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How to Build Model Airplane from Scratch

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit


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Everyone can build a model airplane by using an ARF (almost ready to fly) kit. The real adventure and challenge however is the build the airplane entirely from scratch - using your hands, imagination and eventually a model airplane plan.

Steps

1. Choose the airplane type. Before building you must have an idea about the type of the model you are going to build. The free flight models are very different than static scale models for example and require completely different set of skills.
   
2. Select a model. After you know whether you are going to build static, flying or remote control airplane, you can decide on the exact model.
   
3. Download plans. It's recommended that you download a professionally designed plan for your model. This is essentially for the flying models because they may not fly without keeping the symmetry and proper measures. It's a must for the static models too because they must represent a real airplane in exact scale.
   
4. Choose material. Some model airplane plans may be tied to a specific material, but many will let you choose yourself. Most model airplanes are made of balsa wood or plastic, but you may decide to use robust paper or clay for the static models.
   
5. Cut the parts. This is the most important part of the work. Make sure you properly measure and cut the different parts of the airplane.
   
6. Build the parts together Carefully assemble the model together. If there is an engine (when building an RC aircraft) make sure it's properly installed.
   
7. Paint it. Painting is easy and fun stage but still requires patience and good taste.
   

Tips

• You can create a plan yourself if you have some knowledge about aeronautic.
  
• If this is your first model, better start with paper one.
  
• You can find a lot of model airplane plans for free or very cheap. Don't pay too much for model plans.
  
• Allow your kids take part in the process. They will enjoy it.
  

Warnings

• Don't try to build static scale models if you don't have the exact measures of the real aircraft
  
• If building with paper, don't choose too complex model.
  
• Don't forget the safety measures when cutting and working with paints and clue.
  

Sources and Citations

• Model Aircraft On Wikipedia
  
• How to make paper airplanes
  
• Free model airplane plans
  

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Plastic Model Airplanes Rock!

How poor have been our grandparents having only wooden and paper airplanes! At the time they have been kids, mahagony models have been the greatest thing they have ever been able to think about. Mahagony models are great, but are they everything? No, of course.

We are lucky to be able to play, built and collect plastic model airplanes. Why is plastic so great? I will share with you:

1. It is very robust material. Plastic is hard to break and sustains long time and all kind of air conditions. So even if you fly your model aicraft outside in the rain, there will be no problem.

2. Plastic is very light. In many cases plastic model airplanes are lighter than the aircraft made of wood. Often they can comoare in weight with paper airplanes. This means your powered model can fly much longer with less battery usage.

3. Plastic can come in different colors. If you buy a good kit of plastic model aircraft you may not even need to paint it. Of course some kits come with gray parts which need to be painted, but plastic can have any color you want.

4. Plastic is very appropriate for all kind of model airplanes. You'll find static ones, miliraty aircraft, helicopters, civilian airplanes, commercial model aircraft, spacecrafts, rockets - simply everything.

Some people will say that the only real models are those made of wood. I like the wooden models especially those from balsa wood, but I still cannot agree with them. Plastic is a great material for aviation models especially when the parts are created from high quality plastic.

Maybe the only problem is that it's harder to find raw plastic and build your models entirely from scratch. For scratch builders maybe the better option is to create paper or balsa wood airplane models.

Read more about the plastic model airplanes.

Model Airplane Kits

I often write about building model airplanes on your own. It's really a lot more exciting than just buying a ready model and putting it somewhere.

The problem with building model aircraft is the complexity. The static scale models don't need to fly, but they must be exact scaled versions of real airplanes. This is a tremendous effort in measuring and requires high precissness.

The flying model airplanes on the other side require a lot of though in aerodynamic. If you want to build a flying model yourself, you may find out that it's much harder than you may have thought.

The solution to these problems are model aircraft kits. They are simplifying the building process while leaving you the joy and excitement of building an aircraft yourself.

You can find all kind of model aircraft kits on the market. Pre-cut, die-cut, plastic kits, RC aircraft kits, wood kits, even some metal ones. Some of the kits are almost ready to fly and require only painting. Other come entirely in parts and you need to build everything. Some are cheap, other - very expensive.

There are model kits for everyone and if you want to build an airplane but never done it before, I strongly recommend you to try with a model airplane kit. This way you will make less mistakes, will waste less materials and time and will build a good tested model airplane.

Once gained experience with kits, you can always go ahead and try building your next static or flying model entirely on your own. Don't forget that there are also plans available so you don't need to be an engineer. Of course designing your own plan is also very exciting, but that's entirely another matter.

