Flying Flea !!!!
 

I test flew this bird for a guy, 1/4 scale. 72" mainplane, for those not familiar with it is a model of a homebuilt, there are no ailerons, rudder only, no elevators, there is a servo hooked to the trailing edge of the wing which moves it up and down to change the angle of incidence, more angle and the plane goes up, the real ones were banned because they had a nasty habit of tucking the nose in and under and going inverted with no way to gain control, this bird flew svery well Mike

RE: Flying Flea !!!!
 

Mike, the design concept looks similar to this model in Japan designed over a hundred years ago.

RE: Flying Flea !!!!
 

actually, they fixed the diving thing.you can still get plans for the full-scale here [link=http://www.valkyrie.net/~flyingflea/gallery.html]http://www.valkyrie.net/~flyingflea/gallery.html[/link] I often daydream of building one, but as often as I crash models, I probably shouldn't.

RE: Flying Flea !!!!
 

I have never seen that bird, the "flea" properly named Pou du Ciel was designed in 1934 by Henry Mignet, it was probagly the first homebuilt, Mignet clained that anyone who could build a packing case could make one, it was grounded for 2 years until the problem of diving was sorted out but now some of the newer ones are back flying again Mike

RE: Flying Flea !!!!
 

This is funny, I was just going to send you that site, some really intersting stuff, the guy that built the model has also always dreamed of building the real one, unfortantly time has caught up with us, too long in the tooth now Mike

RE: Flying Flea !!!!
 

actually...I think the first homebuilt was the Wright Flyer (or at least it was the first successful one!)

RE: Flying Flea !!!!
 

nice flea,
is it really fly slow?
so is there any free plans around for pou du ciel ..
I have a huge image archive about Henri Mignet's desing inculiding all the technical drawings that I could find and some early easy plans from the "POU REVIEW"
but not able to find a "REAL MODEL plan" for any version
I really want to build a HM-16 Bebe for indoor :(
so any plans will be very helpfull not commercial one (RBC already have a kit for HM-16)
It seems to be "theplanpage.com" have some plans that I never able to open the site
For the ones who able to reach "theplanpage" please send a copy ...

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