Across the Joeverse: USS FLAGG 2.0

Across the Joeverse: USS FLAGG 2.0: The GI JOE USS FLAGG is the largest playset known to all toys.  Its simplicity and excessive 1980s style all in one fell swoop.

I have found myself thinking about G.I. Joe action figures and play sets this Christmas season.  I used to have the original USS Flagg carrier back in the 1980s.  I ended up giving it away to a friend's young son since I was moving and had no place to store such a huge set.

I still focus mainly on the 1/6th scale stuff, but a friend has started to do some test filming using Power Team Elite action figures and vehicles.  I let him used my UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter for one of his filming tests and I liked the result.  I even have purchased from Big Lots this date, the Chinese Zhi-9 (Z-9) army utility helicopter (it is a license-built version of the Aérospatiale (now Eurocopter) AS 365N Dauphin II.

While sitting at the local MacDonalds to use their free Wi-Fi, I decided to do some websearches on various items including on the above mentioned USS Flagg.  On the Joeverse blog, I found his August 13, 2011 entry and linked that posting to here.

The next step (for me that is), is to carry this sickness to the next level and make it a FULLY functional (boat) model that can be radio control or let someone ride on their back under a quick release flight deck - under manual control.

And just for the record, a model of the USS Nimitiz would be about 65 feet in length.

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Ref.
1.  Across the Joeverse blog.  August 13, 2011. ( http://acrossthejoeverse.blogspot.com/2011/08/uss-flagg-20.html ).  image from that site.
2.  image of Power Team Elite toys such as the Zhi-9/AS 365N Dauphin II (hobbyshop.webs.com).

Bryon's Striking Back Expo Hardware

I have always wanted to visited the Bryon Expo to see the Striking Back show. Saddly, that show stopped over a decade ago. But lots and lots of rc model pilots remembered that show. You can see the Striking Back production on YouTube, but here are some videos below (and links) that showed the huge model aircraft carriers, the smaller boats that cruised the flooded driveway when the show was underway. And finally, the Bryon hangar where the models were built and prepped for the show.

Back in my youth, the summer between my 8th and 9th grade years, I stayed up late at night writing out in longhand in what turned out to be two 5-subject spiral notebooks and thus my second novel (I had done the same thing the previous summer). It centered on RC model airplanes and re-fighting World War Two in miniature. Those aircraft carriers (that you can see in the video here) were about the size that I wrote about way back when.

Now I am 50 years old and think back on the impossibility of being able to do what I wrote about back in my youth. Take landing a model airplane. As a pilot of a model airplane, it takes lots of practice to be able to land on the same spot all the time. Add to that wind conditions, actually having to fly a 10 pound model airplane right at yourself (even if you were protected by a net in my story). Now days, you can have micro cameras and via tele-link systems; you could actually be in the cockpit of your model airplane flying around. Always wanted to be a U.S. Navy pilot, but didn't like the idea of joining the Navy to do it? Well, now you can.

Then there is the final link below of someone who actually went so far to make a function RC model airplane aircraft carrier.

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Ref.

1. USS Hornet and Akagi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQnuAvqM2zE).

2. Background ship at Bryon site (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTQKH5AKryw).

3. Bryon behnd the scenes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sb9CVsXahA).

4. RC Aircraft Carrier KARE 11 News - April 2, 2007. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKGV-0-74FI).

5. Nitroplanes.com (http://www.nitroplanes.com/88e-camera-mount-system.html).

6. Nitroplanes.com/FPV gadgets (http://www.nitroplanes.com/gadgets.html).