Scott Urschel BO-105 “N105” Project
The wife and I had the great pleasure of meeting Scott Urschel and his beautiful wife Gina during our travels to the Tuscon area. I had wanted to build the 1/4 scale Heli-Factory BO-105 after watching Steffen Richter doing aerobatics with his while visiting the Scale Challenge. Bernd Bremer ( one of the owners of Heli-Factory ) and I made arrangments to get one on order. I wanted to build an aerobatic version but seems everyone was building the “Red Bull” and you know me I like to be different, lol. Nothing against Red Bull as I have admired them for years. I did an internet search and up popped a video by Pylon Aviation with Scott’s 105 upside down AND it was Red, White and Blue, I WAS SOLD, lol. I thought I would send Scott an email and introduce myself and tell him of what I wanted to do and to my great surprise he was one hundred percent onboard, gave me his phone number and the rest is history. He invited us to visit him at his hanger and take all the pictures I needed and ask all the questions I wanted. Come to find Scott has a very long history of flying aerobatics in both helicopters and airplanes. He is also the North American distributor for Airbus. We had a wonderful time on that visit and him and Gina were the best of hosts. Now to the build:
I contacted Bernd at Heli-Factory and encountered the first problem that could have been a “deal breaker” as Scott’s 105 is a CBS version and the Heli-Factory version is the CB ( the shorter one ). With Bernd being the great guy that he is ( being a great friend certainly helped as well ), he assured me he would have a CBS version at my shop ( basement ) by the end of February.
Next I contacted Stefan Radau at SCALE PRINT and Bernd had already talked with him and he agreed to take my pictures and make the necessary modifications and print an instrument panel and cockpit to match Scott’s 105. The SCALE PRINT package arrived a few weeks later and I have been very busy working on the instrument panel and center console as you can see in the pictures below. I will be including pictures of the build as I progress along with pictures of Scott’s 105 “ N105 “.
Another area that required a little attention were the cyclic grips. The ones from SCALE-PRINT were the standard grips but Scott had a more modern grip which included other accessories. Using plastic and aluminum tubing I was able to modify the grips to give a more scale appearance.
After the cockpit was finished it was time to wait on the fuselage. Arrangments were made and Bernd headed to the fuselage manufactures in Poland. They stretched the short “CB’ vdersion into the longer “CBS” version just as the Eurocopter ( Airbus ) did years ago. Upon arrival to Heli-factory, Bernd started to apply his magic making many additionl scale modifications to match the Scott Urschel 105.
I had been seeing some of the fabulous fuselages being painted by Francis Paduwat and Bernd and I decide a project of this scale should only be painted by the best so Bernd made arrangements for Francis to do the paint. I received pictures as the fuselage was being painted and was getting very excited. Francis did a spectacular job in painting this model, it looked exactly like the full size.
We had decided to build this model powed with a Jakadofsky 7000 Turbine instead of electric. After arriving back at Heli-Factory, Bernd and Georg started the installation of the the mechanics which they had assembled during painting. It was at this time that Sandy and I traveled to Germany to attend Francis Puduwat’s “Scale Heli-Days” Fun-Fly being held in Belgium. This gave me a perfect opportunity to visit Heli-Factory and meet Georg Maier ( the other half of Heli-Factory ). I was truly amazed at how these two worked together getting my 105 ready for shipment to the U.S.
The model was placed in a very sturdy crate along with Bernd’s personal EC-145 which was to remain in the U.S. for Bernd to fly when visiting. Thats when the unexpected happened. Somewhere between Customs in Memphis and Knoxville the shipper severely damaged the crate and both models which required being returned to Germany. The BO-105 was not terribly damaged and required only one rear crosstube and a new tail boom, sadly the EC-145 did not survive. Lucky for me Heli-Factory designed the 105 to have a removable tail boom and Bernd only had to replace those items. Of course that meant another trip to Belgium to Frances for more painting. The items were replaced and Bernd had the 105 back together in time to display at a large event in Germany and it is now packaged up securely and ready for shipment back to Tennessee. Once it arrives I will start posting the final assembly. I hope to have it on display at the Smoky Mountain Scale RC Helicopter Fun Fly in October. Bernd, Georg, Steffen and Heiko will be here for the Fun Fly and are staying a few days extra to assist me with the final assembly as this is my first Turbine model.
THE STORY WILL CONTINUE !!!!
