EXTREMELY RARE COX THIMBLE DROME PROTOTYPE "BLACK WIDOW" GAS MODEL AIRPLANE

Lodela Cox Viuda Negra

That is a cute little bugger.  

But that's a Jim Walker Firebaby fuselage right down to the forward cowl and the pilot figure.  I wonder if there was some sort of collaboration between Cox and Jim Walker.  




I have the black version too, but for some reason the pilot didn't print correctly.

Indeed it does have the appearance of the Jim Walker Fireball fuselage. This is mere speculation, but it could be that the patents on it expired. It's market was in Mexico and possibly other Latin American countries, and as such the laws there, not US would apply. And, it could also be possible that there was left over unused stock of fuselages that were put to use, or still had the molds and equipment to make more. May be a factory that once made Jim Walker's planes in Mexico, someone came up with a brilliant idea to market a plane with Cox motors and Jim's technology? Again this is sheer speculation, but it would be interesting to know more history about the plane's manufacturer.

From what I can see, one could easily come up with a reasonable retro facsimile of it based on the photos of the Jim Walker fuselage and the top view of the flying surfaces.

a betancourt, are the wings sheet balsa (may be 1/16th inch thick) with paper covering similar to some of the ready-to-fly rubber and gas powered aircraft of the 1960's and 1970's? (Comet and Top Flite aircraft come to mind.)

Thanks a betancourt and rsv1cox for the photos.

Cox had a Firebaby, the one with plastic fuselage and balsa wings. I got one of this in 1977 and was sold by Lodela Cox. At that time Cox licensed Lodela to market and sell Cox planes in Mexico.

The Viuda Negra was marketed by Lodela and used the same Firebaby fuselage and painted 1/8" balsa wings and stab, the same as the Firebaby, this plane was only sold in Mexico in the late 70´s.

This is extremely interesting.

There is no doubt that Cox licensed this to Lodela, just check out the box.  And there is no doubt the fuselage, wheels, and firewall are Jim Walker, I have rescued one, built another from scratch, and have two new in the box.  There must be a connection between Cox, Walker, and Lodela.  





Do you have a Cox Firebaby or a picture of one?

The batwing?? theme reminds me of Dad's 77 Bellanca Citabria green paint batwing theme. (white wings and fuse with green batwing paint). Seems as they "Hot Rodded" the Walker design with a cool wing design and graphics for a V2.0 repeat. Ebay pinged me a few weeks ago about a Black Widow cl model that was up for grabs. A quick peek, but I never checked back on it. Silly me.

This thread still lives.

Amazing.

Howdy folks.

This is an interesting video, it is in English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCXTPbrhu_E

Yes, I watched the whole thing.  Boils down to dollars/Pesos import fees tariffs.  Thanks for that.

If you don't mind, I'm going to build a Bat wing and horizontal stab for my black one, scallop both, paint them white and copy and apply the decal.  I just think that model is neat. The history, the connection.

Thanks for sharing.

Bob

rsv1cox wrote:Yes, I watched the whole thing.  Boils down to dollars/Pesos import fees tariffs.  Thanks for that.

If you don't mind, I'm going to build a Bat wing and horizontal stab for my black one, scallop both, paint them white and copy and apply the decal.  I just think that model is neat. The history, the connection.  

Thanks for sharing.

Bob

Bob:  me too, but I will show details in a pencil and paper drawing if it is o.k. With owner, otherwise he will have some documentation.

Happydad      

It will be interesting to see how your projects turn out, I myself will be doing the same, with balsa fuselage, to be used for flying.

Thanks,

I was able to introduce some camber into my copied wing by wetting it and rubber banding it to a wing of similar camber and letting it dry overnight.  But the fuselage has just a flat slot that tends to flatten out the camber, so it may be wasted effort.   The original has camber and dihedral but I don't know how to introduce that without cutting it and I'm not going to do that.  




I might even slightly sand the leading and trailing edges on this one.


I have no artistic ability HD so I just blew up a betancourts spider web image and will transfer that on to decal paper.  Rinky dink, but it's what I have.  I have a label maker that prints on thin clear tape and will type out something like Copy of a Cox Black Widow Airplane and fix it to the bottom of the wing.  Not that anyone would confuse it with the real thing.  

I did something similar with this wingless Testors Cosmic Wind, but his one has camber built into the fuselage that helps maintain it.  




Funny how an old man can get all enthused about such things.

I can redraw spider wing decals. What size is the wingspan at trailing edge? Can you send a photo of rudder? What is the length of rudder trailing edge?

rsv1cox wrote:This is extremely interesting.

There is no doubt that Cox licensed this to Lodela, just check out the box.  And there is no doubt the fuselage, wheels, and firewall are Jim Walker, I have rescued one, built another from scratch, and have two new in the box.  There must be a connection between Cox, Walker, and Lodela.  





