Teaching young lads about military history
I know it's not an aeromodelling site - but this does have a military aviation theme.
Young twelve year old Tartare was complaining last night.
"Dad, I don't want to make that kitset of the Stuka, I want to make a jet."
The Stuka had sat at the bottom of a pile of kitsets, and he was clearing the backlog.
"Are you sure?" says I. "It was actually quite an interesting plane I think. Let's find out some more."
So I sit there on his bed on my iPhone as he's gluing the thing together and learn something myself as I read aloud from Wikipedia:
"It had automatic hydraulic dive brakes that would pull the plane out of a dive on bomb release, even if the pilot blacked out through G-LOC.
And - get this - those Luftwaffe pilots pulled 6.5g's when they pulled up from a constant speed dive."
He looks at me. "You mean they were pulling fast-jet type G's?"
"Yep."
He spent the rest of the night finishing the plane.
And I imagined what it must have been like to fly one of those things.
Off to get Hans-Ulrich Rudel's book off Kindle now.
And that's why - despite the connotations of geekery - I think making models is a bloody good way of teaching young fellas about aviation history.