Sterling Kit -Have To Rant-

[Jerry Rauch]

Is it just me or did the original Sterling kits have really POOR parts fit? really POOR die cut balsa? instead of cut, it's smashed thru...I bought a Sterling Great Lakes Trainer off E-bay, finally got around to starting it,... pathetic parts fit...the notches in the leading edges for the ribs are mis-aligned. I understand it's a kit..but good grief, this is a joke...because the plywood spar for the wing center is cut wrong, the dihedral will be different from one side to the other...Many of the same numbered ribs are different lengths...Maybe its euphoric recall, but I don't remember the Ringmasters being this bad...From what I'm seeing here I understand why they went out of business they made garbage. I just bought a Skylark off E-bay, I guess it will be a pile of crap too...
Sorry for the rant....I'm just agrivated here...

[Wynn Robins]

Jerry
 you should read the forums!!!  the sterling "kits" are good for templates - and collectors.........

there are many new kits out that are far better with quality - sure you cant get the great lakes etc, but then again.......spending money on rubbish is a pain in the butt!!!!

[Alan Hahn]

Jerry
 you should read the forums!!!  the sterling "kits" are good for templates - and collectors.........

there are many new kits out that are far better with quality - sure you cant get the great lakes etc, but then again.......spending money on rubbish is a pain in the butt!!!!

Wynn,
I'm not sure they are even good for templates.

Back many moons ago (~15 years), I built a Ringmaster Jr from a Sterling kit (for the life of me I don't recall how I got that kit). I remember looking at a rib that had a negative "bite" cut out of the airfoil. This wasn't the infamous pollywog airfoil, but an honest-to-goodness half moon shape bite out of a rib near its high point. It obviously was done by the die cutter. That plane I called my lead-sled RingmasterJr. Still have it (The good die young, but the bad live forever).

So I say good riddance to Sterling.

Sort of sad, because a Ringmaster Jr. was a plane I built back in my "Classic" years as a kid. I don't recall any of those type issues back then (but as a kid, maybe I wouldn't have noticed.

Alan

[john e. holliday]

I think who ever took over Sterling was trying to get rid of what was left on the shelves and to heck with the quality.  I have a Ringmaster kit that I won't even put it on the bay.  It was one of the last ones that hobby shop got in before the doors were closed.  But, as much as people complain in the early days(50's) we thought these were great kits.  Or I did anyway.  Veco were better kits, but, more expensive.  The AJ Aircraft Fire Cat was a whole dollar more than the Ringmaster.   Until I built one never thought about the quality of building the kits. 

I think laser cutting has spoiled us.  Even the jigs we now use to cuts parts.  Have fun, DOC Holliday

[Ralph Wenzel (d)]

Hang onto the Skylark for a couple of years and then re-sell it on eBAY. You may be surprised at how much it appreciates! In the meantime, Blue Sky Models (Tom Niebuhr) offers an excellent, laser-cut Skylark that is true to the original plans. The Sterling kit was not an exact copy, and didn't fly the same!

[dennis lipsett]

Sterling kits are the product of another era. As such we of that era get a kick out of building them and correcting the obvious flaws that they had.
I have built quite a few of them and for the life of me I can't help but be amused while I build them. Half of the fun is re engineering them. Even more so to build them better then when I was so much younger.
if you buy them to build then you get to imagineer them, collecting them is perhaps satisfying in the having them,but will never match the satisfaction of building one and getting it to live up to your expectations.
Dennis

[Brett Buck]

Is it just me or did the original Sterling kits have really POOR parts fit? really POOR die cut balsa?

   Certainly, they were notorious for that. But to be honest, not a lot of other kits from that era were tremendously better, and even recent die-cut kits aren't exactly what you  call works of art.

     Brett

[dennis lipsett]

   Certainly, they were notorious for that. But to be honest, not a lot of other kits from that era were tremendously better, and even recent die-cut kits aren't exactly what you  call works of art.

