Chet Mohn, New Cumberland, Pennsylvania
“This was a lot more work than I wanted to do, but I’m happy with the results,” Chet says. He gave Revell’s 1/39 scale Wright Flyer a good going-over to modify it for the military version. He writes: “The wings were remade with a tapered edge. They did not have to be bent as they were much more rigid. I replaced the cradle with two chairs (the aircraft could be steered from both). The engine started life as a cluster of bombs; I modified it from there to replicate an in-line four-cylinder.” Chet didn’t stop there, either. He scratchbuilt a larger fuel tank and radiator, added struts and moved the kit’s, made new propellers to model metal rather than wood, scratchbuilt the frame to move the rudder and elevator farther from the wing, and ran the rigging according to drawings supplied by the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. “I used the launch rail from the kit,” he says, “but it is attached to a tower with a weight that powered a catapult. These were scratchbuilt, too.”