamy toys, shock fliers (whatever they are!) 3D machines and Extras, Sukhois, Edges, CAPs et al which are designed to hover.

The Telemaster is a chill-out machine so why not build one for relaxing with and an aerobatic model for hovering?

As for the ease of the build it is a pretty easy model to build but if it's your first proper kit build, you'd be better off if you had an experienced builder to help you. The ARTF version is, well.. an ARTF..

Happy Landings

DD