Pushy Cat (oz2562)

About this Plan

Pushy Cat. Free flight pusher, sports power model by Vic Smeed. 44in span for small diesels. Mills 0.75 shown.

Quote: "Vic Smeed's 1953 Bowden Trophy Winner. A 44 inch pusher sport model for engines up to 1 cc. Super-stable, this is the 'plane for perfect r.o.g. take-off and landing.

Just about all of a model's ailments centre around, or affect, the CG. To design a trouble-free model is therefore simple - don't let it have a CG. Pushy-Cat is one model which definitely hasn't one, for although it balances where indicated on the plan, the vertical factors bring the true CG to a position almost one inch outside the airframe, in thin air! Does this produce visions of the model scudding away and leaving its CG standing!

Seriously, Pushy-Cat is an attempt to get out of the rut while still retaining reasonably simple construction, easy trimming, and good flight characteristics. The appearance is not far from scale (remember the Scheldemeuw and the Carden-Baynes?) and the layout is of particular interest to concours builders, since the only part of the model likely to be affected by fuel is the leading edge of the fin, and the all-sheet fuselage offers an excellent base on which to build up a high finish.

The configuration also lends itself to flying-boat $daptation, and a suggested removable shoe " is shown on the plan.

One minor snag is that rotary-valve motors will require a left-hand air-screw, since they will not run backwards A plastic prop of suitable diameter can be warmed in an oven until soft enough to be twisted to reverse pitch, or a wooden prop carved from a beech blank as illustrated, which takes less than twenty minutes, Side port engines, such as the Mills .75 used on the original, can use an ordinary airscrew put on back-to-front, the engine being run in the opposite direction from normal.

Building the model is very straightforward: use softish balsa and keep colour-doping to a minimum if a .5 motor is to be used. Space bearers as required, but check propeller clearance. The cabin top front and rear engine fairing are the only awkward spots... "

Note this plan is a 2-colour 600dpi bitmap PDF, reduced down from hogal's vector tracing. For the original hogal tracing (probably shows more detail) see supplementary file.

Supplementary file notes

Article.
PDFvector plan tracing (hogal).

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