A & A / Nosen - anybody know?

I see them on Ebay from time to time, usually they are selling a few P-51 kits or a 1/4 scale Champ or Citabria. I do not know why they went this way, makes it a pain to get one. Wish they would go back to direct sales or through the major distributors/shops etc.

The kits are decidedly old in design and construction but they do fly extremely well. I still miss my 1/4 scale Citabria that I lost in a crash several years ago, it was one of the nciest flying planes I have ever sen and/or flown. I have a spare kit in the shop, need to build another one of these days.

Brian Allen

Cutting kits is his part time job. When he gets ahead a few he sells them. When he wants a few days off, he takes them. The kits are cut in runs..once he sets up for a model he cuts kits for only that model. He then changes his setup and cuts something different. All in all, I'm glad they are mostly still available. I bought my Mr. Mulligan kit here on this NG from a fellow. An ad on most of the forums and or e-bay will get you what you want reasonably quick. The Jenny and Gere Sport are harder to come by.

The one kit of the 1/4 scale Champ I picked up on E-Bay a while back (about a year ago) was really bad. The die crushed wood was completly unusable. Luckily, it is mostly sticks. I ended up scratching out the stuff I needed from wood I had or got from the LHS. It seems thier tooling is getting quite old. This was my 3rd or 4th A&A kit I have built. The others were much better.

The kits I had from the late 80's early 90's were much better. Maybe that is why they are using e-bay to sell what they have. I tried to contact them about a gear set for my Mr. Mulligan, but they never returned my e-mail.

Personally, I would not buy another from them until I heard that thier quality had improved.

FredD

I won't argue that their quality has slipped, but I have built half a dozen of their kits over the years and have become (by necessity) quite good at taking a box of crappy wood and making nice airplanes out of them. I have even come up with the necessary mods needed for using Quadra's on them in order for the airplanes to hold up over time. The reason I asked the original question is that I'm currently flying the 1/4 Citabria, and I also have 2 other 1/4 Citabria kits, 1 1/4 Champ kit, and 1 1/4 Gere Sport kit on the shelf. I would, however, like to find a (cheap?) 1/4 Mr. Mulligan kit as well as the big Nosen Trainer just for fun. I guess I'll have to keep an eye on Ebay...

MJC

"RedFred1" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@mb-m28.aol.com...

I will look to see if I have the plans...You would probably be better off starting from them and making your own parts anyway! I do see them pop up from time to time and you can always use the favorites feature and have the system notify you when they come up for auction. I also sell some decal sets that are cut vinyl and printed vinyl if you are interested. I can send a pic if you want to see them.

Good luck with it! FredD

I'm a Nosen collector as well. I fly a 310 and have the Champ, Citabria, 310, Mulligan, Mustang, and Trainer in kit form. I'll find me a Gere Sport one day and I may have a P-47 located now... I'm lucky to have bought my 310 some years back.. it has cowls. The Mustang is even older and includes the canopy and came with a Belt drive, 6 inch spinner and 4 blade 18 inch prop. It is fun chasing down the kits and parts...

Dean still has a couple of the original Byron kits around

on the R/C airplanes kits link in the left column, they are at the end of the list. The site isn't updated often. Fire off an email and ask.

It would be nicer if he would just print the outline of the rib and let me do the cutting. I built a few of the old Nosen kits before AA and had a lot of fun with the 'BIG' citabria. I think it sold for 70 dollars or so. Hated to build up the cowl. It did fly with a .60 but better with a .75 to .90. Center section also gave me fits but a good redesign fixed that. And it did need struts.

According to the folks around here, I was the only one crazy enough to do the built up cowl. Did you do the wheel pants too?

They also sold a kit, or was it just the plans, for a Giant Ugly Stick. Anybody who built one? Did it fly good and was the construction good too?

I did the built up cowl for mine - I don't know about the other guy. No wheel pants though. I have a set of fiberglass if I feel the need.

FredD

I've had three of them over the years some from Nosen and some from A&A. The wood and cutting was definately better in the Nosen kits. The first acrually flew on a K&B 61...very weak but managable.. crashed in the late '60's. Second on had a converted Homelite in it and flew well....sold it. The last one I built up as a Citabria Pro from pictures I got from Oskosh and powered it with a Saito 270T and later an OS120 pumper. On the 270 it was wild. One time after talking and assembling at the same time during an air show, I did a loop after takeoff and noticed that when I came out I had a lot of extra dihedral....right I forgot to attach the struts at the bottom of the fuse.... it survived. Sold it to Pete Rawlings. I now have one still in the box from A&A waiting for assembly someday. I ramble on because even if the wood is a bit crunched and the design pretty old, it is one of the truly great flying scale models. Use the fiberglass cowl, gusset the after framework with 1/32 ply if you use a gas engine, beef up the LG with 3/16 music wire, make the tail feathers removable, and use lots of aileron differential and rudder mixing. Incidentally, if you want to do a Pro I have the patterns to make the conversion. It won't look like the BUSA version but it will be right. If you want to research the Pro the designation was 8KCAB.

Phil AMA609

I almost bought the Trainer kit, but a sniper beat me to it (no complaints here, I snipe too!) but I'm still looking for one to bash into a C185. One thing I DID pick up off Ebay a while back was 1/2 scale (yes, 1/2 scale) plans for the Citabria. I bought them from the guy who built the prototype kit for A&A but they killed the project before it was ever offered as a kit. But I have the plans so I'm thinking that it could be a lot of fun with a big twin in it. Too many airplanes, so little time :-(

MJC