Go-Go Fli (oz9088)

About this Plan

Go-Go Fli. Radio control pylon racer model. Goodyear pylon racer.

Quote: "The Goodyear racer that is so fast it laps its contemporaries! Although it won the Nationals, you probably won't want to build it! Phil Kraft tells why.

GOODYEAR racing can achieve a popularity at least equal to Class III stunt flying. Whether or not it reaches this potential depends entirely on rules proposals now in preparation. If the rules finally selected encourage the widest possible participation from the average R/C enthusiast, we may have an event which has wide appeal to both spectators and participants.

I had watched a number of Goodyear events without a great deal of enthusiasm. It seemed to me that these little scale aircraft were too specialized and involved too much effort in con-struction in relation to the chance of disaster. It also was apparent that those who had originated the event were not receptive to any suggestions towards simpliflying the type of aircraft used. There were mutterings from this elite about a 'Gentlemen's Event' and not wishing to appeal to the poor mundane average flyer, etc.

Frankly, I set out to design a racer with a bit of a chip on my shoulder and hoped to build a non-scale prototype that was fast enough to easily make up for the large scale handicap than a feature of the rules. Since I am a lazy model builder, the design was to be of simple fast construction. The GoGo Fli is the result.

From a design standpoint every effort was made to keep the ship as clean as possible. We believed that the shoulder wing configuration with the wing and stablizer center lines close to the thrust line would produce the least drag. For simplicity, the wing and fuselage were built in one piece and fillets were used at the junction of the wing and fuselage.

The first wing was semi-symmetrical with a total thickness of somewhat less than 6%. The ultra thin wing, however, proved impractical as it curled every which way after doping. The thickness was then increased to 7.5% and the rear section of the wing was made solid. The turned down wing tips were added primarily to minimize the tip vortex under high G loads and high angles of attack. It is also possible that they result in less drag. The wing also has approximately 1/2 in negative dihedral. We could probably develop a scientific reason for this but the board on which the wing was built sprung loose in the center and the negative dihedral was therefore unintentional.

The ship was completed in January of this year. The first test flight with the engine running rich was the first indication that the design was extremely fast and that we had also used far too much aileron area. When the engine stopped the airplane was brought around in a fast glide and passed by me approximately 6 or 8 feet high. I expected that it would land approximately in the center of the ample runway but it kept right on gliding until we ran out of runway! I wasn't worried as there was another 100 yards of grassy field ahead, however, it quickly ate up this area and still hadn't lost more than a foot in altitude when it suddenly dawned on me that it wasn't coming down!

The fence at the end of the field terminated the glide pattern, and with a great deal of swearing and recrimination, we carried it back to the shop for rebuilding. The next time out the low speed characteristics of the ship were carefully checked while we had plenty of altitude and the engine was still running. Perhaps, due to the vortex tips, the airplane could be slowed down and stalled completely with no tendency to drop a wing tip or even to change heading..."

Update 28/08/2017: Added PDFvector plan tracing, thanks to hogal.

Supplementary file notes

Article pages, thanks to Cavitation.
PDFvector plan tracing

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