An aeroplane of simple construction that flies remarkably well, built by R. S. Barnaby ............................................ Percy Pierce, winner of the distance record ....................... A well-proportioned model, capable of long flights ................ A well designed aeroplane built by James MacPherson ............... A beautiful model built by Stewart Easter ......................... A successful model of 1910 built by E. G. Halpine. Note contrast in plane area ........................................................ Percy Pierce launching a prize-winning model ...................... Launching the sling-shot gliders .................................. A tractor with large plane forward built by F. W. Curtis .......... Model built by William Robinson ................................... Front view of the De Lion model ................................... Two of the earlier Peoli models ................................... CHAPTER I MODEL AEROPLANES OF 1911 For the average boy there is no more stirring music than the brisk, whirring note of his model aeroplane. Let the propellers spin steadily for ten glorious seconds, and the journey spans a couple hundred feet or more. Double the time and the flight becomes a triumph. Out of the ingenuity of thousands of boy aviators, the world over, has come a surprising development of the model aeroplane. The experimental stage is passed. Any bright boy may now build a model aeroplane which is certain to give results. The distance qualities of your model may even rival your endurance as a runner in keeping pace with it. Working along different lines, the builders of model aeroplanes, widely scattered, seem to be gradually developing much the same type of air craft. The tendency is toward the construction of much lighter and more logical models than last year. In place of the complicated models supported by several broad planes, we find the most successful amateur aviators expending all their ingenuity upon simple monoplane forms. The biplane forms are being abandoned by model builders, as well as the biplane form of elevating planes. In place of the models made from fifty or more members, we now find excellent models, capable of much longer flights, formed of but a dozen pieces. The builders of model aeroplanes are keeping pace with the development of the man-carrying machines, if they are not passing them, in developing the flying machine of the future.