Category: Uncategorized Page 1 of 3

HOLY COW, SKYSTERS!  Did you realize that Guillows is celebrating 100 years in business this year, 2026?  Can you believe it?  I bet every one of us has built at least ONE Guillows kit!  Well, you know what?  The Flying Aces Club is going to help them celebrate by featuring Guillows models at the 2026 FAC Nats!  Our FAC-GHQ staff has been busy hammering out the details and we finally have a great set of ways to participate.  Check these out:

Guillow’s JETSTREAM Event – you can fly your UNMODIFIED JetStream (light sanding and your choice of rubber permitted) any of the three days of the contest.  Fly as often as you like and submit your high scores.  The highest single flight time earns a Kanone!

On the last day (Saturday), there will be a Guillow’s Scale Flying Horde event!  Get those Scale Gumband Guillows out on the field and we’ll all launch them together in one final Mass Launch of the Nats!

There are some distinctions to be made:  there are Guillows “Classic” (pre-plastic, old-style structure) and Guillows “Modern” (plastic parts, modern formers, etc.) – you can read all about the specific rules in the following files that are straight from GHQ.  But here’s the basic skinny:

1. Guillows Classic – These are your early kit plans with typical “dime-scale-like” structures.  Build these per plan with the normal FAC mods available and fly them in whatever category they fit in , such as: Dime, Two Bit, WWI, etc.  These will NOT have special awards since you don’t need to do anything different than you normally do.
2. Guillows Modern – These are the kits we all know and “love” – those heavy weights with all the plastic.  Guess what?  Build them all like Guillows intended!  Use the kit wood, use the kit plastic (including the cowling!) and fly them in whatever event they fit in.  Now there’s some special rules that GHQ has created to make thing fair and interesting, so check out the rule files below.  Maybe you won’t win the event, but don’t give up hope!  The Highest Scoring All-Stock Guillows Scale Job in each event will earn its own Kanone!

The 2026 Nats will bring in an event they’ve been flying at WestFAC for years:  CARRIER LAUNCH!  Of course a carrier launch requires an ROG.  These carrier events are not restricted to Guillows, but your new Guillows built-to-plan models can surely participate here, too (if the original plane was designed for carrier use – see the rule sheet)!

Lastly (there’s more?), there will be a Guillows Best in Show Award for you to shoot for!  And, with any luck, Guillows might send some factory people down to help us celebrate their 100 years!

Now here’s the nitty-gritty details:  see these rule sheets that are hot off the presses for all the specifics.  Don’t try to mess with the intent – you know what they mean.  Follow the rules, following your own honor code and we’ll all have a Guillows hoot!

OOPS!  I forgot!  You say you can’t attend the Nats?  Well, we didn’t forget about you, bunky!  There a Guillows Scale POSTAL contest, too!  And it is open to anyone* anywhere – even international flyers!

* – attending the Nats disqualifies you from the Postal contest.

RULE SHEETS (print ’em off so you can refer to them anytime!):

• Guillows Fever – basic rules – get the PDF file HERE
• Guillows Nats FAQ – GHQ details to help you build and fly all legal-like – grab the file HERE
• Carrier Event Info – includes how to plug in acceptable landing gear – grab the file HERE
• Guillows Scale Postal Rules – get the file HERE

Last month (December 2022), there was a discussion on Facebook regarding the Chambermaid.  The modeler was asking what color was acceptable for the Chambermaid.  Being the helpful sort (?), I piped in and said that the Chambermaid is often modeled with coloring ranging from white to cub yellow and that “records” state is was a cream color.

James Vliet (an authority on F1 racers) provided an image as proof of color – and we should likely accept it as gospel:

As we can see, this is more yellow than we traditionally think of “cream”.  James also showed a Berryloid color brochure that showed a light lemon yellow called “Diana Cream” – so we should expand our thoughts of cream color to include light yellow.  After all, butter used to be more yellow (not margarine) and cream probably was, too (since butter is made from cream).  In fact, more natural and organic egg yolks are much richer in color (orange) than the yellow that we are accustomed to.  Our mega-processing of food has changed things for us.

All of this talk of the Chambermaid and its original fabric swatch made me remember back in the dawn of the internet (1997), there had been an online discussion regarding the Pearson-Williams “Mr Smoothie” and “what color was it, really?”  I cannot recall the hows and whys of the discussion, but I dug around in my archives and found some details.  The discussion was on the old Free Flight Mailing List.  I saved the image and pertinent details and here they are:

Keep in mind that colors change in photographs, scanning, and reproduction on the web.

Lastly, not so much of a color definition (as this plane is not much in question), is a swatch I have in my personal collection that I obtained from the estate of an air racing historian:

These are photos, swatches, and the face of the fuel gauge from the crash of Johnny Livingston’s Cessna CR-3.  He bailed out of this plane somewhere near Columbus, Ohio in August 1933.  The plane was only six months old and had never lost a race (about half a dozen races).  He couldn’t fully extend the landing gear and jumped (who know why he didn’t land the plane – maybe the gear was partially extended and would have tripped a belly landing?)  Regardless, a life-saving decision was made and that was that.

So there you have it – three fabric swatches from long-gone racers.

Do you fly JetCat?  How well do you fly it?  Are you on the Sierra Hotel list?

JetCat is a fun event.  Well maybe I should say “fun”.  It is an easy event to fly, it doesn’t take much time to prepare, and you can generally fly it in a smaller space than many of our other events.  But it is not easy to fly it well and it can be frustrating.

It is also a pretty simple event:  choose any full-scale jet-powered aircraft you like, build it out of sheet wood, build it in profile, and make a hand-held rubber catapult and go fly!  The sheet wood can be built up, if you like, and you can also do a full body, as opposed to profile.

Personally, I have spent more time on developing and adjusting JetCat plans and models than any other type of model.  I often go through at least two, maybe three or more prototypes before I have a model that flies in a reasonable manner.  I consider “success” to be a model that can fly at least twenty seconds regularly.

Don DeLoach set up an Unofficial FAC Recognition for great JetCat flights.  What is a “great” JetCat flight?  Any official flight over ONE MINUTE.  In FAC circles, one minute (in our rubber categories) is probably a notable milestone for newbies.  But in JetCat is it VERY difficult to hit one minute.  I have been flying JetCat since about 2014 – that’s eight years – and I have hit 40+ seconds a handful of times, and my high time is 57 seconds, but never 1 minute or more.  And I fly a lot – I have 69 recorded 1st, 2nd, or 3rd results in JetCat in those eight years.

Anyway – Sierra Hotel – it is a significant achievement.  Last night, Don sent me the latest entry into the Sierra Hotel group:  Rick Pangell.  Most FAC’ers probably don’t know Rick; here’s what I know.  He’s a long-time and dedicated Free Flighter.  He is the editor of the Magnificent Mountain Men (Colorado) newsletter.  And he has been the AMA Free Flight Nats photographer for many years.  And he’s a nice guy, too!

Don sent along this photo of Rick with his P-59 (a popular JetCat subject) – which is a LARGE JetCat; Don says it has a 20″ wingspan, at least.  He reports that it is a real floater.  Being that large, it doesn’t get up super high, but floats “every bit as good as an AMA catapult glider”.  Rick recorded a 63-second flight yesterday (16 Oct 2022).  Welcome to the Sierra Hotel, Rick!

P.S. you can find the Sierra Hotel list HERE.  Check out those flight times!!!

Rick Pangell and his Sierra Hotel P-59 JetCat (DeLoach photo)