Tbobflow

I bought this plane at Texas RC Modelers in 2003-4, it's basically a rain gutter combat type plane. I put a OS25FX in it and man was it fun! I crashed it after flying it for a couple of years, and now almost 10 years later I want to rebuild/reconstruct it and fly it again. It was a 36" wingspan I am pretty sure, with a straight wing with 12" chord. The tube with tail is 24" long.

It has 2 aileron servos and an elevator servo for control, and it flew kinda like a flying wing but with a vert stabilizer and elevator. It has a streamer clip on the tail so I think it was used for streamer type combat in the early 2000's.

My dilemma is reconstructing the wing. The wing mounted to the bottom of the tube and there was no landing gear, hand launch only. I no longer have any remnants of the wing, and somehow no pictures of it prior to the crash, so I am unsure how the wing attached and was constructed.

i think I'd like to move forward with a EPS wing sheeted with balsa or similar. However I'm not sure how to proceed. I have seen the spad type kits and they use a coroplast wing but I'm not interested in that type of wing.

if anyone can identify this plane and help point me in the right direction or give me some tips for setting up a 36" span straight 12" chord wing for this id sure appreciate it!

Tbobflow

The wing did attach via 4 bolts from the underside into the tube, and I apologize in advance for how crummy this pictures are. Not sure if it helps with the identification, but the plane was covered to resemble a Texas Flag.

Gray Beard

My Feedback: (-1)

Most of them in my area were scratch built and used for our club combat events and we had a racing class for them. Last one I picked up at a swap meet had a covered foam delta type wing. I bought it for the engine and servos that were in it. By the time I picked it up all the events for them was over so I never bothered to fly it.

Tbobflow

Scratch built was the thing for sure. I'm not sure I have the commitment for that in this case... Might have to find some other nimble light wing load craft to put too big of an engine in.

scale only 4 me

My Feedback: (158)

Find a crashed trainer and cut the wing down,, most guy put these together from trash found spare parts,, no one I know ever built a wing just for one.

Tbobflow

Whoah, thanks. That's a great idea and I know where to get a trainer too!

Gray Beard

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If there is a club member with a foam cutter the wing is really easy to make from foam. The only drain pipe kits I recall were {I think] US aircorp or something like that. They advertised them as near crash proof. There are plenty of nice kits for the .25, the Taylor Kraft is a favorite and House of Balsa has a good selection.Most anything would be a better choice of plane.The Taylor Craft kit was sold through Tower, there may be an ARF for it now??

JohnBuckner

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What you have is a Combat SPAD and Spads were all the rage for a while an suddenly like a comet just burned out. As the fellows noted folks tended to do all sorts of things with them The basic building material was Corroplast sign material, you know that corogated plastic stuff that election signs and or beer signs tend to be made of. For a few years at election time there was in place a crime wave in stolen political signs!

The wings and tail feathers were almost always of corroplast and rectangular plastic downspout was popular for fuselages. Now since you said the wingspan was 36 inchs and the chord was twelve it is very unlikely the wing was of foam or pieces of other airplanes. The reason that the 36 inch wing span was so popular is normally a 36 inch yard stick was used as the main spar and the coro was cut across the corogations so the material could be folded back over the yardstick and the the fold became the leading edge.

Here is my left over Spad note there is an open hole where a rudder servo once was as it was soon realized rudder was point less on these things and weight was the big thing, even a second aileron servo was overkill They tended to fly fast mine has an old
Magnum .28. The last time I flew this was about five years ago when I volunteered to be a paint ball target.

John



If you search on Spad or spad to the bone you find al sorts of spads stuff if its still up.

Gray Beard

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John, that's the first SPAD I have seen with a down spout fuse. All the SPADs at my club had thin aluminum fuses with the coraplast wing and tail feathers. The fad lasted about two or three weeks and it was during a big political moment in the central valley of Merced. The politicians were making a big stink about there signs going missing. I never understood that, after the elections they left those signs up and just forgot about them.
We had a fellow here, VILLA that once mentioned he had hundreds of crashes, I asked how that could happen and he told me all his planes were SPAD and he sent me a lot of photos. He took SPAD to an all new level and there was nothing simple about his planes.

JohnBuckner

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My best guess is the whole spad thing came on strong for around 6 or 7 years. Actually likely has its roots long before that. What it really was all about was the use of alternative materials and in the Spads case, plastic materials. Supposedly what Spad stood for was Special Plastic Airplane design. Actually the OP's airplane also uses the rectangular plastic Down spout.

This materials thing has been around since day one before my time but some of the alternative methods use during WW11 is very interesting. Once popular alternative material was just plain old card board boxes and I got in on that one with a twenty five sized three control RC ship a parasol winged thing that was mostly dumpster card board. Flew that one three or four years off and on until I got board with it and converted it to fly controlline until I gave it away to a kid Hmmm, that one is still around too, will post a picture if I can find it.

Another alternative material that came after the dumpster boxes but before the Spads is the Foam core projects and this is a foam board with a shinny paper product skin on both sides,

John

tomgreen

You might want to try WWW. rccores.com . They have been making combat gremlins a long time. They also sell foam core wings, give them a look.

Gray Beard

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I wasn't around for WWII and all the shortages when kids were really creative in making there stuff but my Grandmother did tell me about it and of course I gave it a try but the nickle glider was much better then my cardboard planes.
The Simple Plastic Airplane Designs were only around my local club for a couple weeks and that was the last I saw of them but the down spout fuse type were around for a while. The one you showed is really a lot better then anything I had seen though.
In combat planes I saw a lot of plastic baseball bats used as a fuse and the surfaces were built up wings or foam.
I never got into any of them myself but they were used for a long time until the club moved on to different things.
John, if you built that SPAD you did a heck of a job. Looks great!!
Gene

JohnBuckner

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Ya I ordered up material to build six them and gave the other five to the fellas at kingman and one summer we alternated every two weeks with the fellas down at Havasu Desert Hawks. It was OK but the problem was it took a lot of manpower to score properly so died out at the end of the summer.

Hmm seen some of those ridiculous plastic bat versions which goes to show that many will go to almost any extreme to use alternate materials

John

Gray Beard

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Wow, I was scrolling down and looking to see the different threads we have in the header and what do you know, we have a SPAD thread all it's own so they must have been popular when RCU first started. I took a look and I discovered they really did have kits for them. Even found one that looked like the one I bought at a swap meet.

Tbobflow

Can you point me at that SPAD thread? I don't see it and I searched some already..

Thanks!

Gray Beard

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When you come onto RCU you scroll down to locate where you want to go, Beginners, kit building, Q&A, just keep going down and there is a SPAD page.

scale only 4 me

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http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/s-p-...st-design-178/

Tbobflow

thank you.

Tbobflow

My SPAD was really close to this before the crash.

http://www.spadtothebone.net/SPAD/getsome/coro_fuse.htm

Tbobflow

Seems like it was a variant on a Gremlin kit .