Sir Fly
New member
Introduction
This thread is dedicated to the build log of my Dad's Guillows P40. This plane has a very interesting and unique history, and I have really grown quite attached to it. I am really looking forward to completing the plane and seeing it in the air, and I hope you will too! Please feel free to provide any sugestions or constructive criticism at any point during the build.
I have already been working on the plane for a few months during the weekends, so forgive me for starting the thread in media res, so to speak.
The Plane
The plane, as I mentioned earlier, is a half built Guillows Balsa Model P40 Kittyhawk. The plane is quite old, from around the 1970s (?) when my uncle bought it for his growing collection of warbird models. However, he barely began constructing it before it was pushed to the backburner as he finished high school and moved away. The plane ended up in my grandparents' attic in Winsconsin when my dad found it. He was still pretty young when my uncle first bought it, so the plane was in storage for quite a few years!
Anyways, my dad pulled it down from the attic and over the course of the next few years, he gradually built the entire airframe of the plane: the wing, fuselage, horizontal and vertical stabilizers. Basically the whole thing was complete and ready to be skinned and finished as a shelf model. But he never finished it. For one reason or another, he didn't skin the airframe. Instead it was wrapped up and put in a big box with his other balsa models and put back in the attic. It was beginning to seem that the plane would never be built at all.
Instead, about 3 months ago my dad and I were discussing what I should do with my free time after I had stopped playing lacrosse. I was already neck deep in RC Planes, model aircraft, and Flite Test, so this became the focus of the conversation. I mentioned that I wanted to start a club at my high school ( looking for suggestions btw) and also creating a workshop in my bedroom to build planes instead of at my desk in the office, where I do HW. The discussion came to a close and then my dad surprised me by going down into the basement and came up with a big cardboard box. Inside, neatly wrapped in paper, was a model TBF Avenger, F4 Phantom, and finally - the real treasure -
the incomplete P40.
This came as quite an astonishment to me, and my dad explained it's story and how it came to end up in our basement. The model planes box remained in my grandparents' attic while my dad went off to college. My dad rediscovered it when he was helping them move closer to us shortly before I was born. He reclaimed it, and then it was promptly put into storage in our basement. Now, with the plane unearthed and entrusted to me, I vowed to finish the model and treasure it as a "high school family heirloom" (my Uncle, dad, and now I only worked on it while we were/are in high school).
So....yeah. After I had been working on it for a little while I thought, "Hey! I should make a build log for this and convert it to RC!" Unfortunately I only have a few photos of the plane before I started work on it, so I am just gonna pick up the log where I am now. I'll make sure I post the pictures soon (probably tomorrow).
Thank you for reading this whole thing and I hope you enjoy the log. Also, please feel free to provide any suggestions and comments you think may be helpful! I am sure there are quite a few folks here that know much more than me.
Take care,
- Sir Fly
This thread is dedicated to the build log of my Dad's Guillows P40. This plane has a very interesting and unique history, and I have really grown quite attached to it. I am really looking forward to completing the plane and seeing it in the air, and I hope you will too! Please feel free to provide any sugestions or constructive criticism at any point during the build.
I have already been working on the plane for a few months during the weekends, so forgive me for starting the thread in media res, so to speak.
The Plane
The plane, as I mentioned earlier, is a half built Guillows Balsa Model P40 Kittyhawk. The plane is quite old, from around the 1970s (?) when my uncle bought it for his growing collection of warbird models. However, he barely began constructing it before it was pushed to the backburner as he finished high school and moved away. The plane ended up in my grandparents' attic in Winsconsin when my dad found it. He was still pretty young when my uncle first bought it, so the plane was in storage for quite a few years!
Anyways, my dad pulled it down from the attic and over the course of the next few years, he gradually built the entire airframe of the plane: the wing, fuselage, horizontal and vertical stabilizers. Basically the whole thing was complete and ready to be skinned and finished as a shelf model. But he never finished it. For one reason or another, he didn't skin the airframe. Instead it was wrapped up and put in a big box with his other balsa models and put back in the attic. It was beginning to seem that the plane would never be built at all.
Instead, about 3 months ago my dad and I were discussing what I should do with my free time after I had stopped playing lacrosse. I was already neck deep in RC Planes, model aircraft, and Flite Test, so this became the focus of the conversation. I mentioned that I wanted to start a club at my high school ( looking for suggestions btw) and also creating a workshop in my bedroom to build planes instead of at my desk in the office, where I do HW. The discussion came to a close and then my dad surprised me by going down into the basement and came up with a big cardboard box. Inside, neatly wrapped in paper, was a model TBF Avenger, F4 Phantom, and finally - the real treasure -
the incomplete P40.
This came as quite an astonishment to me, and my dad explained it's story and how it came to end up in our basement. The model planes box remained in my grandparents' attic while my dad went off to college. My dad rediscovered it when he was helping them move closer to us shortly before I was born. He reclaimed it, and then it was promptly put into storage in our basement. Now, with the plane unearthed and entrusted to me, I vowed to finish the model and treasure it as a "high school family heirloom" (my Uncle, dad, and now I only worked on it while we were/are in high school).
So....yeah. After I had been working on it for a little while I thought, "Hey! I should make a build log for this and convert it to RC!" Unfortunately I only have a few photos of the plane before I started work on it, so I am just gonna pick up the log where I am now. I'll make sure I post the pictures soon (probably tomorrow).
Thank you for reading this whole thing and I hope you enjoy the log. Also, please feel free to provide any suggestions and comments you think may be helpful! I am sure there are quite a few folks here that know much more than me.
Take care,
- Sir Fly