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I've begun removing (some of) the wires on the left wing(s).

Followed your example, went flying today, took the big Nieuport out to blow the dust off it.

I hope the Snipe re-rig goes as nice as the SE. Your Snipe is really a nice looking airplane! I like the 1/6 scale sized airplanes the best!

Thanks. I've now removed all the rigging and the struts on the left side.

I also like 1/6 scale WWI models, though 1/4 scale does allow more detailing. My impression is that most 1/3 scale (as well as 1/2 scale) typically have less detail work than many 1/4 scale models. Obviously, there are exceptions, but I think the guys building really big models are more into flying.

That is correct! At least in my case. I enjoy scale competition - to a point, but flying is where it's at!

Maybe I'd feel differently if I lived in the US midwest which seems to be ground zero for WWI flying events. As it is, I'm unlikely to even see another WWI model, let alone a scale competition. For me competitions of any type hold no appeal. I build scale just to be building scale. Flying is icing on the cake for me.

Roger on the Midwest being the heart of where the action is. I have to travel a long way to participate in a good WWI meet. Living left of the big river puts you pretty far from the action. There are plenty of Warbird fly ins but strictly Dawn Patrol activity is rare. There used to be one at The Old Kingsbury Airdrome near San Antonio and I held one at Bomber Field for three years but lack of participation caused them to go away. I went to Fla. for the Blue Max in Jan this year and am going to Dayton in Sept for the DPR 100 year Commemorative meet but a lot of long distance travel is hard on a fixed income.

Try living left of the Pacific ocean. :p

OUCH!! Point made

worse yet is the Quadcopter craze currently invading our world , I have no problem with them flying over open garbage dumps though ..in the hope...I'm all for having "Biplane only flying sites" !!!!

Simply not the case. Most of these models have remarkable detail. We just fly what we build.

" long distance travel is hard on a fixed income." Yeah, especially when you build scale models. Not much $ for anything else.

Scale models???? I thought those were the only kind out there! I never 'see' anything else. My vision is curiously selective. It's easy to make big models fly well. The challenge is making small ones fly well. Look at the FF folks' (scale... right???) models. Some are extremely amazing.

I have the impression that the more miniature the model, the more obsessive the modeler becomes about detail. Look at what some of the scratch-building plastic modelers do. And there are good reasons for this. If a 1/3 scale model has the very same "level" of detail as a 1/6 scale model (for example, both have rib stitching, both have the same cockpit details, both have the same detail in a dummy engine), the 1/3 scale model will end up appear "barer" than the 1/6 scale model. So to make the detail of the 1/3 scale model look as "visually dense" as the 1/6 scale model it probably needs 3 or 4 times as much detail. Remember, tfokker's 1/2 scale DVIII? Of for that matter his DrI or DVII? But that is a tremendous amount of work and most modelers just aren't up to it. I'm not. There just aren't many Pete McDurmotts in the world.

That having been said, there are always going to be models with more or less detail at every scale.

The only POSSIBLE reason anyone could have for flying a quadcopter is because they are interested in mounting a camera and getting into drone photography. They are otherwise perhaps the most boring RC devices around.

BTW, I want to clarify that I have lots of respect for SCALE helicopters. It's just that you almost never see one. Most "helis" are the equivalent of 3-D fun-fly models. Also I would love to see SCALE HELICOPTERS doing a range of scale actions for example, picking up, carrying and depositing loads. landing in tough spots. That to me would be a lot more impressive than flying upside down and backwards.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08K_aEajzNA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-Gt1sKv2vo In fact, you'd think that for serious scale helicopter fans a great field would be full of obstacles.

Regarding my Snipe, I'm considering at the moment if I want to make a new set of struts and the fittings that attach them to the bolts in the spars. Or I could just use the struts I have and re-rig the left side to match the right side.

Right at the moment, I feel like removing all the rigging on both sides and starting from scratch. On a two (or more) bay biplane I would assume that you should first entirely rig the first (inboard) bay with all the correct incidences and dihedral and then move on to the next bay.

Abu, I totally agree about the hellis. I'd love to see some turbine scale types, but never have. When them 3D guys are flying, I'm out by the parking lot. They scare me to bits. I can never tell if they're in control of it or not. I'd love to see what your talking about. Sling loads and such.

What I dislike about flying at the same time as helis is that they flit around unpredictably.

Yeah, I know the feeling. And one would make a god awfull mess of a WWI biplane if ever in an air to air with one.

This may give you an idea of just how big a mess!
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/zSHYpM1JDKE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

My self and many others think that rotary and fixed wing models should not share the same air space. It is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Many clubs have a separate area for each. Just like you, when a large rc helicopter takes to the air in near proximity to me, I look for cover. It's those razor sharp blades spinning at incredible rpms I suppose. "If the wings are moving faster that the fuselage it must be a helicopter and therefore unsafe."

As that crash video shows, even a small heli can destroy a large model airplane. And typically it's not going to be the speed of the rotors but rather the combined speed of the two converging objects. My objection is that the flight path of helis (and we're talking here about those awful 4-D aerobatics) is frequently unpredictable. I don't mind flying with 2, 3, even 4 other aircraft in the sky because I know more or less what they'll be doing.

Anyway, so far it doesn't seem like it's going to be a problem for me at my new club. I've been to field three times, seen a total of three people, and two helis. The heli guy flew once and went home.

There is a reason that at full size airports the airplane and helicopter patterns are on opposite sides of the field.

I have one philosophy regarding fixed wing and heli in the same airspace. If one of them chooses to take to the air while I am flying, I will land; immediately.

Les