Now, there you have an
airliner. Almost an ocean liner, one could say.
32 passengers, mind you.
Mister Vincent Burnelli developed a whole family of planes around the lifting
fuselage concept, used much, much later in more contemporary machines. Its
earlier interventions in the design field contributed to planes like the Lawson
Airliner and the Continental KB-1, amazing creations on their own.
Structural soundness, safety
and many other qualities of the plane were sought after with the rational use
of advanced design concepts. In a way, the “lifting body” is related to the
flying wing, both searching for minimum drag, efficiency and structural
advantages. Lifting bodies will appear much later, among other examples, in the
NASA experimental planes that studied atmospheric re-entering vehicles. A
similar line was pursued by French designers: De Monge (7.4 in 1924 too),
Dyle-Bacalan (DB 70 around 1925) and Carpentier (C-1 of 1935).
There is a wealth of material
on the Net, so if you feel attracted do your homework and you will find many
interesting stories and the planes and men that created them.
For the purpose of this
article, I would just say that this story starts in1920, when Burnelli got
associated with Mr. Remington (hence the “RB” denomination) that there were two
version of the plane, the RB-1 and the RB-2, but RB-1 got reincarnated at least
once. Here we deal with RB-1 second life. You could have tons of fun trying to
sort out which is which, as many of the photos on the Net are mislabeled, and
some minor modifications were performed in the machines, even in the same
versions. Here some clues: look at the wheels, vertical tail surfaces, engines,
tapering –or not- of the aft fuselage and the protruding –or not- ailerons. The
best part is when sources contradict each other.
And yes, I say all of the
above with a mischievous smile.
The model:
Boy, what a corrugated slab!
It was love at first sight. A long haul enterprise, without doubt, proven by the
fact that this model went on an off the building board for more than a year.
After I reached the three hundred parts mark I decided that I was better off
not counting them. Although it seems hard work, I can assure you that it is
much worse than what it seems. To get some relief from the project stress I got
involved in building five models at the same time, three vacuforms, one
conversion and one scratch. It worked, because compared with that, the Burnelli
project looked almost like a smooth ride.
The photos will tell the
story, but a sound track with screams could be added to make for a more
realistic effect. Hey, look at the bright side: almost no decals!
Materials: mostly styrene,
some wire, printed paper for the seats, band-aids, wood for the props, Aspirin,
Sculpey for the sofas, wheels from the ICM 1/72 TB-3 monster (which I built on
skis). Vacuformed canopies were made thanks to the acquisition of an old but in
perfect condition Mattel Vac-U-Form machine. Hey, that Mattel contraption is
really fun. It is small, so don’t have any visions of grandeur about molding
big fuselages or floats. But here it is another opportunity of burning your
fingers, melt plastic and get involved in the arcane technologies of the
sixties. Now I understand why people looked so happy then. Contrail and
Strutz’s strut material from Aeroclub and a couple of photoetched parts
completed the list. I must hereby confess that I received some extra help and
encouragement from the Wings of Peace forum, together with harsh and insensitive
commentaries about the appearance of the airplane.
All in all quite and
adventure, including the hundreds of genuflections and push-ups performed to
recover minute parts from the carpet, which rendered going to the gym
redundant.
And I’ll throw my gauntlet at the feet of the
ones that dare to call it ugly.
No comments:
Post a Comment