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| Coffee table entertainment... |
Good "fly away" Friday Morning, everybody.
When I saw this yesterday, it was too late for a Throwback post.
I remember having a book like this of paper airplanes as well as a book on constructing paper birds. It was not as thorough a compilation of historical aircraft like this one is. Paging through the book, the planes are pretty well crafted. Looks like I might have a try on one of those.
Unfortunately, there's no P-47 Thunderbolt. What's wrong with these people!
The ones I built as a kid did not look as good as these, but like these paper replicas, they're not very aerodynamic. As for the paper birds, I insisted on hanging a few from a tree in the backyard. They didn't do too well in this... um... environment!
Says something about my perception of form and function, doesn't it? My artistic DNA is lacking a few links, I think... ha!
It brings to mind a conversation I had once with aviation artist guru, Nixon Galloway, seated backwards on our flight to D.C. in a military C-141 transport.
He told me about a club of aviation "enthusiasts" that build these incredibly light, flyable, balsa airplanes that are powered by flies.
Yeh, that's right... Flies!
He told me it was pretty competitive group. For example, one "enthusiast" realized the pinning the bug to the fuselage was not as effective as super gluing the bugs legs to the plane.
The pin's weight negatively affected the plane's flight characteristics as well as the aircraft's ability to sustain flight. I thought for a moment or two, there was no one up there on his flight deck, ya know? Maybe, old Nick Galloway was on final approach or, at the very least, needed a "crosscheck!"
Pretty wild...
Anyway, on the cover of the book is an invitation to take one of the pages and "make a plane!"
I just might do that...
Third cup... I need it!
Copyright 2021/Ben Bensen III
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