Free Bird

Duane,

I have an Orion project to do and that's exactly what I was planning on doing. I've located an excellent Veco 45 with the baffle in the exhaust, and being it's in such great shape I don't think I'd want to run it. It's amazing how great minds think alike!

FB

Michaelj2k

Veco .45's are good strong engines but they are a pain to break in (lapped piston). Put it on the test stand with a couple gallons of castor based fuel and a good book.

kingaltair

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Do they work with modern mufflers?

Duane

Free Bird

Jeff,

I found my Hobby Helpers Perigee plan, do you need a copy? The stab is very thin airfoil (not a slab), and the ribs have "feet" at the L/E & T/E to aid building it. I'm getting some other plans copied and can have the Perigee done at the same time. LMK

FB

Free Bird

[quote]Veco .45's are good strong engines but they are a pain to break in (lapped piston). Put it on the test stand with a couple gallons of castor based fuel and a good book. [quote]

Honestly, the engine I got doesn't look like it was ever run (gotta take a closer look to refresh my memory), but I'm more inclined to use it for display only and use a modern engine for flying. I think strapping a muffler will cause too many issues.

FB

JeffH

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FB, pm sent.

Michaelj2k

We had one mounted on a Hartman Zeus with a Taurus wing using a Merco strap on muffler. The rotating exhaust baffle was removed and the holes plugged with cut down rivets that fit the hole diameter. With an installed Orbit 4+8 "digital" and PS-2 servos (22 oz. flight pack), the airplane weighed around 8 lbs total. It did not have a problem hauling that airplane.

My current Taurus has a Veco .61 installed; I usually fly it around 1/2 to 3/4. As far as vintage engines are concerned, I'll take a Veco/K&B any day.

kingaltair

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I have no idea about other brands of engines, (or other ST engines), but the ST .56 Ed used were not designed for use with a muffler. Maybe it didn't breathe right, or and it tended to overheat, (these were notorious for having less than great carbs...I think ST used several over a short period, and modelers frequently performed their own mods, such as drilling out the hole in the carb). We eventually came to the comclusion the muffler was the problem, (check the EKT thread).

I eventually went to a present-day ST carb, (which still fit the opening perfectly), but it just wasn't happy with the best strap-on muffler I could find, (I had one custom-made for it).

Glad your Veco works...don't know about the K&B Tom used.

Duane

Michaelj2k

Super Tigre designed their engines with sub piston induction. When the piston it at TC, air is inducted into the chamber below the piston. Un-muffled, the "light case" ST's are very good engines but suffer with a closed expansion muffler. That's how the "flow through" mufflers came about; they were noisy but they worked.

OS carb's were reliable from day one. ST had the carb of the week. The ST carb problem was solved when Perry came along.

Veco became K&B which is still available from MECOA except with a K&B carb installed http://www.mecoa.com/kb/61/61-parts.htm (P/N 6550). I have one of these carbs currently installed on a Veco .61 in my Kaos.

BTW, the K&B .45 is not the same engine as the Veco .45. The only problem with the Veco is getting the thing broken in!

BruceTharpe

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So I'm flipping through this old RCM from September '65. A cool T-tail model catches my eye in the NATs coverage. Then I get to the back cover and there's the same cool T-tail in a color ad for Hobbypoxy. Hmmm, Tom Brett, think I'll google that name and see if I can find out more about his model. And that's what led me to this thread - about a week ago! I've been slowly reading it, letting it unravel like a good novel. I knew it was something special when I saw an image of that Hobbypoxy ad in the very first post.

Tom Brett is my type of guy - creative, analytical, and detail oriented. Same could be said for Duane! Your thoroughness is incredible. Thanks to both you and Helen Brett for documenting Tom's contributions to the hobby.

Fantastic and valuable thread!

kingaltair

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You are so very welcome...like discovering a "lost" treasure, I've tried to document as best I can everything that Helen has made available to me having to do with Tom, and his planes. Helen is Tom's #1 fan.

