Plagiarist (oz12394)

About this Plan

Plagiarist. Wakefield rubber contest model.

Quote: "This high-performance FAI model is the result of 'borrowing' the best parts of several successful models. The resulting aircraft is a consistent contest winner. Construction is conventional. Plagiarist, by Bob Isaacks.

As its name suggests, the Plagiarist is a Wakefield model which combines features from several successful designs. To give credit where credit is due, the wing design is borrowed directly from Frank Parmenter's Charisma; ditto for the rudder. The front-end was borrowed from Fred Pearce's 74 Wake, as is the pylon-style wing mount. The fuselage construction duplicates that of George Xenakis Tart, and the 7% thick flat-bottomed stabilizer is my contribution to the design.

The design objectives of the Plagiarist were to develop a competitive airplane with conventional construction that is warp free, easy to align and adjust, easy to repair, quick to build and rugged. Those objectives have been achieved. The Plagiarist has an excellent contest record with its most recent win being the '85 Tri-Cities Championship in Seguin, Texas where it was pitted against FAI Wakefield, Nordic, and Power Models, some of which were flown by current members of the USA FAI Team. The conventional con-struction and jig-built wing make it possi-ble to fly this airplane, season after sea-son, with no more than one short test hop before flying an official at any contest in which it is entered. The original Plagiarist is now over six years old and still performs consistently although it has gained some weight and a few dings from over 300 flights.

If you have never built a Wakefield model and would like to give it a try, con-sider the Plagiarist; it builds fast and wins trophies. It's a fun way to get acquainted with FAI competition.

FUSELAGE Begin fuselage construction by prepar-ing four 3/16-inch square strips and carve them to triangular cross section. Next, cut 7 pieces of 3-inch wide, 1/16-inch balsa, 6 inches long. Prepare the edges for butt gluing and glue the seven pieces together to form a single piece of 116-inch thick balsa 6 inches wide x 21 inches long with the grain vertical. Next cut one piece of 1/16-inch plywood 1/2 x 6 and butt glue it to the edge of the 6 x 21 balsa sheet. Now cut 9 pieces of 3 inch wide x 1/32-inch balsa 6 inches long; butt glue them to-gether to form a single sheet of balsa 1/32 x 6 x 26-1/2. The next step is to glue the 1/16 sheet to the 1/32 sheet; make sure that one side of this assembly is flat; you now should have a single sheet, 6 x 48 consist-ing of plywood, 1/16 balsa and 1/32 balsa.

Secure a flat 48-inch long building board and lightly pin the sheet prepared above to it with the flat side up (you will have to shim up the 1/32 portion to achieve this). Using a straight edge, glue one of the 3/16 square triangles to the sheet approximately 1/8 from the top edge of the sheet with the vertical portion of the triangle at the top (see sketch on plan for the arrangement). Next, glue the second triangle on the sheet 1-1/4 inch down from the first triangle; note that this triangular strip tapers toward the top strip at the fuselage rear, so that they are 1 inch apart at the end of the sheet. Next, construct a 'mirror image' fuselage side spaced approximately 3/16 down from the first side..."

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Quote: "Plagiarist. Wakefield, Bob Isaacks, Model Builder 1986/10. Scan by Algy2 [see datafile]. All I have done is to increase the contrast a bit, and scaled it. Note that the top and side views of the fuselage are half size."

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