What model airplane to gift?

Many people like to buy model airplanes not for themselves but to make a gift to sometone. This is exceptionally cool idea - one model aircraft is a really original gift. Depending on the aircraft type and the gift receiver it could be also educational or entertaining item. Let's see what kind of model airplanes are apporpriate for gifts and for what people:

Static model airplane: The static models are of very high quality and usually quite expensive. However they are not very exciting for children and teenagers. Static model airplanes are most apporpriate gifts for older people who have the habbit of placing beautiful items in their homes.

RC Model aircraft. The remote control airplanes are excellent gifts for kids over 8 ages, teenagers and even active young people. They are great toys and can give them a lot of enjoyment and long hours of nice play.

The free flight model airplanes are great for everyone and maybe the most appropriate gift for smaller kids. Because there is almost nothing to go wrong with them, you can safely let young children play. The free flight airplanes are of course a good gift for everyone else.

Kit model airplanes. The kits are for people who like to learn and build new things. You should be careful when choosing such model airplane as a gift - many people may not value it enough. But for those who love building things themselves, a model kit airplane can be one of the greatest gifts they have ever received.

The model airplanes are excellent gifts, just put some thought what exactly is most appropriate for the specific case.

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Static Model Airplanes

The static model airplanes are luxury accessoires for people who like well touched things. As the name suggests, the static model aircraft does not fly. It just stays out there and makes your room, working cabinet or office looking great.

Most static model airplanes are made of balsa wood, but recently some appear made from plastic or even various metals. All static models should be painted well and should be exact copies of real world airplanes. That's why they are also called static scale models.

Many people start collecting models and then become passionate about building static scale models themselves. You should be very passionate, skilful and wiling to learn to make such models good. Keeping the right scale and building even the smallest details of the aircraft takes a lot of effort.

Most probably your first tries to make static scale models yourself will be disastrous. To avoid thta it's highly recommended that you start with model aircraft kit. Using a kit will save you from the hardest measuring work and working on the small details.

Static scale model airplanes and helicopters are very appropriate for gifting. Don't hesitate to buy such a gift even for people who are not very interesting in aviation - you may get surprised to see them buying their own models very soon after that!

What's your preferrence for a RC helicopter?

If you are keen on model aviation, it's time to decide what kind of aircraft you want. What, you already know it's a helicopter? Great, then go ahead and pick one!

My preference is to big RC helicopters that are easy to fly and control. They usually don't have a small propeler on the side - instead of that there are two ones at the top which rotate in different directions.

The small RC helicopters like Picco Z for example are also easy to control and are very suitable for flying in a room.

The helicopters which have a propeller on the side are generally harder to control because you need to follow two things at once.

So, what is your preference for an RC helicopter? Do you like simple or complex ones? It's easy to get addicted to the more and more complex helicopters but they have a really steep learning curve.

By the way, there are even other kinds of RC rotorcraft althought they are not as popular. But if you don't want exactly a helicopter, you can search for and RC autogyro, gyrodine or gyrocopter.

One more factor to consider when choosing is also the fuel that the helicopter model uses. Is it gas or electricy? The gas models are more professional, but the electricy models are easier to use.

So, what is your preference?

How To Start Model Aviation?

Maybe you think model airplanes are cool and would like to collect or build them, but still have not decided, read this post.

Why Model Airplanes?
Because they are affordable and fun, they teach you great things about aviation, they help you develop great skills and they make you feel proud by your collection.

If you plan to build model airplanes from scratch, you'll need learn about aerodynamics, physics and aeronauthics. It will be a great experiences.

What's the best for beginners in collecting
Don't want to build models but just to collect? No problem. (Althought I bet after buying some you'll want to try building yourself!).

Start with buying cheap small models. Don't buy scale aircraft for the beginning - they are expensive and often hard to choose for beginners. A great way to start collecting is with RC aircraft or free flight models.

What's best for beginners in building
Start with paper airplanes! I am serious, they are not as simple as you may think. Paper airplanes can be pretty complex, beautiful and exciting.

The best of all with them is that building them is almost free - you can even use printed paper in the beginning and the web is full of free plans.

Once you advance...
Just think about the cool things that will come once you gain experience in this hobby. If you are only "collector" (and never wish to build which is very unlikely), you'll start buying great massive scale models or advanced RC aircraft.

