The Vintage Model Company – VMC Pilot Balsa Wood Kit

The VMC Pilot is a high wing cabin sports model designed for fun flying. This is not a scale model based on a real (or what modellers call the ‘prototype’) aircraft, but is designed purely as a flying model. Sports models come in many guises and are often flown in competitions that are purely about flying duration, with many different sets of rules and regulations governing their size and shape. Often these models bear no resemblance to a real aircraft at all, with thin tubular fuselages, no undercarriage and very long thin wings.

A cabin sports model is one that has a ‘cockpit’ where a notional pilot could sit, with fewer compromises to the size and shape for duration. Therefore, it sits between a scale model and a pure duration model both in the way it looks and the way it performs.

These models are much easier to build and fly than their scale model counterparts and therefore form an ideal starting point for a new modeller.

YOUR KIT

This kit is for building a traditionally constructed, rubber-powered, free-flight cabin sports model of an original design by the Vintage Model Company (VMC). Construction of the model from this kit uses simple balsa wood surfaces and the traditional method of ‘stick and tissue’ for the wings; that is to say, a built up balsa wood skeleton (framework), covered with a tissue skin. The balsa wings are built over a plan printed at their exact scale. Power is provided by a rubber strip motor that is wound up before flight.

Free-flight means just that – once the model is launched it is on its own. It must follow a predetermined flight path established when the model is initially adjusted for flight or ‘trimmed’. Also in the spirit of traditional kits, additional items required to build the model are things that can be found in the kitchen drawer or are easily available on the high street.