Instructor (oz6566)

About this Plan

Instructor. RC Sport Trainer for .19 - .49 engines. Published in RCM Annual 1966. Original Scan by RFJ.

Quote: "How do I get started in R/C? What equipment should I choose? Is there an airplane specifically designed as a trainer to fit my requirements? Can I learn to fly successfully? These and many more are the questions this article wil answer. If you're a newcomer to radio control, RCM is assigning you an instructor.

The Instructor is an airplane that has been designed especially to teach beginners how to fly. More than that, it has been designed to progress as the begin-ner progresses and to 'grow up' with him. This ship was not designed in the old fashioned way of attemping to take a single channel ship and to modify it slightly for large engi nes and multi channel operation. Instead, the Instructor was designed to be a multi trainer easy to build, a snap to fly, and to have the capabilities of taking on a larger engine and much more control when the Tyro is ready for it. In short, it has been designed to give you the best possible entry into radio control with a minimum of construction time and moderate expenditure of money. It is a small ship by many standards, and yet by being small, the weight is kept down allowing the builder to choose from a wide range of engines.

In its basic form the Instructor is designed to fly with six channel radio gear with either a .19 or .35 size engine.

The test model was equipped with a Veco .35 for test flights and with eight channels of radio gear installed. Tests have been made to see how this ship would respond with only rudder control, and by setting the elevator trim to up-trim position, it performed quite well. By using the standard contest set-up of up thrust it can be flown very well in rudder only competition.

Before we get into the construction f would like to unfold for you the reasons behind the Instructor and why it is a 'different' airplane although it closely resembles various other designs.

To begin with the basic design of the Instructor had to accomplish several things. It had to be able to fly with engines from .19 to .49, one heck of a range! It also had to have room to take any type of radio installation, from four channel through full-house proportional. It had to allow for any ham fisted modeler to install his radio gear and engines and be able to change at will. It had to have provision for ailerons to be added later as the beginner became proficient. It had to be simple, yet easy to build for the newcomer to modeling. Last and most important, it had to fly, and fly well In fact, it had to be easy to fly with the smaller engines in order that the beginner wouldn't feel as if he had a tiger by the tail. One other thing - it had to be rugged, able to withstand the high strain of a fast pull-out with a large engine and yet be light enough to fly with a smaller one.

All of these boiled down to the Instructor. It has proven itself in all categories. It is extremely easy to fly, has no bad habits, and is rugged. She can operate over a wide speed range, and yet handle like a baby carriage. One of the most satisfying flight characteristics is that on turns her nose stays up. To make a turn to the right or left, simply nudge the rudder a bit and then let her come on around - no blips of up elevator are required to hold altitude, the nose stays up. With many, many multi ships and trainers, when a turn is started, down comes the nose and a spiral dive is the end result. This is unnerving to the beginner, to say the least!

If you are not a beginner, but want to build the Instructor for a good airplane, you are in for a surprise, she can perform any flight maneuver, and well! One of the most thrilling stunts is to head downwind at full bore and then hold full up elevator and rudder - she will snap roll one and one half times, tumble through the air almost end over end for one flip, then settle down to a high speed spin! Try the same bit from an outside loop, but at the bottom hit full rudder while holding full down elevator, and she will snap roll inverted, tumble, and come out in an inverted spin! Try this on some of the so called hot multi ships and see if the wings hold up!

Frankly, I was surprised at just how well the Instructor does fill the bill for almost every type of flyer. Since this part of the series is to help the beginner in starting construction we are going to take more than the normal amount of time to try and fill in the gaps in building. If you're an old hand you can skip over most of these words. At the end of this section you will find a complete material list for building in case you have to mail-order your materials.

One of the prime requisites for successful construction is a good building board. I have found that for all around good use chip board, or novaply works better than plywood. This board is made of wood chips and resin and is very warp resistant. I have two pieces that I use, each being four feet long by 16 in wide. This may seem small, but I place these pieces on a card table when building and slip into a closet when they are not needed. Also having two allows me to use each piece for building wing halves or to build a fuselage on one and an elevator on another. I keep one side of each for wings only. This keeps all of the glue and other junk from marring the surface. Also, I have lined off the wing side of each with a plastic marking pen. Each panel is laid off in 1 in spaced lines running horizontally and 3 in spaced lines running vertically. This makes it easy to build wings since I can lay out the panels without using plans. If any other lines are required to get the spars or tips in the right place, these marks can be made with a plastic tip marking pen on the wax paper covering. Use wax paper to cover either the wood or the plans..."

Update 15/07/2016: Added article pages, thanks to davidterrell80.

Update 31/08/2017: Replaced this plan with a clearer copy (restored text, rebuilt page gap) thanks to davidterrell80.

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, text and pics. Complete at 22 pages. Note large filesize.
Previous scan version.

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