davidgeorge212

I have a question about drawing plans directly from an arf that was recently discontinued (maybe 1 or 2 years ago). First of all is this even legal to do, could it still be copyrighted by the company even though it is discontinued? My intentions are not to sell the plans as if they were mine but rather draw them up and use them to cut out spare parts if I crash the original plane. And because this discontiued plane is so popular at our feild, I imagine some members might want a copy of the plans. What are your thoughts about this?


David

limeybob

My Feedback: (6)

chinese ARF?

Bob

davidgeorge212

It is a discontinued plane from Hyperion

Edwin

My Feedback: (2)

I wouldnt worry as long as you dont make any money off it. I'm planning on doing the same. In two cases I want a larger plane.
Edwin

davidgeorge212

Ya, I dont plan on selling these plans just give them to people who enjoy flying this plane and doing a little scratch building.

Im also guessing it would be ok to load them up on the internet in a pdf format here on rcu so if other modlers want to build this plane they could.

dreadnaut

My Feedback: (5)

Change the span by 1/4 inch. Slightly alter the fuselage profile and call it something else. Thats probably what Hyperion did.

allanflowers

You have gone from making the plans for yourself and a few friends in your club to... posting the plans on the internet for anybody in the WORLD to use.
Think about it! The company may want to reintroduce the model. They may want to sell the rights to someone else. In any case, it is THEIR intellectual property. You are going WAY too far.

davidgeorge212

all right then I wont, I will just keep them on my file

I havent even drawn up the plans yet, or know if I even will with my busy schedule. I just got the plane in the mail yesterday.

davidgeorge212

the only reason I thought about uploading them was that I saw a website, by dave fitzpatrick, where he drew up autocad plans for the discontinued Hanger 9 arf of the "Pizzaz" He said in the discription that he loved the plane and wanted to archive the plans, I guess everyone else can too now.

You can see all his plans on this website:
http://my.pclink.com/~dfritzke/

ARUP

That's funny! Oftentimes Asian folks copy OUR stuff! They don't seem to worried about whose intellectual property they are stealing!!!!!!!

ARUP

That's funny! Oftentimes Asian folks copy OUR stuff! They don't seem too concerned about whose intellectual property they are stealing!!!!

dreadnaut

My Feedback: (5)

Ok, Lets look at a pattern plane for example. They will all have a wing span of about 72-76 inches, and be about 78 inches long. The latest trend is for fuselages with large cross section, and canopies that are centered around the wing leading edge.

If you make an exact copy of all the ribs, and formers, and copy it exactly, then you will have intellectual property issues. But if you are like most people who would actually go so far as to build your own plane [sm=eek.gif], I doubt if you would stop there. I have "designed" my own pattern planes; two so far. I did not try to reinvent the wheel. I would not try to design a plane to compete in pattern that was a .20 sized flying lawnmower. I looked at several different planes, and incorporated features I liked. It came out looking kind of like the one described above.

If you "reverse engineer" that plane you have, and come out with something that is not quite the same, and incorporates things that were not part of the original, then I do not see a problem. Wilbur and Orville Wright had issues with Glen Curtis, whose plane looked a lot like theirs, except he lost the canard and used a conventional tail, and straitened out the wing instead of putting in annhedral like the Wrights did. The Wrights big mistake was that they thought they could patent flight itself.

davidgeorge212

as I look at the structure of the plane it is almost 95% + laser cut out (meaning there is hardly any kind of dimensional balsa sticks that were cut to size and glued in, it is all laser cut holes and patterns and such) . If/when I draw up the plans I think my biggest goal I would like to achieve is to simplify the design as much as possible so that it could be theoretically glued up using nothing but dimensional lumber that you can buy from the hobby shop. I want it to be where I can pin the peices down a building board and glue them up that way. For any external rounded areas the builder would have to sand it to the finish shape, and for internal holes either use an appropriate size drill bit or cut it out on a scroll saw.