Pole Cat (oz13659)

About this Plan

Pole Cat. Radio control pylon racer model. Wingspan 51 in, wing area 462 sq in. For .40 engine.

Quote: "Pole Cat. The name itself inspires apparitions of a striped back caricature of the cat family pulling G's around the number one pole.

A desire to have something different in a Formula I racer with clean rakish lines, an edge in drag reduction and superior flight characteristics motivated this whole project. In the search for such a subject, my attention was drawn to one Ernie Prosch from Los Vegas, Nevada, creator of the 'Loki'. To our good fortune, it was learned that Ernie was well underway with his second effort on a new Formula I . A study of his 3-view sketches revealed that this new effort promised to encorporate all of these desirable features and then some. The full scale Pole Cat has been flown and is quite successful. A personal inspection of the craft and meeting with Ernie in November of '76 was a most rewarding experience. Men of his talent and dedication are few in number - ie the number of successful racing subjects we have to model.

Prototypes have been built, redesigned and rebuilt over the last two years; this kit is the result of those experiments. Build the model true, light and as the instructions depict and you will be most happy with the results.

Because the wing is located deep in the fuselage, I have not been pleased with efforts to build it as a two piece model. The molded parts will allow you to if you must, but I strongly recommend the structure be one unit. Thus, the plans and instructions are so oriented. If you do elect to have the wing detachable, devise some method of securing the fuselage and top shell to each other such that no twisting or bending may occur in flight.

Wing Construction: Cut wing skins as depicted, leaving 3/8 in overlap in width. Join the balsa with polyester or aliphatic resin. Lightly sand the foam cores with No.220 paper and blow or vacuum clean. Use a slow setting epoxy glue to apply the skins. Approximately 1-1/4 oz of glue should suffice for all four balsa panels. Remove excess with a squeegee and then reapply that amount to the foam at the peak of the airfoil - a bead running spanwise.

Insert the sheeted cores in their foam cradles, tape the leading edge overhang together with multiple strips of masking tape. Sandwich this stack between two flat surfaces for curing. Trim the skins flush with the cores and attach the leading edge, trailing edge and tips with aliphatic resin using masking tape to hold while curing. Note that there is washout cut into the cores.

Sand the panels to shape leaving a generous radius on the leading edge. Cut out the ailerons, removing the inboard section as well. Install the torque rods, tip hinges and nylon pinned hinges. Recap the inboard section and check freedom of aileron movement..."

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Note there are two instruction files here. The default is for a one-piece model. The alternative instruction file is to build a bolt-on wing version.

Supplementary file notes

Instructions.
Instructions (bolt-on wing version).

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