Pete (oz3777)

About this Plan

Pete. Rubber sport model.

Quote: "THIS plane was built in an attempt to solve the problem of 'to streamline or not to streamline' and whilst it did not decide that at all it did prove that by careful arrangement of the parts it is quite possible to get an excellent performance out of a box model. The use of a folding propeller was con-templated from the onset and, since this involves a low thrust line position in order to counterbalance the CG shift, it was decided to see if any advantage was to be obtained in the way of reduced interference drag by putting the wing on a short pylon mount above a diamond fuselage.

In practice, this worked surprisingly well. The model was flown all last summer - and incidentally, had extremely bad luck in the way of 'tree-top perching'! The usual duration without thermals is in the neighbourhood of two and three-quarter minutes on 1,100 turns.

Building the model is quite easy, but I propose describing the folding prop, and wing mount in some detail. The wings themselves are quite conventional. One point to bear in mind here is to pack up the front of the trailing edge about 1/32 in when building to avoid a flat bottom here. The tail-plane is built up 'Air Cadet' fashion with the centre-section sheet covered for additional strength. The fins are built flat, covered and doped and then cemented to the tailplane end ribs. The fuselage is reinforced here shown with 1/16 sheet and the undercarriage system is similar to that introduced by Mr Rippon and fully described in Aeromodeller in connection with his model 'George'.

Carve the prop, blades from soft balsa - if obtainable - and sandpaper to final shape. Put the bearing in place temporarily, and then take a 3 in length of 18 swg wire and push it through the hinge line. It ought to be 1/10 in nearer the hub and 1/10 in nearer the leading edge on the one side of the blade than the other. Hold the ends of the wire, with the blade erect so that you can see through the hole in the bearing, and allow it to fold without moving your fingers..."

Quote: "Here is Pete cleaned and scaled to full size. As before I have had to re-arrange the plan because while most of it was one third size, some bits were half size and some bits full size. Everything is now full size. The article is now separate."

Supplementary file notes

Article, 1 page with pic.

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