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Remington-Burnelli RB-1, 1920, Scratch-built 1/72


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From 13 years ago, another model of a vintage plane that precognized the future:

 

Now, there you have an airliner. Almost an ocean liner, one could say. And, ladies and gentlemen, this was 1920.

32 passengers, mind you. Mister Vincent Burnelli developed a whole family of planes around the lifting body concept, -used much, much later in more contemporary machines. Its earlier interventions in the design field contributed to planes like the Lawson Airliner and the Continental KB-1, amazing creations on their own.

Structural soundness, safety and many other qualities of the plane were sought after with the rational use of advanced design concepts. In a way, the “lifting body” is related to the flying wing, both searching for minimum drag, efficiency and structural advantages. Lifting bodies will appear much later, among other examples, in the NASA experimental planes that studied atmospheric re-entering vehicles. A similar line was pursued by French designers: De Monge (his De Monge 7.4 in 1924), Dyle-Bacalan (D.B. 70 around 1925) and Carpentier (C-1 of 1935).

There is a wealth of material on the Net, so if you feel attracted to these types and concept do your homework and you will find many interesting stories and the planes and men that created them.

For the purpose of this article, I would just say that this story starts in 1920, when Burnelli got associated with Mr. Remington (hence the “RB” denomination), and that there were two version of the plane, the RB-1 and the RB-2, but RB-1 got reincarnated at least once. Here we deal with RB-1's second life. You could have tons of fun trying to sort out which is which, as many of the photos on the Net are mislabelled, and some minor modifications were performed in the machines, even in the same versions. Here some clues: look at the wheels, vertical tail surfaces, engines, tapering –or not- of the aft fuselage and the protruding –or not- ailerons. And the best part as always is when sources contradict each other.

 

The model:

Boy, what a corrugated slab! It was love at first sight. A long haul enterprise, without doubt, proven by the fact that this model went on an off the building board for more than a year. After I reached the three hundred parts mark I decided that I was better off not counting them. Although it seems hard work, I can assure you that it is much worse than what it seems.

All in all quite an adventure, including the hundreds of genuflections and push-ups performed to recover minute parts from the carpet, which rendered going to the gym redundant.

 And I’ll throw my gauntlet at the feet of the ones that dare to call it ugly.

 

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Well, you've surpassed yourself this time, Moa. I love it...and the entertaining background description!

 

Is those really scale corrugations, or have you suggested it with (very neatly) drawn lines? Either way, it looks the part.

 

As you might have gathered, I've become quite a fan of your work. Keep it up!

Jon

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22 minutes ago, Jonners said:

Is those really scale corrugations, or have you suggested it with (very neatly) drawn lines? Either way, it looks the part.

Hi Jon

Those are "corrugated" styrene sheets by either Evergreen or Plastruct (I have both and don't recall which ones I used there).

They come in a variety of types and sizes.

I have used them some times to represent corrugations on models (scratchbuilt 1/72 Junkers K-16 below):

56.JPG

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That's the best one so far and with a very interesting back story. 

No way could it be called ugly, it was just an adventurous aeroplane of an adventurous time. Quite appealing really. 

Beautifully crafted as usual. Please keep them coming. 

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9 hours ago, Moa said:

Those are "corrugated" styrene sheets by either Evergreen or Plastruct (

Thanks Moa; I haven't seen those before but I will look out for some. Another schoolday...

 

You've got some cracking results, and the K-16 looks the business.

Jon

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What can I add? That is a truly first class piece of scratch building - but no wonder it took a year...! The design looks very futuristic as you write, but it has a certain appeal to it in spite of the odd shape. But then I really like odd shaped aircraft!

 

P

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Another fine lecture in aviation history, and what a result !!!

I wonder why none of these inventive concepts broke through, probably the mood was too conservative then.

 

Thanks Moa for showing all these little wonder models to us !!

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1 hour ago, occa said:

I wonder why none of these inventive concepts broke through, probably the mood was too conservative then.

 

Thanks Moa for showing all these little wonder models to us !!

I think that is probably the main reason.

And regarding sharing the models, I am having a great time with what all post here too.

Cheers

 

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Another cracker Mr Moa. A very interesting aeroplane and one that led to Burnelli developing others along the line. And what an aerofoil!! I presume you wrapped the wing around some curved object and used hot water or a hair drier to get the pronounced shape? I have an Airmodel vacform Cunliffe-Owen OA-1 model started in the stash somewhere that started out as a Burnelli design.

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4 hours ago, Horatio Gruntfuttock said:

Another cracker Mr Moa. A very interesting aeroplane and one that led to Burnelli developing others along the line. And what an aerofoil!! I presume you wrapped the wing around some curved object and used hot water or a hair drier to get the pronounced shape? I have an Airmodel vacform Cunliffe-Owen OA-1 model started in the stash somewhere that started out as a Burnelli design.

Thanks Horatio who builds models of planes designed by Horatios.

I used spars and ribs, that is how I often deal with the issue:

 

Burnelli:

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Rohrbach Roland:

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I'm starting to wonder if you inhabit a different parallel universe to me. It would certainly explain why you keep coming up with aircraft that I didn't know existed.

 

As ever, I would like to see more of your marvellous creations to stare in wide-eyed wonder at.

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Thanks for the exploded Burnelli view - it gives me an idea of how to approach my Cunliffe-Owen kit. I have had this for yonks and have no idea if it is available anywhere but is quite a substantial kit and probably the company's largest kit ( I think it is a Canadian company).

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