Do you have a Cox Firebaby or a picture of one?

rsv1cox: are these 2 planes yours? Can I make a pen and paper drawing of the fire baby fuselage? How long is the fuselage and how high is the rudder ?
It looks like the slot for the wing on the red widow is longer than the wingspan. Maybe to adjust the C.G. back and forth? Not so much on the Firebaby.

I won’t do anything until I get your approval.

Happydad        

Yes, those are all my planes.

Let me take some measurements of the original and get back to you.  Wing, Fuse, rudder, etc. etc.

I think the wing is 18" and I know the root of the wing completely fills the slot.  Could be different on the BW, but I thought it reflection.  Maybe a betancourt can verify.  I would like to see a clear picture of the BW's molded in tail wheel to see if it's identical to the JW's. If we all cooperate this could turn into fun projects.

Wish I had some pictures of the red reconstruction JW when I got it.  Fuselage badly bent ( straightened with heat), firewall disintegrating, about 3 square inches of the wing left, but they all went away when my computer crashed a couple of years ago.  The hard drive survives but I have got to find somebody to extract it's information.  

This could be fun.

Bob

Here are more photos of the plane.

Great pictures ab. Love those decals.

The control handle looks like standard Cox with a Lodela label.  The handle supplied with mine looks just like those supplied with Testors models. The bell crank and tail wheel are the same as on my Jim Walker.

What I have, excuse the shaky lines on the sketching's.




Pictures.  If anyone wants better renderings of the ads I can scan them and send them to you, just PM me with your email.









]

Hello, Are you able to send me the Firebaby instructions scanned with higher resolution?

I will really appreciate it.

Thank you.

a betancourt wrote:Hello, Are you able to send me the Firebaby instructions scanned with higher resolution?

I will really appreciate it.

Thank you.

The Firebaby U-control plans are larger sized but I can scan them half and half and you can piece them together.  The ads that came with it are standard size.  Just PM me your email and I will send them to you.  

Bob

rsv1cox wrote:

a betancourt wrote:Hello, Are you able to send me the Firebaby instructions scanned with higher resolution?

I will really appreciate it.

Thank you.

The Firebaby U-control plans are larger sized but I can scan them half and half and you can piece them together.  The ads that came with it are standard size.  Just PM me your email and I will send them to you.  

Bob

Thank you very much Bob. I have sent you a PM.

Best regards.

Alfredo

rsv1cox wrote:
Wish I had some pictures of the red reconstruction JW when I got it.  Fuselage badly bent ( straightened with heat), firewall disintegrating, about 3 square inches of the wing left, but they all went away when my computer crashed a couple of years ago.  The hard drive survives but I have got to find somebody to extract it's information.  

Bob,
I do IT.
There are (roughly) $25 hard drive adapters that let an internal hard drive be used as an external hard drive. We can work out the details if you PM.
I'll need the model number and manufacturer of the hard drive in order to suggest the appropriate adapter. Once the drive is connected, it will show up like a thumb drive on your computer. Once connected, you may have to adjust file permissions to take over "ownership" of those files. This isn't a hard issue to tackle, and we could work via phone to manage the task. Note I didn't say "project." It really is fairly easy.
This assumes the drive is still good.

944_Jim wrote:

rsv1cox wrote:
Wish I had some pictures of the red reconstruction JW when I got it.  Fuselage badly bent ( straightened with heat), firewall disintegrating, about 3 square inches of the wing left, but they all went away when my computer crashed a couple of years ago.  The hard drive survives but I have got to find somebody to extract it's information.  

Bob,
I do IT.
There are (roughly) $25 hard drive adapters that let an internal hard drive be used as an external hard drive. We can work out the details if you PM.
I'll need the model number and manufacturer of the hard drive in order to suggest the appropriate adapter. Once the drive is connected, it will show up like a thumb drive on your computer. Once connected, you may have to adjust file permissions to take over "ownership" of those files. This isn't a hard issue to tackle, and we could work via phone to manage the task. Note I didn't say "project." It really is fairly easy.
This assumes the drive is still good.

944_Jim: Nice to know. I used to do a lot of things among which was repair Dell laptop computers, and desktops. All the desktops are long gone. Is there anything that can hook up another laptop HDD to my MacBook Air, just keeding. The 256GB SSD goes fast, it was my daughters and she needed money. The only other issue is the “N” and “RETURN” keys are intermittent. Key tops new, but the tiny little rubber cap is $10 plus shipping. As if the $10 wasn’t enough. I even tried a flash drive, SSM?, into the battery charge port and it works, but the battery is low after 2 hours, so it was only $200 I shouldn’t complain.
Hijack over.

p.s. I am also working on drawings for both the JW and Red Widow, but lacking time right now.
   I am trying to tile the drawings of the pictures shown above in posts, with permissions, and upscaling to 200%, then whatever % equals 21inch wingspan for the Red Widow and 19 for the JW, I think.
   Anyway upscale the tiled drawings until full size per posted wingspan and fuselage length. I think I can, I think I can. More when I have time.

Happydad