A special message from Allan Laycock …
You will all have received the MAAA President’s (Tim Nolan) Christmas Best Wishes on 24 December 2021 and embedded in this message was a short video clip about the fact that the MAAA is encouraging all clubs to hold a special event to celebrate Hazel Sig’s special milestone (the video message from Tim Nolan is embedded below for anyone who missed it). Hazel was instrumental in bringing many model airplane kits into the world including Australia. SIG operated out of Iowa in the USA from the mid-1960s and I think may still have some kits and equipment for sale today. They were a powerhouse in aeromodelling in the 70’s and 80’s and produced many, many kits both simple and complex in free flight and control line, radio in Pattern, Scale, trainers and sport. I have attached a link to site (below) that gives a lot of detail about the SIG Company. There is also the message from the MAAA President for your info in case you missed it. I believe that the Namadgi Sport Flyers Club Inc. is able to Celebrate this milestone and will be able to go back to the President of the MAAA and say that we celebrated Hazel Sig’s 100th Birthday in style.
I have chosen a beginner’s small glider kit called a SIG ‘Flip’ (small plan above) of 14” span for the event on the 27thFebruary. This model comprises only 6 pieces of balsa, nose weight and a small piece of wire for a hook. The original was a chuck glider – you had to throw it with your arm. With older members at Namadgi not having such an arm anymore an alternative is provided by a rubber band catapult launching system – this too will be provided along with a dihedral gauges, some super glue and kicker in the kits I have produced. I will make 20 ‘KITs’ of the Flip and that is 6 parts of balsa cut to size and will just need to be glued together, the catapult hook pin inserted and glued, a nose weight attached (also provided), a couple of tweaks eg left rudder for right handers and vice versa and go fly. The kits will be much quicker way to build the glider and will only take no more than 10 mins or so to complete.
This will kit is provided by me at no cost to the Club but a donation of $10 for a ‘Celebration Flip Kit’ is required in order to participate in the event and is levied ‘just to help the club coffers’. Those who prefer to build their own glider from the plan on the Club’s web-site will not receive the Commemorative Certificate that those who obtain a kit will. There will be a mass launch of Flips after the sausage sizzle. BTW This glider is also good for grandpas and grandkids after the day.
If any member has a SIG model or even a broken wing, kit box etc please bring these along on the day.
Come join the fun on 27 February,
Allan Laycock
If you want to have a look at the Flip the pdf is below:
Allan adds that “the small size Flip plan needs to be enlarged by 220% or 2.2 times and tiled to print on A4 sheets of paper in order to provide a full sized plan, please. In order to check your tiled work the span of the full sized glider is 14”.
If you want to print the plan and then tile the individual sheets together to make a full size plan, open the pdf in Adobe Acrobat Reader, click the Print option and select the “Poster” option which will/should automaticaly rescale the pdf to full size and then spread it across the correct number of individual A4 pages. If you are uncertain how to do this then check out this page .