Everything you said about Tom's nature is correct....attention to detail, and a meticulous builder. He even had a plug for his aileron servo in a recessed socket designed and built into the wing structure on the Perigee...it's part of the plans though I wonder how many kit builders actually did it. That kind of detail says a lot, and goes way beyond anything I would do. The same attention to detail is seen in everything Tom did..his models are the closest to "perfect" in building quality of anything I've ever seen. That kind of building is hardly seen today...I hope somebody young is out there learning to build like Tom did. The closest person I know to Tom's characteristic of attention to detail and immaculate building is Kevin Clark, a friend I worked with when building the Simla, (another thread).

The TBX is an immensely complex plane with complexly drawn plans. Someday I want to make it a "project" to build one...and it WILL be a project. It will take everything I have and then some.

Duane

kingaltair

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BTWYou need to get one of Chuck Winter's revised videos, with the new section on Tom Brett. It is the ONLY footage I know of of the TBX in the air.

Duane

BruceTharpe

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Yep, I've already emailed Col. Winter - really looking forward to the DVD.

An earlier post made it sound like the Hobbypoxy ad only ran that one time. Seems unusual because most ads run several times.

kingaltair

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Yes you would think so, but it seems to have been a "one-hit-wonder".

Thanks for all the nice comments in your earlier post...they were very much appreciated.

BTW...check out the August issue of Model Aviation for my article on SPA's 20th Anniversary contest

stefanP

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Duane,Is there any chance the TBX could get into a set of plans? Or did tom do a lot of scratch pad notes& sketches.This is one kooooooooooooool thread.Thanxs duane.
stefanP

kingaltair

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TBX plans were drawn, but are not available at this time. As I said above, the quality of the existing plan is not the best...parts of it are faint or quite dark. The plans really need to be faithfully redrawn or put in CAD by someone with skill and a love for this plane. The plans are very complex. It would take an excellent builder and a lot of time and work to reproduce.

Anyone with serious interest should PM or e-mail me and we can discuss it...we never know what the future holds.

Duane

kingaltair

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After more than a year, it looks like there will soon be new information to add to this thread.

I have remained in touch with Helen Brett on and off all this time, and she recently contacted me with a new photograph of a reduced-size Perigee model built by a modeler form Kentucky that recently surfaced. I don't have the photo with me, but will post it soon plus some other news. Until then, see you later.

Duane Wilson--(Kingaltair)

kingaltair

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Helen sent me this picture of this reduced size Perigee, and wanted to know if I could find out anything about the owner/builder by his AMA number 19302, (which of course is pretty low). While not wanting to break any privacy laws, AMA was able to tell me the plane's AMA number belongs to a Mr. Paul Bradley, living somewhere in Kentucky. We are now trying to see if AMA can give him Helen's e-mail, and possibly get the two of them together to discuss details of the aircraft.

As mentioned earlier, Mr Bradley built his model scaled down, but it's hard to know if the ".56" means the engine size, or roughly half-size (56%), of the original. We would appreciate anybody with information on this plane to post on this thread, or contact us.

Beautiful job making a small replica including a close match to Tom's colors, and the intricacy or the Perigee name badge.

Duane

Free Bird

Duane,

That model is a kit from BMJR MODELS. The .56 is indeed 56% the size of the full scale model. BMJR also makes half scale models of the Taurus, Orion, Astro Hog and Duelist. I have built the Taurus and Orion (still in the bones though). I also have the Perigee kit, they are laser cut and very nicely done. The really cool thing about them is that a lot of the original construction techniques are used. The Taurus uses a wrapped L/E from 2 sheets of 1/32 balsa for the wing. I highly recommend getting one or two.

