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Road to Top Gun — Chuck Hamilton’s Douglas SDB-3 Dauntless Dive-Bomber

GSNadmin

Staff member
Chuck Hamilton from Bremen, IN will be competing for the first time at the 2017 Top Gun Scale Invitational. Chuck have been preparing myself since he got back in to the hobby 15 years ago and he’ll be flying his beautiful SDB-3 Dauntless.



Every model he has built in some way ties to his father and this Ziroli designed SDB-3 Dauntless is one of them. He and his father were at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo in MI when they brought in the original aircraft that this model is based on. While looking over the newly acquired SBD, which was recovered from Lake Michigan, (with all the lake growth still attached), his father told him the story of his best friend being a rear gunner on a SBD during WWII. At that moment, I knew I had to build one.



The Ziroli SBD has typical wood construction and is nicely powered by Zenoah GT-80 twin cylinder gas engine.The model is 2.4 in. to the foot scale and has a wingspan of 100 inches. It is 78 inches long and has 1,750 square inches of wing area.





It features Robart retracts, a Spectrum DX18 radio system for guidance, a fully detailed cockpit and is painted with latex house paint including all markings, weathering etc.The model has been flying at local fly-ins now for over 3 years.





Chuck says the love for modeling goes back to his father who was in the infancy of RC and scale military aircraft and modeling has kept them close.

Photos by Chuck and Dino DiGeorgio.



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