Scratch-built 1/72 Johnson Uni-plane 1934

by Gabriel Stern

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By now, as you probably assumed, we are well into the foggiest regions of scratch-building.  Not only there are no kits, but there are also no plans or three-views.  Fortunately a few images can be grabbed here and there, and, most important, fellow modelers can guide you when the light becomes too dim.
To say that the Johnson’s Uni-plane of 1934 was once offered by his builder to a hamburger company to make flying advertisement will completely make the case. The builder, though, couldn’t: due to an unfortunate crash upon take off -one in a series of them, if I may add- sponsorship was unplugged.
At a mere 14 feet span (about 4.27 meters) massive it is not, but oozes charm. A Church Marathon of 42 hp took the plane to the air, but since in its first incarnation it had only control in two axis (no ailerons), it was extremely difficult to make it stay there. Further development included a single vertical tail and the missing ailerons, but this lovely machine stubbornly refused to stay aloft. It made, though, a series of straight-line long hops and eventually –err, after some crashes- reached plane’s heaven, wherever that may be.
Some info can be consulted at
http://aerofiles.com/_j.html looking under the plane’s name.  

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Given the above-mentioned conspicuous absence of plans, the modeling approach for this one was rather simple, trying to capture an almost decent resemblance while not complicating matters a lot. Or even a bit.
While on the subject of building, I would like to make a call using this wide forum to manufacturers, inventors and entrepreneurs in general for the case of the decals. Boyz and Girlz, we need to invent something that doesn’t look like a layer of translucent pancake on the model surface, or something that doesn’t force us to incur in elaborate alchemies just to make those *&%&--## registration numbers/images blend easily on the surface.
 

Oh, behold the strange shape of the Uni-plane! Any resemblance with the “Voyager” of “Star Trek” or the nose of the “Seaview” from “Voyage to the bottom of the sea” is a mere coincidence.
The (not so much) flying hamburger is another proud member of a long lineage of airborne food items like the Lee-Richards annular wing –aka flying doughnut-, Charles Zimmerman’s “flying pancakes”, B. I. Cheranovsky’s “flying croissants” and so forth.
With this one, the expression “piece o’cake” reaches new heights.

Enjoy!

Gabriel 

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Photos and text © by Gabriel Stern