Mini-Voyager
BURT RUTAN, designer of the renowned around-the-world, unrefueled aircraft Voyager, has a long-standing fascination with canard designs. At the same time, Burt is aware that canards react unfavorably to scaling down. It was he who reminded me, as he was inspecting my 9-ft. Radio Control canard model, that in a small, exact scale version it probably would not fly. In fact, even as a nine-footer, extra-large changes in aspect proportions were required to obtain good performance. And in the 4-ft. Control Line Voyager, featured a few issues ago, the canard wing was next-to-useless once the engine quit and the speed dropped. It became necessary to reduce the wing loading on the canard considerably to get a glide that wouldn't cause the model to self-destruct.
For the Christmas Tree
THE POPULARITY of the "Modeler's Widow" jacket patch shows that many of our wives have something in common with the better known football widow. Dawn has very little interest in flying or boating models and even prefers not to hold one of those "oily things" for pictures, but she did take a liking to airplanes in her own type of handicraft. She had been making wooden Christmas tree ornaments from kits, and liked the idea of putting together and painting my home-made airplane miniatures. I took a slide of the three-view drawing of my favorite biplane and reduced to about a six-in. span which was then cut from 1/16-in. basswood on the jigsaw.
Project Snapshot
I IMAGINE most modelers have a dream project in the back of their mind that waits for the right opportunity to be taken off the shelf of ideas and become a reality. An article on the Sparrow Teleplane (American Aircraft Modeler, Sept. '73) started several years of daydreaming about building a camera-carrying model like it. Aerial photography began as early as 1858, when photos were taken from a hot air balloon. Kites were also used successfully by a gentleman who suspended an 18 1/2 by 48" camera from a bank of kites. The photo showed spectacularly clear detail of San Francisco after the great earthquake of 1906. Modelers have been putting still and movie cameras in models for years and many have enjoyed the view of their flying field from "up there."
Project Snapshot on the Road
IT SEEMS that most hobby projects become more complex with time. The beginner who is satisfied with a two- or three-channel radio is soon eager to work with five or six channels. The models and equipment often become more involved and expensive. But along with the extra time and money goes a greater satisfaction when a more challenging project is completed. However, the extra time and expense sometimes goes for things you cannot buy at a hobby shop.
Paracraft: The Powered Parafoil
When Lincoln Beachey proclaimed he could fly a barn door, he hadn't heard of the Wizard of Oz. This `Beast,' `Praying Mantis,' or `ParaCraft,' as it was finally demurely named, would baffle any mere wizard. It's strange and it does strange things-touch-and-goes, figure eights, climbs steeply and slowly, or descends like a helicopter. Now it will star in a Show Team act. I have just about concluded that a show team is a group of modelers who are all in search of a cure for the itch to do something unusual. It leads them to put just about anything into the air, or at least a flying machine that appears to be just about anything. It seems that with a little aerodynamic modifications, an ironing board, dog house, flying saucer or stop sign may take to the air (no teacups yet?). Some appear to fly backwards or upside down, but all the seemingly unflyable are well thought out and tested engineering feats designed to entertain their audiences. It seems that I, too, have this bug for the unusual and, after flying Snapshot 3 for the Virginia Air Show Squadron for a year, I began to work on a new craft for the next year.
