Ole Tiger (oz7742)

About this Plan

Ole Tiger. Formula 1 racing version of Bob Downey's famous Ole Tiger.

Quote: "I am another one who has been bitten by the racing bug. Put it off for a couple of years, and then was shamed into build-ing a Formula I ship. And I grabbed a good one to start with, a T-tailed Rivets. This business of 'going fast and turning left' really turned out to be a ball, and look where it's got me - trying to write a story about one of my all-time favorite racing aircraft, Bob Downey's famous "Ole Tiger."

Ole Tiger began life in 1947 being built by Jim Miller and raced as "Miller Spe-cial Little Gem." In 1963, Bob Downey re-built the Miller Special into the Ole Tiger configuration and has been a con-sistent winner since then.

The October, 1967, issue of "Private Pi-lot" has some excellent photos and an in-formative article, and Volume IV of 'Racing Planes' (Aero Publishers, FalIbrook, California) has an excellent racing his-tory of Ole Tiger, and also has the three-view drawing that provided the data for our model version.

We began doodling up our 450-sq. in. version during 1968 and finally got her airborne in the fall. She's been flown at Mile Square, Cotati, Turlock, and at the Pioneers Field at Sunnyvale - all in California. Ole Tiger is not a difficult ship to build, and it does build into an attractive model. One of the features we have tried to preserve is the extremely low aspect ratio of the wing. We have done a little revising in this respect, but the overall effect is still there. So, if you'd like something a little different to race, have a go at this model.

Wing: One of the features is its extremely thin wing. Have no fears though. It is not new and has been well tried and proven, both in flight characteristics and strength in such ships as Joe Foster's Rivets, and Jim Kirtland's Shoestring. In addition to having excellent flight characteristics, it is perhaps the easiest wing to build that we have ever had. Wing data as follows: Span, 40 in and chord of 14-1/2; thickness at root, 1 in (14%), at the tip, 3%; mean thickness of the wing is 81/z%; aspect ratio, 3.4.

As you can see on the plan, the wing is built on building boards. It goes without saying that your wing will be no better than the board you build it on, so start with a good foundation. We obtained our building boards from a pattern shop, and it's called 'Perfect Plank' and consists of successive vertical laminations of pine and is faced in a milling machine and is true. It's fairly expensive, but once purchased, is good for a long time.

You will need two pieces 20 in long and 16 in wide. Lay one piece flat on your bench, butt the second piece to the first and block one end up to obtain the dihedral angle shown on the plans. When it's about right, staple the two boards together so that the top surfaces are perfectly flush at the joint. A bead of glue along this joint will 'lock up' the boards for sure.

After all this, the actual construction can begin by edge gluing four wing skins together. We glue ours up so that the bottom skin joints are parallel with the rear spar and the top skin joints are parallel with the leading edge which provides a sort of cross-grain construction in the finished wing.

Our favorite method of gluing the sheets is to first run masking tape over all joints in one panel, opening the reverse side of the joints, and brushing a light coat of 'Starcrest' coating resin in the joints, then laying the panel out flat with the taped side down. In two hours, the joints are ready for sanding...."

Note this is a low resolution plan.

Update 27/05/2016: article pages, text & pics added, thanks to RFJ.

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, text & pics.

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