Baron Knight II (oz8700)

About this Plan

Baron Knight II. Rubber competition model.

Quote: "THIS model, first designed and built in early 1964, has achieved a certain measure of success and obtained the following 4 places out of 4 contests entered. South Midland Gala 3rd, Aeromodeller Postal Event 1st, East Anglian Rally 1st, and Woodford Rally 2nd.

It is reasonably simple to build and anyone who has built a rubber model before should have no difficulty in getting near maximum flights without any assistance from thermals. It has a very fast climb for the 20 second motor run and needs careful adjustment for optimum performance.

Commence construction by building the wing and tail surfaces then these will have time to settle whilst the rest of the model is being made. On the plan, only one wing centre panel is shown but if the right hand panel is traced on to greaseproof paper this can be turned over and used to build the left hand panel.

Remember to only use wood light enough to keep the complete airframe under the 2.46 oz required by the formulae. All flying surfaces should be covered in Jap tissue (if obtainable) but if light-weight Modelspan is used remember to dope sparingly.

When building the fuselage, the sheet sides of the motor tube must be covered and doped INSIDE before construction, this will stop the fuselage soaking up lubricant and help avoid splitting in the case of snapped motors.

The fuselage is built square, and then fitted on one edge to form the diamond shape. Decide which edge is to be top, stick the pylon on vertically in the position as shown and then add the pylon formers to each side to make the 1/32 sheet side, you will need a template and this can be cut from postcard to the exact shape, then transferred to 1/32 light sheet. The pylon must be made in this way as this gives the required cross sectional area.

Fin supports are triangles of 3/16 balsa stuck to the base and then sanded to match the symetrical section of the rib.

No undercarriage is shown, but a length of light 1/8 square balsa in a box or a piece of 20 swg wire in a tube will provide the leg for ROG. If you want a more streamlined job it is quite simple to fix up a retractable leg out of a piece of tapered 1/8 in square spruce.

Care should be taken making the propeller, as this plus the motor makes up the heart of any rubber model. The moulding block is easy to make and extra care taken here will pay-off in the finished blade. The 3 laminations for the blade should be glued together with a cold water glue such as Cascamite, (balsa cement could be used but only as a last resort) and left firmly fastened to the former for about 3 days.

After this remove from the block and add the dowel hub. When this is set, smooth the hub into the blade and reinforce the joint by smearing cement liberally over where the dowel and blade join. Drill a large hole in the hub and put a piece of 18 gauge tubing through the dowel, filling the hole with Cataloy, Ardite or similar resins.

Before this dries and Cataloy dries quickly, set the blade up on the pitch triangle with the tubing held horizontal by two blocks on the base board, to which the triangle should be stuck. When this has been set, remove, trim down and sand blade to airfoil shape.

Finally cover and dope blade, solder to cross piece and balance with lead.

Trimming should be undertaken on a calm day and the glide adjusted to a flat wide right hand trimming circle before any power flights are attemp-ted. Don't put all the turns on at once but build up to maximum power gradually. Avoid overdoing the right hand thrust and even a little left thrust may be necessary on full turns to get the steep spiral climb as on the original.

Finally, a note on contest flying. To succeed the motor must be wound right up to the breaking point and this calls for new motors every flight. I run mine in once up to 50 per cent turns and after that about 110 per cent for my flights. You may get two contest flights out of a motor treated in this way but they are suspect on the Second Flight. I average a snapped motor every 3rd flight but the motors are cheap and the results justify the effort."

Scan from DBHL, cleanup by theshadow.

ref DBHL-5456.

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Supplementary file notes

Article, thanks to Newtmagick.

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