A friend sent me this link to an interesting site: http://www.custerchannelwing.com/02_history.html

The design uses the prop airflow over the wing channels to produce static lift, enough to lift the aircraft off the ground vertically!

Have any RCU members ever built an operating model of this craft? It's intriguing, to say the least!

In the photo below, apparently it is taking off almost vertically.

The Custer Channel Wing has been modeled at least twice in the past. From what little information is out there the models were unique but unremarkable as was the full scale airplane.
The real airplane was a vibrating underperforming dog. It had a lot of aspects that suggested that intuition rather than aero engineering went into the design. The airframe as I recall was a worked over Bauman Brigadier.
The photo that you have displayed is showing the airplane climbing out of the ground effect rather than any true vertical component to the climb.
Later studies showed that the performance would have been marginally better if the props had blown the accelerated air over the wing channels. Although the channel configuration has a very small vertical lift component and mostly drag associated with it.
All that aside, as a model where the power to weight ratio is high and the strength to weight ratio is very high, it would make a model that no one would ever confuse with a run of the mill light twin. In fact you could probably get the kind of performance out of it that was envisioned for the real one.

Thanks for the input!

I received the link over the weekend, with a suggestion that we should attempt a flying model, but thought it needed a bit more research first.

If we do attempt it, it would be of thin composite construction, to keep it light and aid fabrication of the tunnel contour areas, which would be critical.

Ah, the Channel Wing- another one of those Popular Science magazine cover stories from my youth that never amounted to anything. But it does get nostalgia points.

One of the Air Trails descendants (Air Trails Hobbies for Young Men?) had an article and an interview with the designer in the 50s. Nice picture on the cover, too. I think there was a kit, possibly by Berkely for a CL/FF/RC version that may not have sold well. There have also been several plans published, mostly controline, using the principal.

A later article on the concept said the main problem with the idea was the uneven loading on the props and subsequent high vibration with one blade in the channel area and the other in open air damaging to wood props, and also to the engine bearings and mounting structure.

Thinking back to the original article, I think the designer spent a lot of time explaining that "Nature abhors a vacuum", and may have mistated some Bernoulli theorems in the interview. Might have helped reduce the take off run by a couple yards, but that was the designer's subjective opinion, and may never have actually been objectively measured.

Thanks for this additional information.

Gremlin mentioned vibration and with your additional input, I can see how the harmonics from partially shrouded props could destroy the basic structure, including the props themselves!

You may want to look for the May 1977 issue of AIRPOWER as there was a lengthy article inside co-written by Willard Custer. It tells of the numerous creations from 1927 up to the CCW-5 and CCW-8. Also much on the controversy. Willard wasn't much of an engineer, but he was moreover an experimenter. Kind of like the Nutty Professor, who can do all this and that, but can't explain it in terms we may understand.

Apparently the nose up attitude was because it needed a low ground speed for T.O. and then had to break away. If you went too fast it would not fly.

Wm.