Rubber Powered Model Airplanes: Comprehensive Building & Flying Basics, Plus Advanced Design-Your-Own Instruction (Don Ross)

I bought this book for my son after we had already built a solid collection of rubber band-powered kit planes. While the majority of the information in the book is timeless many of the products, suppliers, tools and other bits of advice are no longer relevant or available to purchase. This is hardly shocking when you consider the limited number of people who are into flying homebuilt model planes that do not have any electronics in them. So you can get over this with a bit of internet sleuthing but it is difficult for younger folks to wade through so it's definitely a book to be used with adult supervision and assistance.

Good for learning or for advancing building techniques.I purchased this book after struggling to understand Aerodynamics. I learn by doing and this book helped. Instead of first giving the reader theory, this book starts the reader off by having them build a simple rubber band power plane. Then having the reader build another more advanced rubber band powered plane; all within the first hand full of chapters. Along the way you can't avoid learning the theory.I haven't built all the planes contained in the book, they get more challenging as You go along, but I highly recommend this book.You have to carefully read the building instructions but it's all there.

Anyone that is interested in building and flying balsa/tissue aircraft should have this book near their workbench. Great illustrations and information that are a must to anyone building and flying free flight model airplanes.

This book is chock full of hints for both beginner and expert alike, but as many have mentioned here, it desperately could use some form of organization -- especially an INDEX! Aside from the book being an authority on rubber-motor aircraft modeling, it's highly dated.Still, some editing could have helped-- the book is all over the place, providing tips on landing gear, wings etc. across different places in the book. Even though I've only built about two airplanes, any modeler would appreciate a good reference that they can flip open for advice on a particular part of their build. Not something you can easily do with this book.I'm sure modelers everywhere would welcome a modern version of the book, as websites, YouTube videos and forums for this fun craft are often scattershot as well.

Eh, there are a lot of books out there on model airplane building. I guess I had a preconceived notion that this book would provide more detail to custom type scratch builds. It doesnt. While it does provide useful information as to practices involved with scratch or kit builds, it does not provide much detail.In other words, to read this book while having in your mind you want to build an airplane.. reading this book will give you maybe the kind of information someone in the hobby could give you while sitting on a park bench.

Excellent information! Exactly the type of book I was hoping for. Invaluable resource nowadays, when most of what is sold are ready to fly.

Very few books I have read on this subject simply toss you into the hobby like this one. It is truly a "Full Immersion" technique, as the first chapter takes you through, step by step, on building your first Rubber Powered Model Airplane. You will be done in a few hours and you will have a model that floats lazily upward then dreamily back to Earth. From there you will increase the complexity of the models before long you will be taking on large scale rubber scale models. If you have even a passing interest in model planes, you need this book.

This is a great book when starting to build and fly rubber powered flying model airplanes. The book is mainly about building model planes. Gives basic building techniques through how to carve props. A super reference book. I gave my 1992 copy away recently so this is a replacement copy for me. Join the Academy of Model Aeronautics and the National Free Flight Society and get involved in a great hobby.

Excellent! Very detailed old school information for everthing you'd like to know qbout building and flying rubber powered model planes, especially in this era where Governments are more and more regulating and criminalising the hobby. This could be the last section of the hobby that doesn't require mandatory tracking of the hobbyists actions.The only criticism is the lack of pictures; there are some but otherwise the descriptions are very text heavy, so this book will probably exclude those who can't concentrate for more than a dozen words before giving up.

It could do with being a larger page book - maybe it was in the first edition as some of the drawings are hard to read. There is a complete absence of theory and a lot of the practical stuff is very cursory . On the other hand there is a lot of sensible advice in it that will save many people from making dangerous mistakes. As a general inro its very good and makes one want to read a lot more detailed stuff.

Great little book if you getting into modle planes .

Book one and two are great reads full of information ,perfect to make successful models,use for reference,must have for your bookshelves.

plenty of sound advice, detail, with practical knowledge to support the beginner from an experienced individual who knows what heis doing