Douglas AD-4B Skyraider (oz921)

About this Plan

Douglas AD-4B Skyraider. Rubber scale model bomber.

Note: this plan is almost identical to the Walt Mooney plan at Douglas AD-4B Skyraider (oz9190). This one here was described as being at 26 inch wingspan, rather than peanut scale. The measured span in fact comes out at just under 28 inch. According to the scale bar shown.

Direct submission to Outerzone.

Quote: "Peanut Skyraider, by Walt Mooney. Our 'Peanut Vendor' gives us another 'Shrink Job.' Build the original AD-4B from Full Size Plans, and/or a Peanut version from plans on the next two pages. They're both great flyers!

The Douglas Skyraider is one of the all time great airplanes. It was Pre-Designed overnight by Ed Heinemann, Leo Devlin, and Gene Root in a Washington Hotel room, in order to meet a Navy deadline, for which several other companies had already been at work on prototype airplanes. The AD emerged, in the long run, to be the best of them all - and the one that was built in greatest numbers over the longest period. There is a lesson here somewhere with respect to, 'Too many cooks spoil the broth', which could have been helpful to Douglas's competition.

Most military airplanes have rather boring color schemes that tend to camouflage their true lines. But in 1965, Profile Publications came out with the Skyraider Profile No.60, and the very last color scheme on the very last page is the one copied on the airplane in this article. It turned me on with its' red, white and black color scheme, and so in 1967 I built a 26 inch span model.

Recently, I was interested in building a Navy Peanut Scale model and this airplane looked like a good choice. We shot the plans down to half size and, 'voila!', there was a Peanut Scale Skyraider. There are seven years between my first view of Profile No. 60 and the Peanut version. If you look closely you'll notice that the Peanut has a little more dihedral than the original. This is a result of earlier trimming difficulties, and the Peanut version has been stable right from the first flight.

Construction is the standard two-sides-built-over-the-plan box, with formers and stringers, notched ribs with multiple-spar wings and tails, etc, which have been described so often in the past. We'll skip the basic construction, therefore, and get down to a couple of specific details and a more thorough discussion of how to achieve this color scheme on a Peanut Scale model and still have a relatively light weight airplane.

Details worth discussing: The bubble canopy. It is made by carving a solid mold out of hardwood - we used white pine - and then using a toy Mattel Vacu-form to pull a clear plastic canopy over the form.

The vertical tail leading edge was made by laminating three pieces of one-sixteenth wide by one thirty-second thick balsa, using thinned-out white glue and a waxed form, cut out of one-eighth sheet, for a guide. Our laminated part runs down the centerline of the top of the model, from the back of the cockpit to the trailing edge of the rudder.

The four bladed propeller is made from two Sleek Streek propellers (plastic). These have half of their hubs notched away and are then dovetailed together in the proper way. Next, the hub is coated with a thin layer of epoxy, which gets into the joint and makes a good strong hub again. Make sure you have a lightly oiled wire in the propeller shaft hole when you are applying the epoxy so it doesn't get into the shaft hole and ruin your whole day..."

Update 13/04/2020: Replaced this plan with a clearer copy (also added a supplement plan file scaled to peanut size at 13 in span) thanks to MB2020.

Supplementary file notes

Article.
Peanut scale plan.
Previous scan version.

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