FB

BruceTharpe

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Here's a link to the BMJR Perigee .56... http://www.bmjrmodels.com/shop?page=...category_id=31

Paul Bradley is the designer of the reduced size version of the Perigee and several others kitted by BMJR. He also is a current columnist for Model Aviation

PaulBrad

I just became aware of this thread today. I was contacted by the AMA to let me know that Helen Brett was interested in getting in touch with me. When I contacted her via email she let me know about this thread and her interest in my reduced size Perigee. As noted above, my reduced size Perigee is indeed a kit from BMJR Model Products. The 56 percent scale factor came about through a desire to have a 36" wing span. As Tom Brett noted in his American Modeler construction article, he designed the Perigee to be a bit smaller than the contemporary models of the day. He was concerned about being able to perform some of the maneuvers scheduled for the 1962 World Champs and wanted to keep weight to a minimum so the engines of the day could pull the model through the vertical portions of the maneuvers. That slightly smaller size resulted in a .56 scale factor rather than .5 to achieve a 36" span.

My current day reduced size Perigee is electric powered and is comfortable being flown in the smaller venues. It has great performance and can do any of the maneuvers the original model could handle. I love flying it and have logged many hours of air time since it was built.

Paul Bradley

Michaelj2k

It's been a while since the last posting so here is an update. A movie in three parts was posted to Youtube from an Italian team member who competed at Henley in 1962. The first part documents travelling from Italy while the second has some footage of Tom Brett. It's in color and the narration is Italian but there's some good stuff. http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2313865

kingaltair

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I just had a look at these videos today--fantastico!!

It's really wonderful to be able to see these 50+ year-old videos document history for us all. Thanks to the Italian team to preserve the 1962 World Championship for all of us--it's all very interesting to me. Imagine how meaningful it would be if I spoke Italian. Although I didn't follow the narration, you can get the general gist of everything going on.

Regarding You Tube, I need to check with Chuck Winter about the possibility of putting his "Tribute to Tom Brett" from his DVD and Kenley video on YouTube as well, with a link to it here. That would make coverage of Tom and his planes in this forum complete. All I need to do is figure out how.

Duane

kingaltair

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On post #491 above, there is an answer to a request for TBX plans.

Back in 2009, Helen and I were able to find the original velum, (I believe) plans Tom drew for several of his planes, but not the TBX. We DID find a series of PAPER ROLLS that probably came from the original plan, but were not the actual, original plan itself. It has been suggested that the plan we found was intended by Tom to be used for drawing the paint trim scheme. The lines for the dark blue markings are very prominent, and drawn on top of the plan, but the plan itself, (as I described above), was faint and dark, especially on the fuselage. It was far from ideal to use for tracing a new plan, (much less to build from), but it was all we had.

Occasionally I have received various requests for "plans" of the TBX, but I couldn't make what we have available due to poor quality of the paper plan. Meanwhile, a friend in VR/CS has been slowly working on the "plan project"...it has been a major job, and it hasn't always been on the "front burner", so to speak.

After one such request made by a modeler in Switzerland through a mutual friend, (Beppe Fascione), I told Beppe the same thing, that plans were not available for the foreseeable future due to low quality, then didn't give it another thought...until a few weeks ago when I received the following pictures from Beppe. Imagine my surprise when I laid eyes on the photos!!!

This fellow from Switzerland, who I later learned was Guido Patroncini, was certainly both highly motivated and skilled. During this past winter--50 years after the original was built, he has used the information in this thread, and a lot of educated guesses and tremendous building skill to produce a closely related replica of Tom's original TBX. This is a remarkable achievement without a doubt, and similar in some ways to what we did re-creating Kazmirski's Simla back in 2010....a plane created without plans, only with photos and descriptions.

Back then, we wanted to get the closest Simla we could, while using modern building techniques and materials, (such as using a CF wing tube). Guido's intention with the information he had to work with, was never to produce the closest possible duplicate, but instead to get, (as closely as possible), the LOOK of the TBX...and somewhat modernized into what Tom might do if he were designing and building the TBX in 2015,... and he has succeeded. To the untrained eye it looks just like the TBX.

Congrats Guido! More to come...

kingaltair

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To anticipate your first question...no there aren't any plans. Maybe someday.