Super Saucer (oz5689)

About this Plan

Super Saucer. Free flight towline glider model.

Quote: "Have this fine towliner ready for spring breeze. Sure has what it takes. Super Saucer, by Bruce Lester.

Whether to embark on the design of a streamlined machine, or to rest content with a modest 'slabsider' fuselage with squarish lines and chopped-off surfaces, is a problem that confronts most of us quite regularly each year when we start designing next season's models. The problem is not very much clarified by the seemingly excellent performances obtainable from either type.

Towline gliders, as many people will tell you, are peculiar in their own little way, in that while certain models have very pleasing lines they are somewhat a disappointment on the end of a towline. Some weave in and out viciously on the way up, calling for tricky towline manipulation to avoid crashes. Others, if they tow well, may refuse to soar, and so on.

Super Saucer is a development of a glider design I flew in competition in 1947. It became somewhat of a sensation in that even when slightly maladjusted by beginners, it turned in consistent long flights ranging up to a half hour in duration.

Super Saucer's pod-shaped fuselage is the result of slow-speed wind tunnel tests into the drag coefficient of this shape of fuselage, when it was found to have 15 percent less drag than the regular slabsided fuselage. This is verified in the 1944 issue of Model Aeronautical Digest, a meaty little article entitled 'Streamline versus Slabside.'

Low drifting qualities in windy weather have always been a problem, too, and we found a shallow-depth fuselage coupled with low dihedral, and the proper rudder turning-moment was the only way out. So try a Super Saucer and see if some of these points are not borne out, and then you will know why it is superior to the average glider.

The fuselage is of sheet balsa construction; no longerons are employed in its construction, and if you are careful in selecting the softest, yet firmest, sheets of balsa obtainable, you can build a frame as light - if not lighter - than with the longeron and upright style of fuselage construction. First select as a crutch floor a piece of sheet 1/8 x 2 x 28-1/4 inch long. Draw a line down the exact center of the sheet. Referring to the plan and using a small square and ruler, mark off all the stations for the 3/32 soft sheet balsa bulkheads..."

Quote: "Super Saucer is a Bruce Lester Towliner... for those who don't know, he was a successful prolific designer and contest flyer from Canada... His Robomb (oz6838) series is really cool! The saucer is a conventional type towline glider... and would make a great free flight or r/c conversion today....Hi Steve - Super saucer ...scanned from my original copy of MAN full size plan. Submitted by jeff mccammant story city iowa... Thanks steve ! Best regards,"

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, text and pics, thanks to theshadow.

Corrections?

Did we get something wrong with these details about this plan (especially the datafile)? That happens sometimes. You can help us fix it.
Add a correction