Sunday Fighters (oz7751)

About this Plan

Sunday Fighters by Ken Willard, March 1974 AAM. Plan shows 2 variants, the 'Fokker Heinschmitt' and the 'Bristol Spadport'. This design uses the Ace foam 'Sunday Wings' (cat no. 13L65).

Quote: "During the summer of 1973 1 was trying to think of something different and exciting for the second annual WWI Western Front Jamboree, sponsored jointly by American Aircraft Modeler and the Pioneers RC Club of Sunnyvale. The year before, I'd made a hit with a little 24-in S.E.5 powered with an 020. Tough act to follow.

Curiously enough, I had been experimenting with Ace foam wings while trying to develop a Sunday Glider. It turned out successfully and Ed Sweeney bought it for publication in AAM. So I built another one, taking a little more care than I do when I'm testing initially. In the process, I used four untapered Ace wings - two for the left wing and two for the right wing - and had polyhedral with 3-1/2° both at the center and tip panels.

Well, I had the left wing put together, then the right wing and was about to join them at the center section. As I did, for one brief moment I put one above the other. Instant biplane! Looked like a set of S.E. 5 wings all ready for rudder, elevator and motor control. Just the right amount of dihedral to give good rudder turns.

That was it. Why not make a Max 10 powered semi-scale S.E.5 for the Jamboree? No, that wouldn't quite do the trick. Gotta do better. Got it! Make two semi-scale models using the same wings, but gussy one up with balanced ailerons (fake), elevator and rudder, with a scalloped trailing edge on the wings. Paint it red and make some German crosses out of MonoKote. Then, on the other, paint and decorate it a la RAF, and make the wing tips and tail surface look a bit like the Bristol.

As a final touch, change the landing gear slightly, with both struts forward of the wing for the German versions, and one strut extending back to the trailing edge of the lower wing for the English type. Also, make some fake engine heads and exhaust collectors or louvres, just to change the front end appearance. The rest of the design is common to both, except for cutting off a couple of inches from the lower wing tips of the German version to give it the Fokker D.VII touch.

And thus the 'Sunday Fighters' came to be. Now, what should I call them..."

Update 30/05/2016: Added article, thanks to RFJ.

Note this plan used the Ace Foam wing. For a plan showing how to construct a replacement wing in balsa (both tapered and straight-chord) see Ace Foam Wing (oz8557) thanks to AndyKunz.

Supplementary file notes

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