The Little World

Whoops, sorry about that. The Radio Havana broadcast was turned up too high…

But let us not allow politics to interfere with science – particularly with the science of the model airplane. The Little Workshop is proud to announce the introduction of a new instrument into the world – the Stein Staterometer. You won’t find it in the factories of Lockheed, Dassault, or Sukhoi…yet…but I’ll bet they’ll all be copying it as soon as they read this.

Basically, necessity is the mother of invention. Practicality is the aunty and frugality the sad-looking cousin who just sits on the couch and broods. In this case they were all called on to answer the question of whether the new MiG 15 air show plane would be a tail sitter or not. The size of the plastic tail and fuselage were a warning that prompted the inclusion of a slice of flattened musket ball under the cockpit tub, but suspicion arose that this would not be quite enough. Practical investigation was needed.

It’s no good balancing a model on the wingtips and imagining – the centre of gravity may not be there nor does it necessarily correspond to the place where the wheels will hit the tarmac. And it is no good just ignoring the problem – I recently built a model of a B-17 Flying Fortress and forgot to put lead in the nose – it is now just a tail-sitter.

So the Stein Staterometer was born. You can see the basic construction from this picture – note that the upright struts are sourced from Bryant and May. They meet the MiG at the points where the landing gear struts join the wing.

The test – seen in the heading picture – was made and has proved that the weighting was a success. No more is needed. It is not good to overload the plastic landing gear of 1:72 models with excess lead.