Old Timers: Gas Models (I Quaderni di Modellismo)

In 1932 Maxwell Bassett, a young man from Philadelphia, showed up at a model airplane competition - until then domain of rubber models - with a first: a model with an internal combustion engine. To say that Bassett was the first is not completely accurate because before him others had tried, such as Samuel Pierpont Langley who flew his "Aerodrome" along the course of the Potomac River in 1903, but these were isolated episodes, with little resonance and no following partly because those models were often large, complicated and equipped with heavy, underpowered engines that were difficult to handle. Bassett instead designed a simple model of more than orthodox proportions and equipped it with a small and reliable little engine built by his friend Bill Brown, that 10 cc "Brown Jr." which from 1933 onward was produced in hundreds of thousands, unleashing the flowering of many manufacturers who all over the world flooded the market with spark engines like that Brown at first, then with self-ignition engines (the so-called “diesels”) and finally, from 1947 to the present day, with glow-plug engines. Parallel to the engines, a great number of model airplanes were born, which underwent an increasingly rapid evolution and in some cases went down in history. This happened mainly in the United States, but the lesson was soon taken up in Europe as well, especially in Great Britain and in Italy. In this new book of 290 pages you will find the stories of the most important models, modelers and companies that from 1932 to 1950 contributed to the evolution of gas powered model aircraft around the world. As usual, most of the drawings will be available for download on the Web in full size from a dedicated folder or from the "Outerzone" site. Read more