Model Aircraft

A model aircraft may be a small unmanned aircraft or, within the case of a scale model, a reproduction of an existing or imaginary aircraft. Civilian Aircraft Models are divided into two basic groups: flying and non-flying. Non-flying models also are termed static, display, or shelf models.

Flying aircraft models range from simple toy gliders made from balsa and foam polystyrene to powered scale models made up of materials like balsa, wood, plastic, Styrofoam, carbon fiber, or fiberglass and are sometimes skinned with tissue paper or mylar covering. Some are often very large, especially when wont to research the flight properties of a proposed full-scale design.

Static models usually range from toys in which bearing metal or plastic to highly accurate and detailed models that are produced for the museum to set it into the display and which require thousands of hours of the skilled worker. Many models are usually available in kit form, simply made from injection-molded polystyrene.

Aircraft manufacturers and researchers also make structure models unable to free flight, used for testing and development of latest designs. Sometimes only part of the aircraft is modeled.

The most common sort of manufacture for kits is injection molded polystyrene plastic, using steel molds. Now-days, this takes place mostly in countries like China, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Eastern Europe. The injection molding method allows a high degree of precision and automation not available within the other manufacturing processes used for models but the molds are expensive and need large production runs to cover the cost of making them. Smaller and cheaper runs are often through with cast copper molds, and a few companies do even smaller runs using cast resin or rubber molds, but the sturdiness is of a lower standard than carbon steel and labor costs are higher.