Lil Honcho (oz6252)

About this Plan

Li'l Honcho. Radio control sport model for .19 power.

Quote: "LIL HONCHO. The Model That Almost Didn't Happen. By Bob Talley

This is the story of a model that almost didn't happen. Now that it did happen, a lot of my later designs almost aren't - it's so much fun to fly that I hate to take my radio out and put it in anything else. Lil Honcho will probably never win a contest - it wasn't designed to. It probably wouldn't win any beauty awards - it's about as curvy as a two-by-four and just about as subtle. It was designed to do only two things and do them well and it does. It was designed to: (1) Be capable of doing all the standard AMA and FAI pattern maneuvers. (2) Do them low and slow. Why, takes a bit of explaining.

Having had this obsession - er - 'hobby' called R/C since 1953, I've naturally progressed from the old escapement days right on up to propo. However, a few years back, competition wise, I cast my lot with Class II. In 1968 this suddenly became a lost art. Just about the time I was beginning to win a few contests regularly, the event was jerked out from under me. I was so mad (I still am) I continued to fly Class II models in A and B contests for over a year.

Finally I built myself a few .60 powered wing-wigglers and entered them in the contests. I also continued to fly a little three foot span shoulder wing model with only REM controls for fun, and as a comedy act between rounds of the contests. After the last contest of the season I sat back to appraise what I was actually accomplishing. I was having a ball with the comedy act but I wasn't winning any contests. Oh, I'd do OK for a few rounds - until the pressure got a little tough. Then at the most crucial times and usually in the simplest of manuevers, I'd fall back into my old Class II reflexes and blow it. Mulling this over and over I came to two conclusions.

First, I just couldn't mix a Class II comedy act with a Class III type contest machine. The reflexes and timing required were just too different. Second, I needed one heck of a lot of practice with an aileron type low winger just to kill these old Class II reflexes once and for all. It was time to fly or cut balsa! It was right about here that Lil' Honcho almost didn't happen. I already had two or three .60 powered contest bombs laying around the shop and the foam wings all cut for what I hoped would be a new design that would be superior to almost anything flying in con-tests today. The easiest way would be just to take one of these and go out and practice until I had it licked.

As a matter of fact, I started to do just that, but after the first few sessions something was still bugging me. Here I'd take this big roaring .60 beast, go blasting off all over the sky to practice. I'd get the big monster all set up for a maneuver, get halfway thru - goof - and before I had time to make the correction, it was all over and I'd have to go thru the whole elaborate setting up process to start again. At twelve ounces of fuel of flight, yet! (I'm a cheapskate). Moreover, my natural style of flying is close to me and the ground, where I can see exactly whats going on. These big six pound .60 bombs roaring by at eighty mph and twenty feet up and rolling, is enough to rattle even my 200 lb plus frame! A mistake, here, and there's no time or room to correct. I could do all the manuevers I needed, but I just couldn't do them well enough - and my progress was painfully slow.

I kept wishing for my little three foot span .15 model that I could throw all over the sky, down close to the ground, and if I goofed, so what? There'd be plenty of time and room to correct my mistake. The model was always close enough to me to see the mistakes as soon as they happened, correct, watch the correction and re-correct again if necessary. Anybody who saw my old comedy act will remember that I would do multiple snap rolls and reverse spins starting about thirty feet off the deck. I never quite felt 'at home' enough with my .60 bombs to try to throw them around this way - indeed, it, wouldn't have been safe to try. What I needed was a model I could feel 'at home' with down low and close in, yet one which would be capable of all the standard manuevers. It would have to be small, light, simple, slow and easy to build. Lil' Honcho was about to happen!

Frankly, the fuselage was 'designed' first. I knew I needed side area, but I hated the thought of all the work involved in a turtle deck. Surely there must be a simpler way. What could be simpler than two three-inch wide pieces of balsa all the way? Three inches wide at the nose and three inches wide at the tail. Why not? Since light weight and a simple structure was another requirement, why not leave out all those time consuming and weighty items in the wings, like landing gear blocks and braces? In fact, why even a nose wheel at all? I already knew how to take off and land with a trike gear, in fact, this was the one area of the pattern that I wasn't having any trouble with..."

Update 11/10/2016: article pages, text & pics added, thanks to RFJ.

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, text & pics.

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