Sort-a-Scale Fokker (oz10447)

About this Plan

Sort-a-Scale Fokker (Sorta Scale Fokker). Radio control sport trainer model. For .35 - .40 engines, or .46 4-stroke.

Quote: "This model is an excellent flying aircraft that is very docile at low throttle settings and is an excellent first time trainer. At higher throttle settings, it will do most any maneuver you care to do with it, although not violently. It is a real fun airplane to fly and is much more relaxing than the hotter models a lot of guys like to bore holes in the sky with. This one does everything gently. Sort-a-Scale Fokker, by Henry Haffke.

Every Monday evening we fly until it is too dark and I get to fly all types of trainer type aircraft. We each help four or five modelers and, in the time we have, get to take each of them up two, three, or four times. No one has crashed their models seriously and a few of them are now flying by themselves, with others getting close to that stage. It has been a very enjoyable experience for me, and when that new pilot is coaxed down on his first landing, it gives me real satisfaction.

In the course of teaching these new pilots to fly, I get to fly their models a lot since they get shaky and want you to take the model back frequently. Flying these trainer type models a lot reminded me of how much fun they are; they are so much more relaxing than flying a heavy scale model.

I thought it would be nice if I had one of these gentle flying aircraft just for the fun of it. In flying the various trainers the modelers had chosen to build, I found that some of them fly real well, and others, in my estimation, simply are lousy flying models. There are a lot of trainers on the market and I have flown most all of them. I have my personal preference as a teaching tool and prefer the models that are very gentle to fly, but at the same time are capable of performing most of the basic acrobatic maneuvers so that a pilot can learn to do a few things when he has mastered the basics. Without mentioning any specific names, there are a few trainers that are superb at low throttle settings for a new pilot, and yet can be opened up to higher throttle settings and perform very good maneuvers. Most new modelers want to see you do a loop or a roll with their creation after they have had a try at the controls and you are ready to land it for them. It gives them a real kick when they see the model they have built, doing acrobatic maneuvers. Certain trainers do this extremely well while others are nearly impossible to do anything with but a loop.

So when it came time to build a fun airplane, I decided I would design my own and also give it some character. It had to be very easy to build as my building time is nearly non-existent, and it had to be an excellent flying model capable of doing gentle acrobatic maneuvers. I am sure that many of you experienced modelers get your ideas for color schemes from various drawings, or photos that you come across in scanning through the many aviation and model aviation publications that are available. Well, my inspiration for the Fokker came from an artist's drawing of a Fokker D VII in the Time Life 'Epic of Flight' Series. The drawing was of a very unusually colored aircraft that was done in red, white, and blue. I thought this would make a very attractive model if done similar to these colors. The aircraft pictured was the personal Fokker of Ace Rudolph Berthold, and sported his personal 'Winged Sword' emblem on the sides of the aircraft. My mind was made up and I got out my drafting tools and went to work.

The Fokker took shape on paper and now it was time to whittle some balsa. Being very simple to build, made short time of the construction process and in just a couple of weeks of spare time the model was ready to fly. The test flights were made on a fairly windy day, but it proved to be no problem for the new creation. The model was great on the very first flight and needed no changes. It took off in a short time and after just a bit of aileron and rudder trim, flew hands off as straight as an arrow. At low throttle settings it was, as I wanted, a real pussy cat. At full throttle on the 0.S. .40 it would do most anything you wanted, but did nothing violently - just what I had hoped for. It spins nicely both ways and is a real pleasure to fly. I seem to enjoy it more and more each time I take it out, and several of our other club members have enjoyed flying it also. So if you like to build a good sport model with some WW I character, get out the balsa and tools and do it..."

Planfile extracted from low res scan at http://pulling-gz.blogspot.com/2015/02/rcm-sort-scale-fokker-article-and-plan.html

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Supplementary file notes

Article, thanks to hlsat, JHatton.

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