Building and Flying a Rubber Powered Racer from the 1930's. The Howard Ike. 

Thank you. They gotta fly! Thanks for watching.

Thank you, Matt. Yes, this model has shown that thermal sniffing capability on several flights now. 😂 Really appreciate your kind words regarding the video. I'm still trying to get better.

Thank you and thanks for watching.

Thank you for the kind words William. Not sure I can ever rival the work of Tom Hallman but I sure do have fun building and flying stick and tissue models. Thanks for watching!

Thank you Duke. Thanks for watching.

Thank you for watching.

Thank you Don, and thanks for watching.

Thank you Doyle.

Thank you. Yes, pretty happy with this build. The model looks great in the air with those wheel pants. :) Thanks for watching!

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for your kind words. The sliced wing ribs certainly take practice but are still obtainable. Don't be afraid to give them a try! My first few were not so good but time has helped me get better. I'll be using the fingerpaint paper again! I'm thinking wing fillets. 😁 Keep on building and thanks for watching.

Thank you, Ken, this one was interesting and took a bit longer than I originally expected. But it turned out fine and flies better than I expected. A lot of the extra time was completing the landing gear, including the finish work. I use Deft Lacquer Sanding Sealer for sealing the balsa. It's getting harder to find, but I actually found it on the Amazon webpage. I'll go with 3, 4, or even 5 coats sanding with 400 wet/dry between coats. The alternate is to tissue cover all the balsa and seal with dope. Thanks for watching!

Mike, the wing numbers are applied with Elmers Clear glue. I apply it slightly thinned to the area by dipping a wet brush in a bit of the glue I put on an index card, place the number on location and then use a slightly wetter brush to wet down the number and remove any creases or bubbles. The Elmers Clear is a great glue, it's slippery while wet so allows you to slide the number a bit. But you need to be careful because if you wait too long, it breaks down the tissue. Practice is important. The rudder registration was also applied with the Elmers Clear. It dries to a nice matte, clear finish and the tissue pretty much disappears. It also is friendly with the painted surface. Hope that answers your question and thanks for watching.

John - Thank you for the reply. I've been struggling with this aspect of scale modelling for some time and will try your method today. Here's hoping for success.

Mike, you're welcome. I'm using that Elmers Clear a lot more these days. It's my go-to for covering and works great for wing fillets. Good luck. Experiment a bit and have fun!

Stephen, Esaki Japanese tissue. Thanks for watching!

Hi Glenn. Thanks for watching. This was an interesting project that too a bit longer than expected. Yes, for small models I've used meat try foam as well as foam board. I like the form to be the same thickness as the pieces I'm laminating. In this case, I used some heavy balsawood that would unlikely ever be used for a model. And I have a lot of that. 😂 The tandem wheels are an interesting story. It's claimed that Howard did it as a gag to meet certain rules that were being proposed for race planes requiring shock absorbers. (which never came to be) So the two wheels were held by bungees and could float around an axle. One issue, it made it difficult to turn the airplane on the ground. The wheel pants were free to float with no way to hold them level other than air flow and friction on the axle. There's a cool photo of Ike racing with one wheel pant hanging low! Hope to see you soon on a video meeting. 🙂