<Tom Anderson (Old Buzzard) suggested the name to Randy>

I was visiting Randy in his shop and he showed me the just completed prototype. He explained that the design and color scheme was intended to hearken back to military primary trainers between the 1st & 2nd wars and asked me what I thought of 'Tweener' as a name. Since it sported a Cox Golden Bee in the snoot I replied that it was obviously a 'Bee-tween'. And so it is.

FWIW Randy considered the series that started with his 'Nickel' as being the best of his designs for trainers. His own Nickel was used as a testbed for engines and wore many different things up front over the years from an eclectic bevy of Cox products to a PAW .03 and an .061 G-Mark/Cannon which he once told me he considered the best throttling small engine he'd ever used.
While the 1/2A Nickel is certainly a worthy candidate when considering a basic trainer (or just a satisfying lazy man's lawnchair flyer) I think the next size in the series, the 'Dime', powered by .09/.10 size engines, is a slightly better choice since the larger size makes maintaining visual orientation easier.
Both are wonderfully pleasing 3 channel sport flyers that do a lot more things well than many other designs purported to be designed for more sporting applications. Any small model fancier who hasn't a Nickel in his fleet is missing one of the finest flying 1/2A designs that ever put air under its wings IMO. And, for informational purposes, overpowering them makes them less pleasing than if built to plan.

Hmmm, wonder if that old retired Nickel hanging in the shop is redeemable?

BTW-while I have your attention Sometime in the '80s I was flying a sailplane with an Kyosho AP-29 for power. I became so impressed with the friendly willingness of the little motor that I pressed Randy to get one and design a model around it. Which he did. In the same garbage bag that contains the Nickel & the Bee-tween is the fuselage from that original prototype that I rescued from the trash barrel in his shop after a crash and I'd like to rebuild it. I have only one problem-I no longer recall the name of the design nor where it was published. So if anyone recalls that model and who published it or has the article and/or plans I would gratefully reimburse the expense of making copies and sending them to me.

One funny story and then I'll quit, -promise! Randy was new to electric motors at the time and asked how he should go about breaking in the AP-29. I told him he could hook up a couple of cheap dry-cells to it and just let it run until the cells were kaput or he could briefly dunk it in a glass of water while it was running with the same results. Perhaps I glossed over some of the details because a few days later he and I, along with some other neer-do-wells, were flying gliders and electrics at the local community college campus a few blocks away from Randys' house when he told me, "I'm breaking in that motor". "Whattaya mean 'I'm breaking it in"? "Well", sez he, "before I left the house I hooked it up and stuck it in a glass of water". Since we'd been flying and BSing for at least a couple of hours by then I figured the poor motor was a goner. We made a dash to his house to find the poor AP-29 till soldiering slowly along in a glass of the blackest water I've ever seen. It was just fine. Tom @ Buzzard Bluff