Missy Dara (oz8814)

About this Plan

Missy Dara. Radio control quarter midget racer.

Quote: "The most exciting QM to ever take a checkered flag, Missy DARA is an all-out effort at maximum scale fidelity. It's fast, to boot! The original full-size Miss DARA was a Formula racer of the mid 1960s. After several attempts at competing, however, it suffered a fatal crash in a test flight and never appeared on the race scene again. I couldn't resist trying to recapture its appealing, unique shape in the form of a Quarter Midget (QM) racer. It is my impression that many modelers buy modeling magazines for the inspiration from the photos of other modelers' efforts. Besides the information that can be gleaned from the articles, pictures of fellow modelers' planes inspire daydreams of the perfect flying model. Missy DARA was designed to race, but she should also inspire other QM enthusiasts to build racers which are more representative of their full-scale counterparts.

According to the rules, QMs should be 'semi-scale or recognizable replicas' of aircraft that have raced in one way or another. Maybe the rules should say "'easily recognizable' because, as the competition gets faster, the racers become less recognizable. Extremely distasteful to me is the kit practice of supplying a mass-produced fuselage of minimum dimensions, along with a variety of canopies and flying surface tip designs. The simple fuselage form, not resembling any full-size aircraft, is used merely to attach two or three features of the airplane it supposedly models. Whatever happened to the 'Builder of the Model' pride cultivated by transforming either a drawing or a well-engineered kit into a good looking, recognizable airplane? I am not advocating super-scale, detailed QM racers - only more scale effect.

The 7/8 in wing rule makes way for more scale wing planforms, which Missy DARA has. Fuselages built to the five in minimum depth, however, are hard pressed to capture the spirit of the racers after which they are modeled. So I chose to maintain the unique outline of the Miss DARA, despite the fuselage depth. I also decided to retain the low aspect ratio and outline of the Miss DARA wing. You can see that Missy DARA is not a scaled down Formula I racer, but was built to be a QM. But! Can a racer with a deeper, more scale outline fuselage be competitive? Missy DARA, though over six in deep, answers YES!

The accompanying photos (for inspiration, remember) show her with a scale fin and rudder outline. She was flown many times this way, but she proved to be a wayward girl in the tight scatter pylon turn. The plans show her with a larger vertical fin, which proved to be the answer to keeping this little cutie in the groove.

Two other changes have been made to the model since the photos were taken. Competition in the North Central Pylon League (NCPL) here in the Minneapolis-St Paul area, has become so fierce that I found I could afford nei-ther the luxury of a sub-rudder and steerable tail skid, nor the large cheek cowls.

I found that Missy DARA could be raced without rudder control. Takeoffs are quite straight because of the right thrust in the engine mounting. I taped the rudder in place and eliminated the servo and linkage. The plans show an optional movable rudder. Also shown on the plan are smaller, more scale cheek cowls, intended to present a more streamlined front end. Note in the photos that Missy DARA originally had a rear rotor engine installation, utilizing the left cheek cowl as the air intake for the carburetor..."

Missy Dara, American Aircraft Modeler, April 1974.

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, thanks to RFJ.

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