Blue Dragon (oz14933)
About this Plan
Blue Dragon. Free flight power model, for Brown Jr engine. Wingspan 8 ft.
Quote: "Drawn especially for John Pond. Blue Dragon. The 1934 Sir John Shelley Cup Winner and holder of the British ROG Power Record from 1934 to date of writing 1937. By CE Bowden."
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Update 18/11/2023: Added article, thanks to Pit. This is an extract from the 1937 CE Bowden book: Petrol Engined Model Aeroplanes (pages 109-118).
Quote: "General: The Blue Dragon was designed purely as a competition model with exaggerated stability and complete simplicity. It is an easy model to construct and will stand up to a lot of abuse. It would make an excellent beginner's model. Although built in 1934 it is still flying today in 1937, and has had comparatively little repair work done to it. Beauty of line was not considered when designing the model. Full sized blue prints of the model can be obtained from Kanga Aero Models, Birmingham.
Fig. 57 shows the model caught by the camera as it glided slowly overhead at the termination of a seventeen-minutes' flight in Scotland. Two friends and myself had followed the model in my car. She narrowly missed the power wires seen in the photograph. The model made a perfect landing. She is an exceptionally slow glider and also flies very slowly and is therefore very controllable.
The model is now fitted with a Brown Junior 9 cc engine, whereas an Atom Minor 15 cc engine was used to set up the British record. The Brown engine is less powerful and more suitable for normal flying, A 6 cc Baby Cyclone engine flies this model on full throttle and forms a very satisfactory combination.
Fig. 58 is a general outline drawing of the model and should be used to produce a full-sized drawing as described in Chapter VI if the reader wishes to make a replica of this model.
The Fuselage: This is a simple rectangular affair. The correct angle of incidence of the mainplane is obtained by sweeping the top longerons upwards at the nose to make a platform for the wing. The longerons are of 1/8 square birch. The nosepiece is detachable and is an Elektron casting. See Fig. 59. The Brown engine has about one-third of the rear end of the petrol tank cut of to reduce overhang. The end-plate is then resoldered into position.
The nosepiece is kept in position by elastic bands from wire hooks in on either side of the fuselage.
The thrustline of the model is kept as high as possible above the CG position to look after good fore and aft stability. Down thust and offset are given as shown in Fig. 58.
The coils is trapped to the floor of the fuselage by wire just behind the nodepiece, whilst the pocket flashlamp battery is located on the floor of the fuselage 24 in frorm the nose..."
Supplementary file notes
Article.
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User comments
Where would one get the plans for the cabin version shown in the fotos?Mike - 18/11/2023
It seems to me the cabin glazing was an afterthought, added later. You need plans showing the cabin? I doubt there are any original plans of that. Although it may be that later, re-drawn versions exist.
SteveWMD - 18/11/2023
Tony Penhall made several Bowden's plans redrawings. He made in 1986 a more detailed Blue Dragon redrawn with glazing.
Pit - 18/11/2023
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