I have talked to Walt Musciano and have his ok to produce his "Spirit of St. Louis" kit. Wing span 26" length 20" engine .09 to 25 size. Full scale kit, NOT a profile. Would anyone be intrested? I do not know what the selling price will be but it will be under $80.00. This kit was offered by Scientific Models in 1954.
Larry

I am blowing up a 26" Spirit (Scientific Musciano) to 36", so I can use the Guillow's stick and tissue kit decals. I have the fuse hollowed, and the wing sanded. Maybe for a future Musciano Unlimited. Currell

How well does the scale version fly with that tiny horizontal stab and elevators?  For free flight, the stab must be enlarged almost 25%.

There used to be a full size replica in the air museum in San Diego, but tow nuts burned the place to the ground back in 1976 or so. Ruined a ton of rare stuff including a A6M2 Zero Sen fighter and a Ryan Fireball.  There is still a replica hanging in the terminal in St. Louis International ( Lambert Field).

Although the wind was pretty squirrleee' around the building the take off was smooooooth but the level laps had a great deal of turbulance to deal with and just like the real thing, the landing had a quite a few wobblees hops and bounces. Pretty stiff and narrow footprinted  landing gear. Very beautifully rendered model. From what I he flew it again with a little more nose weight..and now with a better feel for how that model handled. I didn' see it...but I hear that it flew quite nicely?
Gads..that was sooooooooo long ago, I can't remember the builders name or where he was from?

Well, Jim Lee made some comments about my Musciano Spirit of St Louis that was built from the MI plans.  So I guess I need to make some comments about his.

First of all, we both built these things for a VSC several years ago.  Neither of us knew about the other's model until we met in the motel parking lot used by most at that VSC.  His comments about mine are a bit too kind.  He had some nice detail on his that were really nice.  I do not know how he did it, but his was several ounces lighter than mine and flew significantly better, or at least it appeared to fly better to me than mine did.  I think the relative placing of each or our models that year was more a function of the wind conditions when each model was flown than anything.

I have flown mine several times since in local contests in OTS, but it will not do the pattern very well in any kind of wind.  It has been flown in some Sport Scale and Fun Scale contests, but without a throttle, it really takes a beating in flight score because of limited flight options.  There used to be some local Fun Scale rules that would allow any maneuvers from the stunt pattern for flight options, so some points used to be available.  Now that Fun Scale is an official event which does not allow maneuvers not performed by the real aircraft, most judges do not seem to be too impressed to allow any such things as overhead eights or "dead stick landing" as flight options

Neverthe less, that MI Musciano design really builds into a decent looking airplane and like all of Musciano's designs, is easy to build, even with using thinner sheet for the fuselage construction and the addition of plywood nose doublers.  With a throttle, it would be easy and fun to fly.

Keith

(edit for typos)