George:

You win the grand prize (whatever that is). They were taken at Chatfield state park in 1994. There were four of us that each built an A-10. Dean Lassek (pictured on right) built two of them, I built one, Ivan Munninghoff made a kit for himself but sold it to someone else and Herb Heaton built one. Dean and I used Dynamax and OS 91's. Herb used the Josh Harel 7 1/2" fan with Graupner props. Don't recall what Herb's plane weighed. Dean built two planes in two different configurations. The one pictured is a one piece wing and fuse and it weighed 43 lbs. I built mine as a two piece fuse and three piece wing and it was about 10 lbs heavier for a number of reasons (one being the multiple pieces and associated structures to handle the different pieces, i.e. three piece wings with plug in spars, etc.). Dean then built a second version which was a little heavier but he installed a couple of RAM 750 turbines in it. I never saw it fly but those that did said it flew much better than the DF versions. I believe that my plane had the most flights on it and as with any new plane we learned a lot each time we flew it. Example: we thought that we would balance the planes at abotu 25% MAC. However, my plane flew as though it was tail heavy. Not dangerously so but whenever I input elevator, the plane just seemed to "sit down" at the rear and not rotate around the CG. Turns out the full scale was balanced at 17.5% MAC. I added some weight and the plane flew much better. Another example was that the plane required a LOT of aileron to initiate a roll and then once the roll began it required opposite aileron to stop the roll. Turns out we were over powering the aileron servos. I looked at the full scale and noticed a trim tab that was deflected up with zero aileron deflection. I cut a trim tab that was 6" long and 1" in chord, glued it at a 30 degree angle, roll problem fixed (just for reference, the ailerons were 22" long and about 5" in chord so they were huge and the wing had a lot of undercamber). And it went on and on, finding various problems.

Didn't mean to hijack the thread and I apologize for getting off track.

Ed