Building remotely controlled
airliner model planes since 1971 I started with a 1/23th scale Vickers Super
VC-10 and a 1/13th scale Fokker F-28. Both planes were built using foam and
balsa only. They were powered by two .40 glow engines each.
It became clear that a common
scale would give a better look when a number of these planes were standing side
by side. Choosing an 1/16th scale made it possible to build most of those days’
airliners at reasonable sizes. After my first planes I knew that the nose and
tail cone of the fuselage were very difficult to build so I decided to make
molds. These devices could now manufactured much easier as fibreglass parts.
For the engine nacelles and the vertical stabilizer I made molds too. The
center fuselage can easily be built with foam and balsa giving a much lighter
structure than a full fibreglass fuselage. Wings and horizontal stabilizer were
also built with foam/balsa.
Those fibreglass parts were (illustrated by
DC-10 / MD-11):
Nose section of the fuselage Tail section of the fuselage with Engine
nacelles
vertical
stabilizer
From early on other modellers
were interested in building these airliner models. With these now not longer
available fibreglass parts and a small drawing they were able to build their
own models. All templates necessary for hotwiring the foam cores were shown on
these drawings so it was possible to hotwire these cores by yourself. In the
net one could also find some suppliers for custom-made foam cores of centre fuselage,
wings and horizontal stabilizer. Retractable landing gears for these airliners
were for many years produced by Hawe-Modelltechnik. Of course building and
flying of this kind of model aircraft required a well-experienced pilot.
In the beginning all models
were designed to use glow engines with propellers but now all of them could
also be equipped with ducted fans (electric or glow engine) or turbines.
During the last decades a
large number of 1/16th scale airliners has been built not only by me but also
by many other modellers. The following pages show some of these planes. For the
quality of the pictures please keep in mind that I had to scan photographs aged
up to 40 years.
For the build of these planes
there are “Basic Instructions” on each of the following sites. Click on the
image to enlarge it. Drawings of all templates for cutting the foam cores of
centre fuselage, wings and horizontal stabilizer came with the fibreglass
parts.
Airbus: A300 A310 A320 A330 A340
Boeing: 707 720B 727 737 747 757
Ilyushin: IL-62
McDonnell
Douglas: DC-8 DC-9 DC-10 MD-80 MD-11
Sud
Aviation: Caravelle
Tupolev: 154
Buildlogs (Turbine): A340 B727 MD-11
Buildlogs (EDF): B707 B737 Caravelle
e-Mail: info@rauch-airliner.com
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