Sopwith Tabloid SS3 (oz9887)

 

Sopwith Tabloid SS3 (oz9887) by Mike Roach 2005 - plan thumbnail

About this Plan

Sopwith Tabloid SS3. Radio control scale model for indoor fliying with electric power. Scale is 1/13.

Quote: "Indoors or out? Try this delightful little 80 gram World War I scout for micro RC and electric-power, designed by mike Roach

I first came across the SS3 while researching the more familiar Tabloid family. There are some excellent photographs in the Albatros Minidatafile No. 6 which allowed me to prepare a working drawing from which I built my first 'foamie', a 35in span version for the GWS gear I stripped out of my Pico Stick. This model weighed about 8oz and was just a little too large for the power available, although it performed very well indeed when I fitted one of the twin 150 motors, an 11x7 prop and a two-cell Li-Ion battery. By that time the model was fairly war-weary and it has been retired, to hang, hardware stripped out, in the ceiling of my model room until I can bear to scrap it. Not a process I enjoy!

This 24in version was built in response to the capabilities of the Falcon range of ultra-light radio equipment. While I was working on the new drawings, I came across Jef Raskin's website (Jef is the inventor of the Click and Drag interface, as well as a host of other innovations, both scientific and aero-modelling) where he too had found the SS3 and had prepared a set of drawings, which differ in a number of respects from mine. I think we will agree to share the honour of 'first past the post' but it was close!

At some point in late 1914, Sopwiths made a number of changes to the design of the Tabloid to meet a Royal Navy requirements. The resulting aircraft had quite a different appearance from the earlier versions: the wings were unstaggered, being orientated about the same CG as the earlier Tabloids and the upper wing was higher above the fuselage - higher even than the protoype. Ailerons were fitted to both wings; steel interplane and cabane section struts replaced the earlier wooden ones. The fuselage alloy side panels ended between the strut locations with a vertical cut-off and a ply panel aft of this line. There was a very obvious dark-coloured circular cut-out in the alloy panel above the front wing spar, possibly an access hatch.

Finally, the fin and rudder were larger, by about 25%, the tail skid was supported by a nest of struts, to give a degree of steering on the ground and the tailplane was redesigned with a straight leading edge. It sounds like a typical Royal Navy response to an existing specification! These aircraft, numbered 1201 -1212 were delivered to the RNAS during 1915 and served as scouts on Home Defence and in the Mediterranean until the middle of 1916. My drawings are as accurate as I can make them, taking details from the photographs in the Datafile, except that the wing section is more cambered than the original, to give a better flight performance at slow speeds.

The design of the model follows conventional free-flight practice, heavily influenced by the Albatros CIII of John Watters and recent models by Ken Shepard and is suitable for indoor or calm outdoor flying. My philosophy is that indoor RC modelsmaybe built at leats as lightly as free- flight ones, since they will only fly under controlled conditions and will be landed carefully and gently, wheraeas every free flight model is, by definition, a crash landing waiting to happen. So if 1/16in square longerons and 1.32in wing ribs seem fragile to you, don't worry. The SS3 and its sister model the three seater are much tougher than foam models and stand up to the gentle stresses of hangers and gymnasiums very well, but it is important to note that much of the trsength comes from working rigging, without which they wouold weigh more, fly fasterm, and break more easilly!

This weight business is important. The model has a wing area of just under 2 sq ft, so the bare airframe had tto weigh about 3oz to get within the magic 2oz/sq ft that indoor flying really needs..."

Supplementary file notes

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Sopwith Tabloid SS3 (oz9887) by Mike Roach 2005 - model pic

Datafile:

ScaleType:
  • Sopwith_Tabloid | help
    see Wikipedia | search Outerzone
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    search RCLibrary 3views (opens in new window)


    ScaleType: This (oz9887) is a scale plan. Where possible we link scale plans to Wikipedia, using a text string called ScaleType.

    If we got this right, you now have a couple of direct links (above) to 1. see the Wikipedia page, and 2. search Oz for more plans of this type. If we didn't, then see below.


    Notes:
    ScaleType is formed from the last part of the Wikipedia page address, which here is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith_Tabloid
    Wikipedia page addresses may well change over time.
    For more obscure types, there currently will be no Wiki page found. We tag these cases as ScaleType = NotFound. These will change over time.
    Corrections? Use the correction form to tell us the new/better ScaleType link we should be using. Thanks.

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Notes

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Scaling

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