Wildflyer

For the past few years our local clubs get together and have a Winter Build Challenge. To enter you must build a kit or from plans or your own design. It must be primarily wood construction, No ARF's or foam planes.


We start on Oct. 1 and the maiden flight get together is the first Saturday in June.


We get support from many companies in the form of prizes and gifts. It's done to promote balsa building and teach the craftsmanship required to build a good model.

Many clubs across the country are doing the same.

In my picture, those chunks of lumber are balsa, they were used to build a bulkhead in a private fishing boat's storage hold to meet some rule in an area of Alaska fishing, many years ago. Our friend that owned the boat gave my dad and I some of the wood when he tore out the temp bulkhead. I have a bandsaw with a resaw blade and it is working quite well to make sheets. It is not contest grade balsa but a lot of it is very usable. The surprise is that there is a knot in one piece, it is as hard as the densest oak I have ever seen. Almost like it's petrified. I am going to cut it out and make some small thing out of it.