TAILWIRE TREATMENT
12Most vintage airplanes
use ridged tailwires to
secure and strengthen
their tail surfaces. These lead from
the vertical fin to the horizontal
stabilizer and from the stabilizer to
the bottom of the fuselage. An
excellent way to duplicate these
important support riggings is to use
metal attachment straps made from Du-Bro ( dubro.com) landing gear
straps and scale clevises from Nelson Hobby Specialties. I use ⁄16-
1
inch welding rod and solder a brass-threaded coupler to one end. A
threaded clevis goes on the coupler for adjustment and a solder-on
clevis goes on the other end. To add to the scale appearance, use 2-
56 Hex-head bolts ( microfasteners.com) and 2-56 Nelson lock nuts to
secure the attachment straps.
FLYING WIRE ATTACHMENT POINTS
13I made the airfoil-shaped rigging wires connecting the wings
to the fuselage from plastic, chrome-colored lacing material
available from most craft stores. The material is stretchy,
so cut it about two inches shorter than needed. Ordinary Sullivan 2-56
metal clevises are glued to the lacing with thin CA. The clevis barrel
and about ⁄2 inch of the lacing can be covered over with black heat-
1
shrink tubing for a finished look. The flying wires pass through tubes
in the fuselage and the attachment points in the wing panels are
made from the threaded ends from Du-Bro ⁄4-scale turnbuckles.
1
Simply drill angled holes in the wing’s plywood hard-points and screw
in the turnbuckle ends. A drop of thin CA locks them in place.
SPREADER BARS
14Another bit of detail to add to a vintage racer is the
spreader bars that help support the flying and landing wires.
Use a length of 1⁄8-inch birch dowel and taper the ends
slightly. Stain the dowel, paint the tapered ends with silver paint and
spray on a coat of clear. To attach the bars to the flying wires, wrap
the area where the rods contact the wires with a ⁄2-inch-wide strip of
1
aluminum ducting tape. Then use 1⁄8-inch strips of ducting tape and
wrap the bars and the wires to form the attachment loops. These
details are mostly for show, but they do hold up well during flight—and
they’re easy to replace if needed!
Teaming Up with Henry Haffke
Model Airplane News contributor and Golden Age racer guru
Henry Haffke and I started this team scale project with Henry
doing the designing and wood and glue work, while I did the
mechanical setup and overall covering, painting, finishing and
detailing. Henry’s original Howard Ike Racer was a .40-size sport-scale model and was published in MAN in 1979. Over the years,
Henry and I spoke often about how nicely the Ike would come
out if enlarged to ⁄
3 scale. Henry uses conventional balsa and
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plywood construction in all his models, including all of his
famous Gee Bee models. This was the first Haffke design to use
a gas engine and the Zenoah G- 26 turned out to be the perfect
engine for this famous 80.6-inch-span racer.
