Satin Doll (oz4761)

About this Plan

Satin Doll. Rubber sport biplane model, with vintage styling.

Quote: "Build Dave Platt's beautiful vintage-style rubber-powered biplane

As a Brit, who has lived in America for - gosh! - 30 years now, one of the great pleasures in my life is to visit England every other year to attend the Vintage Weekend at Old Warden. Here I get a chance to catch up with old friends, some of whom I've known for over 40 years. What adds to the trip is that, usually Dave Baker's SAM Eurochamps and the British Nats follow on the next successive weekends, making the airplane ticket good value despite the expense.

I'm mentioning this to explain that this trip is the reason for Satin Doll's existence. One likes to bring something to Old Warden that is 'in character'. I had built a Pridmore Ladybird (oz2132) and flown it at Old Warden for a few years, and got to wondering what a largish rubber-powered biplane would look like if I designed one myself.

Here it needs to be emphasised that the aim was to create a model that could have been designed in the 1940s, as was the Ladybird. Performance enhancements were shunned; the concentration was on 'flavour'. Both outline and construction had to suit the theme. Hence the bamboo undercarriage legs and balsa wheels so typical of '40s Wakefields. In its construction, the fuselage is reminiscent of some of Bill Dean's mid '40s designs.And entirely valid too; this is an excellent structure. The prop is a folder for practical reasons. Ladybird's freewheeler was forever getting broken in even soft landings, However, the prop is so shaped to suit the design. It has never broken.

For the flying surfaces, a quaint outline was drawn which turned out to be unique, so far as I know, I've been able to find or remember no model or full-scale aircraft that has this shape.

So much for what brought the Satin Doll to life and made it look the way it does. Wanna build one? Let's see if we can help you along. Sweep the bench, put on your Duke Ellington tape for some mood music, and let's go!

CONSTRUCTION: Constructional design is quite conventional and very similar to a 'real' (read pre-FAI) Wakefield.The wing and stabiliser leading edges are laminated due to the curvature required.The bottom wing is really just the same as the top wing but with a couple of bays deleted in the centre for a shorter span.This means that many of the ribs, and the tip parts, are common to both. There's one other thing I'd like to explain concerning the ribs: you'll notice on the plans that only the notches for the bottom spars are drawn. When I build a wing of this type I glue the ribs to the bottom spars, add the LE and TE, and then mark the lines for the upper spars directly on the rib. Now the notches are cut in with a single-edged razor blade. The result - spars that align perfectly. No more wavy spars!

The landing gear may be unusual for someone who has never used bamboo.You will be surprised at the strength-with-lightness it has. You can get bamboo skewers in your grocery supermarket.The upper wire fittings plug into aluminium tubes in the fuselage and are retained with a small rubber band.

The design prop is 16 inch diameter and 20 inch pitch. As I said earlier, the folder was chosen to save landings damage rather than to improve the glide, although the glide must be helped in consequence.You could use any 14 to 18 inch diameter prop, freewheel or folder, and get good results.The spinner was incorporated simply to aid the- looks, and could be eliminated without damaging the performance. Those who want to reproduce the same set-up shown on my model can simply follow the plan..."

Quote: "Hi, This time we go to the April 1997 AEROMODELLER with the cover featuring DAVE PLATT holding his magnificent SATIN DOLL biplane. Plan to be found inside ...SATIN DOLL by the master Dave Platt. Satin Doll is a 42 inch span vintage style Biplane to fly at a Old Warden Vintage Weekend. Designed to look like a 1940s model Dave said the flight performance is far from shabby. When fully wound it easily exceeds two minutes. No scale on the plan but it has the wingspan given plus I think an inch scale on the bottom left corner. Interesting to note that Dave made two models. One covered in Tissue and one covered in Silk. Both weighed exactly the same."

Update 23/06/2017: Added article, thanks to RFJ.

Update 25/06/2017: Added article, thanks to Pit.

Supplementary file notes

Article (1) from Flying Models.
Article (2) from Aeromodeller.

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