Magic Dragon (oz8464)

About this Plan

Magic Dragon. Radio control pattern plane, for 60 power. Uses a foam wing.

Quote: "After all these 'Kind-of-wild' machines, I figured it was about time I did something more or less middle of the road. So for '66 we stirred the brew and whoomped up a 'Magic Dragon'. We went up to 755 square inches of wing in order to lower the wing loading down somewhere be-tween 20 and 22 oz., which checks in as a pretty decent place to be. We also used an NACA 632415 airfoil which is a semi-symmetrical airfoil and is somewhat more of a lifting section than the one I was using in the Thunderbolt, though it doesn't run as much lift as the old 2415. Stuffed a .60 in the front of it, used a tail moment that was a little bit longer than what I had been using, and a nose moment that was a trifle shorter. The rudder size and fin area were around what seemed best coming up through the long design series and the stabilizer was the same kind of, cut, whack and chop proposition.

We built two of these beasts in the spring of '66 and, man, was I delighted! The Green Box proportional hadn't arrived so I stuck reeds in one of them and went pantin' out to Wright Field to fly it on those long smooooth concrete runways. Actually, the wind was blowing about 30 miles an hour (what else for a first flight), but she handled it with no sweat. Probably the best way to describe the flying characteristics is to say, 'it flies with a real light responsive touch', if you know what I mean. Stability is dead neutral and it goes just exactly where you put it by just the amount you put it there.

It moves out right quick and it seems to find a pretty good groove. Rolls are what I've been looking for; it holds them right on a strung line; shows no yaw, wobble, flop, flip or flap; just turns over neatly and cleanly on the old chalk line at about 2 seconds per roll. Landing characteristics are kind of weird; you haul back on the stick and the wing just absolutely refuses to stall out. So you fly and fly and fly and fly. It's darn disconcerting to use 5000 feet of runway to land but it's been known to happen. I haven't really had too much trouble with it as long as I got it down fairly low and slow while we were far out and just let her settle in comfortably.

It's awful nice to know that no matter how far you haul back on it, it simply won't drop a wing and snap roll. On the other hand, the airfoil gives mighty interesting inverted performance. Take a quick peek at it and you'll note that the maximum thickness on the bottom is well ahead of the maximum thickness on top. This tends to move your center of lift forward when you're inverted and you don't require so much down trim. Even more important than that, it gives you nice smooth, round outside loops..."

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, thanks to ser001, from RCLibrary.

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