Rivets (oz11243)

About this Plan

Rivets. Peanut scale rubber model pylon racer.

1972 Rivets Pylon Racer, Bill Falck Design. Peanut Scale, rubber, civilian low wing, racer, 13 in wingspan, designed by Mark Drela.

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Update 16/12/2022: Added article, thanks to Pit.

Quote: "A most unlikely design for a Peanut - that is until you see it finished and watch it fly! This little racer has flown in excess of a minute outdoors, and actually glides in a decent manner. Rivets, by Mark Drela.

Contrary to the impression one might get from its name, 'Rivets' must be one of the cleanest racing airplanes of all time. Powered by only a small 100 hp engine, it won 16 firsts and 4 seconds out of 23 races in which it was entered. Like the original, the Peanut is also a winning ship, having won 1st and 2nd in the two contests it was entered.

With lightweight construction, flight times approach 60 seconds outdoors, in dead air. This, together with its high static scores, make a winning combination. The airplane is especially potent under the Flying Aces Rules, which give a bonus of 25 points for a low-wing racer, plus another 30 points if all the external detailing is duplicated - easy in such a clean airplane.

The emphasis in the model is on scale fidelity - the only deviations are a bigger tail and more dihedral. Nevertheless, the model came out relatively light, less than 3/10 oz. Due to the cheek cowls, wheel pants, and half-shell construction, this is a somewhat complicated Peanut. If you are a beginner, or if you never built a flying scale ship before, I would not recommend the Rivets.

Except for the spinner, super-light wood should be used for the block parts. All ribs, formers, and especially the tail surfaces, should also be built from very light wood. The spars and longerons do not have to be hard wood ... medium is about right. Use Titebond throughout for wood-to-wood joints.

A few construction hints are in order. First of all, raise the wingtip about 1/16 inch when building the wing. Add the 1/16 washin when installing dihedral, and check it again when covering the wing - it is essential for stability.

Installing the landing gear is tricky. First, the bottoms of both wing panels are covered with tissue from W1 out. The rear wire struts are now installed by pushing them into W2 at the proper angle, bending them over, and epoxying to the top of the rib. After this operation, bend the wires over and cut to leave 3/32 long stubs which will be pushed into the wheel pants and epoxied. After covering or painting the pants, mount a wheel in each pant with 1/32 sheet spacers. Notch the small 1/16 sheet fairing where the front wire juts off at an angle. This fairing should be fairly hard wood, since it supports both of the wires. Push the front wire with the wheel and pant attached through W2 at the proper angle, bend over, and epoxy to the short spar. Wrap the wires with tissue and paint silver (don't shrink the tissue, though).

When building the fuse, pre-curve the longerons with your fingers. This is essential to maintain the correct fuselage contours. Formers F3 and F4 are glued on in one piece. F3a is later cut loose and re-glued to match the wing chord precisely. F3a is cut loose and discarded. The missing stringer slots are cut after assembly. This is easily done by using a felt-tip pen to mark the slots with the aid of a light, flexible straightedge. When cutting a slot, place the former in question flat on the corner of the bench to support it.

Omit stringers on the bottom between F3a and F6. When covering the fuse, omit tissue on the bottom between F2 and F6. The short stringers between F2 and F3a only serve to strengthen the wing mounting. After the fuselage tissue is water-shrunk, and the wings steam shrunk (more on that later), the wing is ready to be attached to the fuselage..."

Supplementary file notes

Article.

Corrections?

Did we get something wrong with these details about this plan (especially the datafile)? That happens sometimes. You can help us fix it.
Add a correction