Yankee (oz8766)

About this Plan

Yankee. RC pattern plane.

Quote: "The perfect airplane? A guaranteed winner? The secret way to the top? Yankee, by Bob Noll.

Don't believe it. There is no pattern design that can provide instant success and overcome a lack of flying talent on the part of the pilot. No matter what you may think, winning is made up of 90% pilot ability, 5% airplane and 5% luck. And in today's highly competitive sport of pattern flying, it is most important that as much effort as possible be put into the 95% that we can control. Practice, practice practice with a good, honest airplane is the answer.

Of course, there are many good plane designs kicking around the country, such as the Tiger Tail (oz8522), Mach I (oz5462), Daddy Rabbit (oz5535), Cutlass, Kaos (oz6251), Banshee and others. In the hands of a top pilot, all these designs can be found in the winners circle, primarily because they are sound designs with very honest flying characteristics.

The Yankee is an attempt achieve a plane which contains both, soundness and honesty, as well as a high degree of smoothness in all maneuvers. Having used these terms, let me explain what I mean.

Soundness in design has to do primarily with functionality and integrity of construction. Good basic construction practices, proven reliable over years of experience by other successful designers and myself, have been applied to the Yankee design.

Honesty in flying characteristics relates to the plane's predictability, with a primary emphasis on repetitive duplication and absence of the unexpected. It's hard enough to master the pattern maneuvers without having to contend with a plane that has some nasty idiosyncrasies.

Smoothness is self-explanatory, but a factor not given enough thought with respect to the plane. Although the pilot's 'habits' contribute significantly to the smoothness of flight, the plane, design, and setup are also key factors.

The Yankee definitely meets the criteria mentioned above. It has performed well for me during the contest season, during which time the design was refined through some changes.

As I am not an aeronautical engineer, I can't take credit for developing exotic new airfoils and other aerodynamic breakthroughs in the Yankee. However, being a competitive modeler for quite a few years, I have built this design around some basic good experience that I have had with a Jet Star Mk7 by Ed Keck, and the famous Cutlass Supreme by Don Coleman. In addition to having flown these two designs in competition, I have had the opportunity to fly some of the other popular designs over the past few years, and feel that the Yankee is capable of performing with the best.

Although I will provide some of the significant design features of the Yankee, I want to impress you with the need to build an accurately true and well aligned plane in order to take advantage of the design characteristics. Every competitor who is at, or near, the winners' circle understands the need to have a plane that is exactly true and totally free from warps, surface irregularities and misalignments. And believe it or not, it isn't much more work to do the job the right way; the benefits will be impressive. Each plane I build reconfirms my awareness about the impor-tance of building accuracy.

Now let me go into some of the design features in the Yankee. Both the Jet Star Mk7 and the Cutlass Supreme have the wings 1 in below the thrust line. This configuration has worked well in both these designs, so it was retained for the Yankee. Some designers argue that the wing is harder to see as it is moved up toward the thrust line since, in flight, it becomes masked by the fuselage. I have not experienced this problem, however, as I have always used a contrasting strip along the entire wing leading edge to make it stand out. Moving the wing closer to the thrust line can present equipment installation and landing gear problems..."

Yankee, American Aircraft Modeler, September 1974.

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, thanks to RFJ.

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