A little trading with a motivated seller led to another giant scale rehab project for me, this time a Nosen 1933 Gere Sport 1/3 scale biplane. Here's the fuselage sitting on my wife's car for size reference - the wings fit in my van, from the tailgate they extend all the way up between the front seats. It's about 6" shorter than my 1/3 scale Cessna 152 (RIP), and with two wings will have far lighter wing loading. The covering needs to be completely removed and replaced as it's starting to come loose and it's fairly fragile from age. The structure of the plane, however, feels very strong (so far) including pushrods and hinges. The plane came with a gas conversion engine which looks awfully similar to my old Homelite XL chainsaw engine. It looks woefully too small for this plane, at approx 30cc, but the engine looks complete other than a missing spark plug so I may do a quick re-build on it to see if it can be used somewhere down the line. The instructions say it's designed for a .60 size glow, but that doesn't seem realistic to me with all the weight and drag from two giant wings. Something closer to the 40-50 range may be a better option, and it could be an opportunity to use another old-school engine in an old-school plane.
It's missing some hardware to mount the wings, as well as the struts for the wings. Plans are available online, so I'll order a set to make sure everything is lined up properly once work begins.