     Brett

Brett,
I'm curious. Is there any kit made today that uses die cutting. I can't remember seeing a new kit with it in years. Some of the Sig kits might still use it but those are ancient  designs.
Dennis

[Balsa Butcher]

I know Blue Sky Models kits the Roadrunner and JD Falcon but thought that it was Eric Rule (RSM Models) that kits the Skylark.  Are both manufactures kitting this design now?

[Mike Keville]

Few will remember this, but actually the ORIGINAL Sterling kits (c.1950-1954) weren't that bad.  In that era, I built several Ringmasters and Yaks, plus a couple of their 'C-series' scale kits (Waco; Mr. Mulligan).  During those years their balsa was pretty decent, and they used nice plywood...as opposed to that dark, stringy, mahogany-like cr*p seen in later kits.

Sometime around the mid-to-late 1950s things began going downhill.  Balsa became more suitable for building a coffee table, and overall QC became lax.  Generally, any Sterling kit produced after 1960 has 'value' only as a collectors' item.  That Great Lakes Trainer is among the worst.

[George]

My first Sterling kit was a Ringmaster Jr. - when they cost a buck fifty.    Kit making was VERY competitive at the time and some companies didn't stop production as soon as they should to re-sharpen the dies. I think that's the time when the term die-crunching came about.

Somewhere along the way, large tanker ships used balsa as a tank liner...balsa became scarce. I believe model manufacturers had to take what they could get.

Besides, you havent seen a bad kit until you have a couple of Berkeley's under your X-Acto.    I've heard Berkeley kits described as a box with a nice set of plans and a bunch of balsa scraps. Still, I THINK I remember getting a decent Berkeley kit so perhaps it was luck of the draw...which parts happened to be placed in the box you got.

Modern kits are MUCH better...but then they are not a buck fifty anymore either.

George

[Ralph Wenzel (d)]

I know Blue Sky Models kits the Roadrunner and JD Falcon but thought that it was Eric Rule (RSM Models) that kits the Skylark.  Are both manufactures kitting this design now?

You're right, Pete. I  crossed up the JD Falcon and the Skylark. They are pretty similar appearance-wise . . .

[Frank Sheridan]

I have built several Top Flite Flite Streaks and have yet to see a kit with a properly cut leading/trailing edge piece. Most kits were cut and packed by employees that never built or flew model planes, so quality control varies with each manufacturer, even today. When Bud Nosen launched the giant R/C model industry years ago, the planks of balsa were huge and rough cut to some degree. The first step in the instructions should have been "remove bark before glueing". All the sterling kits I remember building required soaking the leading edge wood and overbending it while it dried to straighten it. Heck, back then I thought this was all part of the building process. The RSM Ruffy kit I recently acquired is NOTHING like the Ruffy kit I bought in 1975, thank goodness.

[Mike Keville]

Again....y'all should've been there in the 1950-1954 era (when, admittedly, most of you weren't yet born):  Sterling produced excellent kits then.  Anything produced after that was junk.

And as someone pointed out above, if you think Sterling's stuff was junk, you ain't lived 'til you've seen BERKELEY kits!  Their ad's, with airbrushed views of various Scale and Stunt kits, had many people drooling --- yet when we opened the box we could hardly believe the contents.

Oh...their decals were nice, but that's about all.

[Tom Niebuhr]

Ralph,

Just want to confirm that I have never kitted the Skylark at Blue Sky Models. I have made a set of laser ribs for one person on special request. With limited business, I will not step on some one elses efforts. Nor does it make sense to compete with anyone on the same design.

[Larry Cunningham]

I have a Sterling Skylark kit which I picked up many years ago at a VSC and the
box has been signed by Ed Southwick. It looks OK, but the log supplied with it is
quite heavy. I know that Ed was very unhappy with the kit version of that model.

Ed, I remember that guy fondly..

L.

"She felt in italics and thought in capitals." -Henry James

[John Miller]

Here Larry, something to go with that kit. Taken at Mile Square. I miss them too.

[john e. holliday]

Met this great couple at VSC years ago.  DOC Holliday