Kawasaki Ki-61 Tony (oz2458)

About this Plan

Tony. Stunt model for control line. Frank Warburton's Tony stunter.

Quote: "For two contest seasons experienced control line stunt flyers and event directors returning from Russia, Belguim and England have sung the praises of this remarkable realistic airplane; to quiet these chaps down a bit and at the same time give our CL friends one of the most thoroughly tested and proven scale-like winners of all time, we want you to step up and meet- Frank's 'Tony' Stunter.

England's 1962 contest season was only 4 weeks away when a practise session in rough weather indicated that I needed a new control line stunt model. I drove home from the flying field (on the left side of the road, you understand) thinking hard about all-weather contenders. I had built up a fair idea of what such a craft should be like from past experience and I had collected information on an ex-tremely suitable full-sized prototype. Japan's World War Two Kawasaki Hien, or Tony as the fighter was called, seemed to have all the qualities necessary to a good stunt job so I decided to give it a try. I designed and drew plans that same evening and started building like mad.

After working for a bit over three weeks, I finished the model just four days before our team selection trials for Kiev. With but six practice flights under our belt we arrived at the trials at 8am and this after 4 hours driving. The weather was appalling, a 20mph wind and driving rain - was I happy!

From the start I felt I had a winner. This model sliced smoothly through the wind with no noticeable speed-up during any maneuver. Ignoring the rain I practiced all morning and was eventually rewarded by two good competition scores which gave me first place. So Tony was off to a good start.

Its next major contest was the British Nationals' Gold Trophy event. Here Tony gave me my first Gold win, but only after a hard fight with USAF's Jeep Newman. After the event several expert stunt boys flew Tony which gave me an opportunity of watching it from the outside. All hands seemed very pleased with the way it performed so I decided to build a duplicate.

During the rest of that season, these Tonies won every contest I entered with them except one and there I placed second by a single point..."

Update 22/03/2015: Replaced this plan with a clearer copy, thanks to dfritzke.

Update 27/11/2017: added article, thanks to RFJ.

Supplementary file notes

Previous version. Also, alternate version of sheet 2, edited to show wing at full span.
Article.

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