earlwb

Back in the 1970's. a number of us used to fly all out .049 plylon racers that looked a lot like the first plan the "Taperwing" above. But most of us opted for more of a thin contant chord wing with a flat bottom airfoil. You know we never really came up with any plans per se back then for these planes. I think they were too easy to build for anything to have thought about it much. I remember one day several of us got together at one guy's house, who had a band saw, and we made up a big pile of wing ribs, and parts and had at it with the superglue. We would lay out some 1/16" sheeting and super glue a few ribs down, then super glue the top sheeting in place. There would be a 1/8" square stick on the front. We would run one aileron. You could build one and have it sanded in less than a hour. we would use a bottom hatch and superglue the wing onto the fuselage. The wing span was 20 to 24 inches depending on your skills. Around 100 to 150 square inches of wing area. We would run crankcase pressure, use one of the super fine threaded racing needle valves on the Cox Tee Dee engine. the cool streamlined motor mount was a required item. we would custom cut and sand our propellers. The fuel tank had a fixed fuel pickup, to kill the engine, you fly inverted for a few seconds. Generally at the time, the RC systems were not all that small or lightweight. So when the engine quit, the glide ratio was more like a Space shuttle. You tended to come in hot and skid along the ground a ways. we would put a hardwood skid on the bottom to keep the wear down.