[Don Boose]

This is my first attempt to build an aircraft engine. I’ve been impressed with the beautiful engines built by Carl (Golden Bear), Mark (Shrike), Glen (birder), Mike Krol (GreMir), and several others of the world-class model builders in the Forum, and most recently by the magnificent Wright R-2600 built by Mike (Bomarc) as part of his North American PBJ-1H Mitchell build and currently featured as POTW (Orlik PBJ-1H Mitchell http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/p...16-2009-a.html.

I am a very mediocre model builder at best and have been on a hiatus for the past couple of months due teaching demands. So I decided to look for something fairly simple as a way to build my hand skills and to learn about how these engines go together. I had been intrigued by the Spirit of Saint Louis thread started by Dan (dansls1) (http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/found-internet/1522-canon-spirit-st-louis.html) and continued in a separate thread by Leif Ohlsson after I sidetracked the discussion by raising questions about metallic paper. Leif provided an assessment of the various Spirit models and found many valuable Spirit resources: http://www.papermodelers.com/forum/aviation/1554-spirit-st-louis-some-considerations.html

Two weeks ago, while visiting the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia with Lil and oldest grandson, 14-year-old Don Boose IV, I bought a couple of copies of the Peter Zorn Spirit of Saint Louis Dover book. Leif’s judgment is: “Unfortunately, that model is far from today's standards as far as scale goes, so it belongs to the memorabilia shelf.” I agree, but still found it to be an attractive-looking model and decided that the simplified Wright J-5A would be a good way to test the waters.

Meanwhile, I have also purchased the GreMir Rafal Ciesielski Spirit and intend to buy the WAK kit, as well. These provide some good reference material and may provide the basis for a future Spirit build.

Don