Patriot (oz9006)

About this Plan

Patriot. Radio control pattern plane.

Quote: "Joe Foster's Class III design has been proving itself in competition from Coast to Coast. Sixth at last year's Nationals, the Patriot can be your entree to the winner's Circle.

THE Patriot design is an endeavor on our part to put together a ship that combines pleasing appearance with practical design features, such as a constant chord wing and other easy-to-build features.

Contrary to a recent popular trend to design shorter tail and longer nose moment arms for proportional control, we are experiencing great success with our longer tail moments and higher aspect ratio wings. This type of design seems to absorb a little more power, but in turn, offers the extra smoothness about the pitch moment that we feel is an asset, and with the engines available to-day, a little more power is not hard to come by. To date, no one has been able to convince us that the small degree of added efficiency and faster roll rate of a tapered wing is worth the added building effort.

Strip ailerons are also incorporated to lessen building time. A word here about our experience with the latter. Our first three attempts with 'strips' were very disappointing. We had a lot of trouble obtaining a smooth, positive response. We tried them larger, smaller, and tapered with equally poor results, finally learning that 'flexing' was the problem. So, at this point, let me offer a word of caution. Construct your ailerons from very firm C grain wood and keep the slop out of the linkages for best results. In addition, we've learned that a little more than the conventional 60%-40% up-to-down differential of aileron movement is required to obtain a truly axial roll. The Patriot requires 9/32 in up and 5/32 in down movement.

The airfoil used in the wing is a result of three previous experiments tied on this design. It has a very smooth stall combined with good penetration which, in our opinion, is very desirable for proportional control flying. Our experience with some thicker sections on this ship evidenced smoothness in calm air, but left something to be desired in the wind. Thinner sections will cause the ship to sail at landing speeds. This is a design you will have no trouble landing in the circle. It has a good positive sink rate and yet will flare beauti-fully for smooth touch-down. And if necessary, you can drag one until the tail touches without dropping a wing. More dihedral was tried and found un-necessary. In fact, the latter lessened inverted flight performance along with smoothness of rolls. The amount called out offers a small degree of positive stability in a banked turn. This, we feel, is highly desirable. It is very difficult to make smooth turns with a ship that wants to increase its bank as it turns. The Patriot requires a small positive pressure to hold it into the banked position.

So far we have discussed our experience with the design equipped with proportional control. Actually, the ship started life as a reed job and was flown very successfully before we equipped it with the new Orbit proportional. The original, before modification, incorpo-rated 3 degree of right thrust, a 20% thick airfoil with the high point at 35%, a more rounded leading edge and a smaller elevator. The installation of reed type servos, receiver and battery pack is not illustrated on the plan, so a short, written description may be in order..."

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, thanks to hlsat, JHatton.

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