Duane,
When speaking of covering the open bays on the Simla, a thought.

In C/L Stunt guys have been using PolySpan, it's a unidirectional synthetic that really resists punctures. It's essentially dress lining and has some pecularities in use, but has been in service for years. It's lighter than silk, heavier than silkspan but takes less material to fill than either.

How I use it is to cover the whole model's wood parts with carbon veil or silkspan and add a few coats of dope, then cut out pieces of the PolySpan about a quarter to half inch outside of the open bay area and dope it on around the edges and pull it taught. Put the Monocote gun to it and it'll pull tight with little heat. Then start the build-up. One thing you cannot do is sand through the build-up because the PolySpan will not tolerate any roughing up. If you do, it'll release strands of nylon that stick straight up and the only thing I've been able to do with it is bury them in putty or talc and dope goo! If you try to sand them smooth it gets worse! The stuff fills really quickly and paints just like silk or silkspan, only it's tough. Keys and stuff bounce right off, weeds and twigs won't touch it.

I get mine from CLC Hobbies in Albuqerque or Aeroproducts in Atlanta.

Thanks for writing the article in MA, it is very well done and the mag editors did a nice job in the presentation.

Chris...