A while back, mid fall, my son and I went flying together. He was 5 years old at that time and I stand with him in the circle and hold the handle with him. The profile we have been messing with is just too big for him.
I decided to draft up some plans for a 15-25 sized profile for him. I spent a couple of nights and came up with the Mini Bear. It was originally designed by John Grigsby and sports an OS20-25FP.
The basic design and build concept copies that of Bill Bischoff. Years ago he came up with some war bird profiles that used gotcha 400 foam wing cores covered with low heat ultra-coat and painted fuses. External BC mounted on a tongue plate through the fuse. Very simple design and can be built very quickly. I have built several of these over the years and they are a blast.
My son saw me working on the plan for a couple of nights and got pretty excited. A few weeks pass and he comes to me on a Saturday afternoon and says “Dad, I sure wish we were working on that plane.” I said “Ok, l let’s get started.” Little did he know I had already cut most of the parts so we could basically build it like a kit. Right off the bat I put the sanding block in his hands and it was off to work we go. Sparky should be proud! We worked for a short period of time sanding and gluing some parts together. He would either hold them and I glue or I hold them and help him glue showing him how to hold things and where to put stuff. He catches on fast. Our first building session ended with us in a cloud of sanding dust and he seemed to be having a very good time and asked about 10,000 questions along the way.
About 4 or 5 days later he asks again about building the plane. Off we go to the shop and work some more. This time we sand out some hinge slots and fit some hinges. I helped him use the K&S wire binder to bend the 3/32 wire for the elevators.
Next time we are in the shop we glue in the BC mount and spread on some filler. I tell him there will be more sanding and he says “When are we putting on the wings?” I don’t know if he is too keen on sanding….Hahahaha!
As it stands now we have all the parts cut and glued and ready to go into one piece. We need to sand the filler out and put some dope on the fuse before we glue the wings on but we are getting there. As a 6 year old, just had his birthday in December, his attention span is about that of a gnat. But this project is on his mind and I am letting him push the building of the model. He told me yesterday we are going to really work on it this weekend. He likes building and making things that is for sure, Legos are all over our house.
I have never taught anyone to build before. I am usually the one on the learning end of things in this endeavor. This is going to be a lot of fun!
Topic: Building (Read 3210 times)