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The
Blue plane
The blue plane
after a nice landing
The blue plane
was our first and favorite home-built small airplane. It was
designed and built by Sam and was piloted by both Sam and
Ben. It's rudder, elevator and throttle control setup made
it very easy to fly, and the high-wing and dihedral made it
very stable. There was, however, one critical flaw in it's
design, which showed itself when Sam was attempting a steep
pull-up. The flaw was a weak wing joint, the result was
total loss. The wing-span was about 45", the fuse
length was about 40", and it was powered by an O.S. 10.
We have thought about making a new blue plane with a
stronger wing, but haven't had the time.
The
Photo Plane
What is left
of it
The photo
plane was designed with just one purpose in mind: taking
pictures from the air. It's too bad that it only took one
picture before plummeting to the ground from 100' up,
wing-less and at full power. It used a rudder and elevator
for direction control. The engine was an O.S. 10, the
wing-span was about 50", and the fuse length was about
40". The reason for the crash was a spar failure
caused by a center-of-gravity too far aft, which made it
over responsive, also the spar stock wasn't thick enough.
It's flight characteristics were not at all pleasant because
of high wing and power loadings, and a bad C.G. location.
The lessons learned were: balance the airplane before
flight, and use the strongest spar you can.
The
Red plane
The red plane
was designed by Sam, and built by Sam, Ben, and also Jay
Kruckenberg. We built it just to have something to do, and
completed it in just one day. This airplane was our first to
use ailerons. The wing-span is about 50", the fuse
length is about 40" and it was powered by an O.S. 10
FP. Top speed was only about 35mph (measured by racing with
a pickup down the road) and it didn't climb very well
because we didn't spend very much time smoothing out the
covering. This airplane's best attribute was that it was
very easy to fly just inches from the ground and then
pull-up to do a crop duster type turn-around. Moe would
always throw sticks at it, trying to knock it down. This
airplane was retired because we wanted to put it's engine in
the shrike.
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