Fire Arrow (oz14290)

About this Plan

Fire Arrow. Radio control sport model, for OS .25 engine.

Quote: "Recently, we retired here in the Valley of the Sun where agriculture seems to be the mainstay of most everyone's existence. We find flying our model aircraft to be quite a different proposition than we had in the past. When we go out to the field, we seem to be flying amongst a large bevy of full sized yellow airplanes. Everywhere you look, the sky is full of them as they swoop low over a field of cotton with a white mist fogging from the trailing edge of the wing.

These planes travel at full speed across a field just inches above the crops then pull up sharply at the edge, clearing the ever present power lines by an unbelievably small margin. Then with a hard left, a quick roll to the right, back over the power line they go out across the field unloading their seemingly inexhaustible supply of insecticides.

Our flying field is completely surrounded by these cotton fields and we, quite often in the summer and fall, have these planes using our airspace in which to do their turns, so we reluctantly bring our models down to the runway and stop to watch the fantastically skilled flying of our neighbors in their yellow painted crop dusters.

It has been intimated that the Fire Arrow faintly resembles some of these low wing crop dusters, actually it began in our mind as an idea gleaned from the pages of 'The Lightplane Since 1909' wherein there lies a plane called the Edmonds G-1 Flying Scooter. The Fire Arrow was never intended to to be a scale model, we just like the Scooter's canopy design. One thing led to another and a plane appeared on the drawing board.

History told of a bird that rose from the ashes of another, the movie told of a plane that rose from what was left of another, thig plane rose from ideas gleaned from hundreds ofkits we have built and thousands of pages of reference material we have read over the past forty years or so. From all of this, we decided to call our new re-creation Phoenix, then a friend informed us that a city already had that name firmly claimed. Well, never to be daunted, we took another tack. The bird that rose from the ashes was called the Fire Bird, that is a fantastic name for a plane. Same person informed us that Pontiac had that name sewed up on one of their sports cars. How about other words with 'fire' in them. Fire Fox came to mind; sorry, that is the subject of a couple of books concerning a Russian jet fighter. Turn it around and you have Fox Fire; had to look that one up in the dictionary. Fox Fire is that stuff in rotten tree stumps that glows in the dark, way out in 'Old Dismal Swamp.' Sounds good, but hardly a name for such a clean fresh airplane as this.

Finally, the name Fire Arrow came to mind and we are sure the name will show up on something or another, so until it does, we like the name and the decorations down the side of the fuselage. Fire Arrow it will be. Now if you've a mind to paint your plane yellow and scream down the runway trailing a cloud of white smoke, go ahead; however, keep your cotton dustin' plane off our plantation.

Construction: Fuselage: We would suggest that your first task would be to kit the plane. The two sides are made from Sig Lite-Ply; we used every bit of a 1/8 x 12 x 36 in sheet. All formers but the firewall are also cut from this material. It was our intention to include balsa cheeks on both sides of the engine so the sides could be rounded to blend into the spinner. This, however, did not materialize; the muffler took up so much room we could use a cheek only on the left side. As it finally turned out, this cheek piece acted just as a doubler, when we ran both sides from the spinner back to the tailpost. If you desire to mount your engine upright instead of horizontal then there should be more than enough room between the two 3/8' cheek plates for the engine.

We cut the canopy sides from two pieces of ply rather than one because of the difficulty of edge sanding the acute angle. It is easier to sand the edges before gluing than it would be afterwards.

The 3/16 square spruce longerons are glued top and bottom to each side; make two sides, one right and one left. Add all vertical spacers. Install formers F-1 and F-2 on the right fuselage half, making sure they are at right angles to the sides. Mount the left side above the right and glue in place and add any cross braces.

To facilitate bending the sides to meet at the tail, we cut notches in the longerons just aft of the 3/16 vertical spacers. Then with a ruler and a No. 11 X-Acto knife, we scored a vertical line in each side so the ply would fold sharply when the two sides were brought together for gluing. The score was then strengthened with Jet CA. All holes for the engine mount, fuel lines, and pushrods were predrilled in the firewall, which was then installed. Also at this time, while you can get at it, install the 3/8 triangular stock behind the firewall.

The cabin former F-2A is mounted at the proper angle and allowed to dry thoroughly. Before the cabin sides are installed, it is necessary to bevel the bottom edges so they will fit flush with the top edge of the fuselage. Glue the instrument panel F-1-A in place, then add the cowl cheeks between the instrument panel and the firewall. Notch the cabin top to fit between the two cabin sides and glue in place.

The 3/16 square canopy uprights are cut to length, beveled and glued in place. We drove pins down through the top into the upper ends of the uprights; these were CA'ed in place, the excess pin was snipped off and filed smooth. The canopy is apparently very strong because we used it as a handle until the windscreen was installed.

Making sure we could remove the fuel tank through the hole in Former F-1, we installed the 3/16 cowl top cross grain. Then we covered the bottom of the fuselage forward of the wing..."

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Scan by MarkD, cleanup by Circlip.

Update 8/1/2023: Replaced this plan with a clearer copy, thanks to theshadow.

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