A View from Broadway

The Pink Lady will carry the reworked "Boris" Russian engine in D Speed. See the article on reworking Boris for Speed. All photos by Ken Burdick.

Boris' ride

By Ken Burdick

Yes folks, it’s true.

Boris has a pimped out ride, with gangsta whitewalls and spinnas. We be stylin' with this ride so don’t nobody be getting no jive on the upholstery.

What, ME worry?

Life for this old -school speed plane (the Hippy ((Marty Higgs)) calls it) the commie lady started out as a chunk of basswood, some balsa blocks and an excellent pair of aluminum wings from Partner Products. The full-size plans were also from Partner who has made plans for all sizes of the elegant Pink Lady design. A scale modeler and speed flyer I know claims the D pink lady is the most proportionate of the entire line.

Recipe for a Pink Lady

I always wanted one but was intimidated by the work involved to build it right. I built a B Pink Lady once. It flew great but looked like -- well, it didn’t look good, so maybe I’m trying to make amends for the ugly duckling.

The Pink-o Lady for our Soviet-made motor, sports a Fast Hippie torque unit as well as control horn and nose ski-doo. All most excellent workmanship.

The wings are as I said before from Partner Products, the pan is an old Harter's C pan that I had. The project originally began as an old-time ship for a handmade .65 I have that was hand made during the Western Associated Modelers days in California. It was made by Frank Lampson., and while this would make a fun nostalgia ship, Boris is a better choice and makes for a more interesting project.

It wasn’t too difficult to refit fat boy into the crutch as the gigantic Lampson engine is carved from a block of aluminum and is almost as big as Boris.

The Lampson engine.

Fitting Fat Boy

This picture was taken after we put Boris on a diet and his waist size went down from 2” to 1.80”.

The following are just pictures from various stages of construction.

Now I can focus on getting Boris up to speed. (I’m not above a cheap pun.)

I have obtained an OS .65 rear drum that with the help of Doug Galbreath will eventually fit into our Soviet project, but it will take some precision machine work, as it “almost” fits. Soon we’ll be running Boris around the block!

Enjoy the pictures.

Kenny-b

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This page was upated Feb. 27, 2017