Shoestring (oz1923)

About this Plan

Shoestring. Scale radio control racer for .40 power. Jan 1966 RC Modeler. This is the plan as it appeared in the magazine pages.

Quote: "There is something about almost every full scale airplane that makes it sungularly beautiful. Of course, there are many different kinds of beauty. Some are even beautiful in an ugly sort of way, if you know what I mean. But when it comes to the Shoestring, designed by Rodney Kriemendahl, it has always seemed to me that he created a classic beauty fit to stand with the all-time greats.

Our model of the Shoestring, adapted to R/C was begun in the summer of '64 but didn't make much progress until the idea of the miniature Goodyear races began to take hold. By sheer accident, our basic dimensions etc fitted into the Goodyear pattern. The only major change was to thin out the airfoil somewhat.

The original wing span of 54 in and overall wing area of 540 sq in were retained. The additional area (above the minimum required by the rules) might make this ship a bit slower than the fastest, but we certainly didn't want a bomb that only the finest flyers could handle This ship had to be something the average man could fly. This eventually proved to be true. Even I was able to fly it, and when you consider my extremely limited multi time, that's really saying something! For the real hot shot, with blood in his eye to win races, sufficient area can easily be taken out of the middle of the wing to reduce it to the minimum allowed by the rules.

Another factor we kept in mind was that, for most flyers, an upright engine is a simpler deal and more practical to work with in every way. However, we provided room in the cheek cowls so that the engine can be mounted horizontally and completely concealed except that the head would be more or less flush with the outside.

Another consideration was how much dihedral to use. A flat wing like the original would, of course, be scale but would require somewhat greater flying skill to handle than one with a few degrees of dihedral. There again, the choice can be made by the builder. For most flyers, we recommend the 4 degrees of dihedral shown, although the difference in stability probably wouldn't be substantial.

The prototype pictured here was built by Mehlin Smith. He began work as soon as our drawings of the fuselage permitted... "

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, text and pics, thanks to AugustaWest.

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