If you are a builder, then even better: after gaining experience with the paper airplanes, you'll probably buy your first kit and build a free flight, RC or scale model yourself. Then you'll try building by just using plans. And finally you may even design your own flying model airplane completely from scratch!

Paper Airplanes

Everyone have built paper airplanes as a kit. Why don't we do it when we grow up? It's still such a great fun and excitement.

The paper airplanes can be extremely simple but that is not a requirement. Some of them are pretty complex. The most experienced model fans create paper aircraft that can fly long and sometimes even has an engine.

Some of the model aircrafts made from paper are called origami airplanes because they follow the rules of this ancient Japan art.

Can you make paper aircraft? Sure, it's not a rocket science (but you can make rockets if you wish!). What it takes is some patience and knowing how to do it. You can check how to make paper airplanes on this site about model airplanes.

Want to create paper helicopters? No problem - there are people who do that as well. All kind of aircraft can be done from paper and it's not hard at all - it just takes some courage and willing to try.

How to Paint a Model Airplane

By Andrew Ling

Once the basic structure of your model airplane is completed, it's time to think about painting.




Types of Paint


Model paints are generally of two types: (oil-based) enamels, or aqueous (water-based) acrylic lacquers. The hobby enamels thin with mineral spirits, dry slowly and harden to a high-gloss finish. The hobby acrylics thin with water or alcohol, dry faster, and clean up easier. Never mix enamel with acrylic, and make sure that you use the correct type of thinner.




Brush


The paintbrush is the simplest method of applying paint. You'll need a broad flat brush for large area coverage, a medium diameter round brush for general use, and a fine-point brush for the smallest detail.
The keys to getting a smooth paint job are:

• Use a clean brush.


• Do not overlap brush strokes. Don't paint over an area with wet paint. If needed, let the paint dry, then apply a second coat.


• Use a brush with soft bristles, sable is best.


• For a wide area, use a wide brush to minimize the number of strokes.


• Keep dried paint particles out of your paint bottle. Use a straw or disposable dropper when transferring paint.


• For acrylic paints, try adding a small amount of thinner, or acrylic paint retarder.


• Practice on scrap plastic before painting your model kit.

After using the brush, clean up immediately with the recommended thinner.




Spray Can


The spray paint can is also commonly used for model kits. The spray can:

• Delivers a smoother paint job with no brush marks.


• Is faster than brushing.


• Requires less cleanup.

However, paint cans deliver a wide area spray and so are somewhat wasteful and more expensive. Also, there is a limited range of colors available, and it's not possible to custom-mix colors. For multiple colors on a model, masking must be done to limit over-spray. The cans will cool down as they are used, which reduces the paint flow. Place the can in warm water for a few minutes to fix this.




Despite their drawbacks, spray cans can be very handy, e.g. for single colors such as model car bodies. Testors spray enamels and Tamiya spray lacquers are popular choices.




Airbrush


The airbrush is the most versatile tool for painting small scale models. When used with a compressor as the air source, it behaves as a very large spray can, while also allowing control of the pressure and of the amount of paint. The airbrush can be used to used to create fine lines of paint and many other useful effects.
Some basic tips:

• A single action airbrush is simpler, easier to learn, and generally lower cost. However, the double action gives you more control over the paint job.


• A compressor will be cheaper in the long run than using cans of compressed air.


• Use the paint maker’s recommended thinner. This will keep the paint flowing smoothly without drying too fast.


• Follow the instructions for cleaning, to keep the airbrush working properly.

To learn more about airbrushing models, get our ebook Learn to Airbrush Model Airplanes.

This article may be reprinted if proper credit is given and all links left intact.

Copyright©2005 World War 2 Airplane Model

Andrew Ling is a long-time model-builder and a contributor to the Learn to Airbrush Model Airplanes ebook.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Ling
http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Paint-a-Model-Airplane&id=85646

Model Airplanes And Everything About Them

Do you have a hobby? Many of us have more than one hobby and that is great. One of my favourite hobbies is model aviation - a hobby in which you create or collect model airplanes and other aircraft.

Collecting model airplanes is not very expensive and is easy. Som,e of the model airplanes cost only several dollars. Of course there are more expensive models - especially the RC aircraft or static scale model aircraft.

Creating models yourself is more complicated, but don't be afraid. You don't need an university degree for that! The most appopriate way to start bulding model airplanes is with kits and when you gain some experience you can start with plans.

Some people create paper model aircrafts which are so cool that they may even look beter than wooden ones.

On this site I'll share a lot of my knowledge about model airplanes.