Curtiss JN-4 Jenny — Handmade Metal Model Airplane, 1:18

The Jenny at 1:18 — larger scale, where the strut arrangement and wire bracing between the wings actually reads.

Handcrafted on an iron frame, hand-painted yellow with decal insignia, metal propeller and rolling wheels.

Details

• 1:18 scale, 100% iron frame
• Metal propeller
• Wheels that roll
• Hand-painted yellow finish with decal insignia
• Biplane wings with full strut and rigging detail
• Ready to display

The aircraft

A biplane's wings are held apart by struts and held together by wire, and the whole assembly is a truss — rigid because it is triangulated, not because any single part is strong. Riggers tuned the wires by ear, plucking them like strings until the tension was right.

The Jenny trained nearly every American and Canadian pilot of the First World War, then went to civilian buyers as war surplus and gave rural America its first look at flight. It is also the aircraft on the Inverted Jenny — the 1918 airmail stamp printed upside down by mistake, now among the most valuable stamps in the world.