Poolboy (oz1586)

About this Plan

Poolboy. Radio control seaplane biplane sport model.

Update 22/01/2014: Replaced this with a correctly scaled version at 20in wingspan, thanks to HarryD.

Quote: "Swimming pool flying at its best! Ken's sort-of-scale flying boat is a great flier and goes together in no time at all. Removable tip floats and strap-on landing gear make it a fun little landplane, too. For Cox Tee Dee .010 or Pee Wee .020, and the tiniest radios.

Bill Northrop has a thing about biplanes. So do I. But I also like small planes, and particulariy, small flying boats. The Poolboy fills all of those requirements. Last lanuary I took the prototype down to the international Modelers Show in Pasadena. California. complete and ready to fly. Bill looked at it, puddled up, and said: I gotta have that for R/C Model Builder!

Since I hate to see a grown man cry, I said: OK. But first I've got to prove that it does what it is supposed to: take off and land in a swimming pool.

The Poolboy design was based on a 1929 flying boat, the Eastman E-2-A, which was produced by the Detroit Aircraft Corporation, one of the companies which Robert Gross, founder of the present-day Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, was associated with. A photo of the Eastman amphibian appeared in the June 1957 issue of the Lockheed publication Of Men and Stars, but was incorrectly identified as a Viking flying boat. lt took the old 'Obscure Aircraft' specialist Bill Hannan to set the record straight.

Anyway, for all this time, I've had that photo and thought what a great model it would make, even in stand-off scale, or nearly so. Every so often I'd look at it, but the opportunity kept evading me. However, I kept the photo, just in case.

As radio control units kept getting smaller, the idea of a small flying boat became more intriguing. Then, when Bill Cannon came up with his Super-Micro unit, the idea came to me. Why not make a 'stand-way-off' scale model of the Eastman E-2-A, in miniature, and see if it could be flown off a swimming pool.

So that's where the Poolboy originated. Over the years I've designed the Puddlejumper (oz5910), the Pondhopper (oz5909), and the Wavemaster; why not design an ultra-small flying boat for swimming pool flying? So I did.

The Poolboy will take off from the water in fifteen feet - less, if there is a tight circle as soon as it is airborne. Yes, it does take some skill to land it back in the pool, but if you can find a puddle of water twenty to twenty-five feet long and an inch deep, you've got all the room you need. That is, as long as it isn't closely enclosed by a five-foot fence! The model is so easy to build (and repair, if you have to) that you can experiment with your flying skill without facinga big repairjob if you do run into a fence.

The prototype is powered with a Cox .010. These engines are no longer in production, but thousands of them still exist, and also, if you don't have one, the plans show how you can substitute a Pee Wee .020. Just don't try a Tee Dee .020; it'll make the model much too wild to control.

As usual, the design follows the basic philosophy of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). By using Hot Stuff or a similar glue as the principal adhesive, you can put the Poolboy together in just a few hours. You'll be glad you did, too. It is one of the best crowd pleasers you'll ever fly.

For those of you who might prefer flying from a runway, a strapped-on landing gear is also shown. Works fine.

The design is so simple that if you are an average modeler, you can build it right from the plans. Wood sizes and materials are called out for each part of the structure. There are just a couple of details that need clarifying, and they are easy to explain. The model is so small that you can almost build it out of scraps from your balsa box. Just be sure to use a medium grade of balsa to keep the weight down.

HULL: This is a simple slabsider, with the sides slanted so that the cabane structure, made from coffee stir sticks, will attach right to the sides of the hull and taper up to meet at the apex of the triangle where the upper wing saddle stir sticks are Hot Stuffed in place. Then the dihedral braces are attached. The 1/8 balsa fairing on the top of the aft end of the hull goes along the centerline, and serves to raise the empennage up high enough..."

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