Hot Pants (oz8693)

About this Plan

Hot Pants. Ultra fast aerobatic and pylon race slope soarer.

Quote: "HAVING FLOWN in a few competitions last season, with little success, I decided for the coming year to design a model to the current 'winning formula,' as it were (we all know who's winning all that silver-ware, don't we?). The result is Hot Pants.

Basically Hot Pants is a small (60 in span) light (24 lb) and clean (just look at those lines) acrobatic glider with a thin, fully-symmetrical section, designed for competition flying.

Although designed as a 'pot hunter', it is surprising how well it will soar in light wind conditions, provided it's flown gently and teh speed is kept up in the turns. Talking of speed - given good lift and flown really fast the Hot Pants is also potentially a winner in glider pylon racing. The thin, fully-symmetrical section is very fast, but for extremely tight turns a low drag semi-symmetrical section such as the Eppler 374 would, I feel, be better. As this latter section has a good lift as well as a low drag co-efficient, the wing is really working for you in the turns without any mushing effect which can result from pulling too much elevator on a model with a symmetrical aerofoil. I am, at the time of writing, building a wing with the Eppler section for the sole purpose of glider pylon-racing. This alternative section is shown on the plan and, when placed on the fuselage, tin. wide hard balsa make up blocks are glued to the underside wing sheeting to take up the differ-ence in aerofoil section, thus enabling two wings to fit one fuselage.

CONSTRUCTION Before starting I would like to point out that all balsa used is of the soft to medium soft grade (with the exception of the nose block) as this is essential if you want to achieve as light a structure as possible. The original bare airframe, less radio and finishing, weighed only 19 oz, so don't be put off by those sheeted wings.

Fuselage: The basic fuselage sides are cut out of medium soft 3/16 sheet, making sure that the outline includes the wing fairing and canopy as these are cut out of the finished fuselage after final shaping and sanding. It would be as well if the cut lines were plotted on the sides at this stage. Now pin the fuselage sides down to your building board and glue the 3/8 x 3/8 in triangular fillets in place. No difficulties should be encountered as long as you cut the triangular strips (as shown on the plan) to ease the bending around the canopy and nose area. Cut formers F.1 and F.2 out of 1/8 ply..."

Hot Pants, Radio Modeller, February 1972.

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, thanks to RFJ.

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