Stunning Thunderbirds T-33 (RC) - First Flight Coming Soon!
Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 09:27PM 
Incredible detail on this T-33 by model master Graeme Mears (photo: facebook)
Quite a while back I showed you the unbelievable story of a privately owned F-16, which of course was really a hyper-realistic RC model built by Graeme Mears from Canada. Then I shared a progress report on a T-33 project he was working on for the Jet World Masters event back in July of 2011. Well here we are now in 2012 and as it turns out, the T-33 has yet to make its first flight... but that's now planned for late February of early March down in Lakeland Florida in conjunction with the Florida Jets event taking place March 1-4. It's definitely an exciting time in the life of this project!
There are a lot of stunning projects like this being built all over the world, but usually we don't know much about them til they surface at an event. However, Graeme has been updating his facebook page with photos along the way giving us a chance to see the mind-boggling details that make a model like this look so incredibly real. I highly recommend you click that link and check out the collection of images.
It's hard sometimes to believe that there are people with the skills and patience to do this kind of work... but to realize that these models fly too just blows the mind. According to Graeme's FB page, highly experienced RC pilot Ali Machinchy will be doing the test flights.
Lastly, this Thunderbirds paint scheme replicates a full scale T-33 (see a flickr pic here) but it's important to know that while there have been a handful of private T-33's painted like this, the Thunderbirds never actually used them for demonstrations.
Hopefully there will be a slick video of the T-33 in flight to post here before long : )
Graeme Mears with the RC T-33 giving some perspective to its size (photo: facebook)
Reader Comments (2)
What a beauty! I can't wait to see a video of it in the air. Nice work, Mr. Mears!
Beauty !