Catching "Tepee Tepee" next to our crew hotel
Shot this vid yesterday on my Kona layover with the guys from the Kona R/C Flyers. They have a great club at the old airport not far from our hotel. They use the last section of runway at the far end of the field every Sunday morning. After that, they usually go fly slope north of the new airport at a place called “The Cinder Cone”. Had a great time and many thanks to Mark and the guys for letting me tag along.
Finally made a real video of the 747/Shuttle. Tom Murray shot some awesome footage as always. We did a flight of 3 Shuttle carrying 747s (two were Scott Todd’s profile depron birds) and two in-flight releases of the Shuttle on my big one. Scott flew the Shuttle on these flights and I flew the 747. Everything went flawlessly until my last approach when the plastic bracket that holds the fan shroud to the plywood stick mount shattered. The vid shows this up close and personal as I had to make a forced landing about 15 feet from where Tom was filming. Had a great time with many thanks to Scott Todd, Tom Murray, Geoff Burke and Clay Balser for all their help today. -Mike
My Grandad, CJ "Shank" Shanklin before his retirement flight in 1981. He turned 90 today and has the distinction of being the oldest Texas International Airlines pilot still living.
For my Grandad’s 90th birthday we went out for BBQ and a museum outing with my mother’s family here in Dallas. The Frontiers of Flight Museum is located on Love Field and has a fantastic amount of Texas-centric aviation stuff. The Braniff exhibit is awesome and is THE definitive collection on the planet. Texas International, Muse Air and Southwest are represented as well but the Braniff memorabilia steals the show. The BI 747 SP pictured above piqued my interest as a future depron project for sure!
My Grandad,"Shank", Mom, and myself posing in front of the BI Concorde model. Just slightly larger than the RC Braniff Concorde I built last year.
The haboob force winds we were expecting that I talked about in a previous post finally arrived, and they weren’t f****n’ around. I knocked an outer wing panel off on my last landing as I got knocked around pretty hard in the rotors whippin’ up at the lip of the ridge. We had a blast though, really a lot of fun. Now, time to scrub the dirt out of my sandblasted, bad self.
No vultures or hawks were injured in the production of this film.
-Mike
These pics are from a Seaplanes and Tecate party at my house a few weeks ago. Geoff’s pal Kota Inishi was in town visiting from Japan. They flew together at JAL and Kota is still an F/O there. We flew seaplanes til dusk on my lake then took it up to Loco to finish the night. It’s got all the makings of an R/C foreign exchange program for airline pilots! See ya in Japan, Kota! -Mike
The forecasted gale force winds for Phoenix didn’t materialize today so Scott and I were able to test the Shuttle and it’s release system. It went flawlessly. Scott flew the shuttle for a total of 5 in-flight releases. The Shuttle flew great and the SCA 747 didn’t break a sweat only requiring a few clicks of down trim to compensate for the built in incidence of the Shuttle. We will have a YouTube vid out soon…
With Scott's profile 747 SCA visible on the ceiling
Just built the Orbiter for the SCA 747 while I was in Dallas for my sister-in-law’s birthday. Using Scott Todd’s vacu-formed nose and 
pod pieces and from his short kit, I built it in two days out of 2mm and 6mm white depron. All up weight with radio and 1320 mah 3 cell is just under 1 pound. Yesterday, Scott and I started work on the attachment structure and release mechanism. The next 2 days here in Phoenix are forecast to be windy as hell so the flight video will have to wait until I get back from my 3 day Kona trip that begins Saturday.
Admiring the super low tech dowel/lite ply mating structure at Scott Todd World HQ
