TOPIC: First flights for years!

Inspired by all the building activity going on i dusted off a couple of my old rapier power models and gave them a go. There is a large field not far from my house that is very quiet, and running around like an idiot chasing rapier planes counts as exercise in my book, so I decided it fits the current lockdown rules:whistle:

The models flown were my L2 powered Republic F-84F 'Thunderflash' and the Jetex Flying wing inspired 'WingDing' which flies on L1. I had a few decent flights. The Wingding goes well proving the motors aren't too powerful, the batch I have seems ideal for it. The Thunderflash is a bit tricky. It tends to spiral, which I put down to the lack of dihedral coupled with the huge vertical stabiliser. If building this one again I'd add a little dihedral and not rely only on the sweep for stability. But i did get a couple of 'full motor run' flights out of it.

Fun to be making some smoke trails again after all these years!

Looking good still, glad you to hear you had some smokey fun.

Roger adds:

welcome back maestro! I look forward to reading more of your dashing endeavours. I presume you are 'working from home' (Howard and I are 'retired from home') so you can get out whenever the weather is clement.
One thing you can help with: John Woodham is building an Me 163. A tricky little beast. You improved the design, but I can't remember what modifications you made.

One thing you can help with: John Woodham is building an Me 163. A tricky little beast. You improved the design, but I can't remember what modifications you made[/color].

I did a new wing design and a downthrust trough, this turned it into a very reliable and quite spectacular flyer (the original tended to get loopy under power).

I didn't do a 'proper' plan, i just did a basic plan for the wings and cutting templates for the new ribs. I did i'm pretty sure also do a mark-up of Richard's fuselage plan but i cant seem to locate it. Anyway, basic wing plan and ribs attached. Leave the wings unpainted for trimming so you can steam in a bit more twist if necessary.

Here is the model and close up of the downthrust trough You might notice on the final model i made a built up vertical stabiliser with aerofoil section, this was just about aesthetics, the sheet one works fine. You will also notice that the wing ribs have 'tabs' included. these ensure the washout twist angle, which is critical to stabilisation on this tailless design. Just sand the tabs off after building.


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I notice your lovely Thunderflash has quite a long nose moment ahead of the CG, I've had a few models with long noses spiral down. In one case I cut the profile Comet 4 nose down to more of a Comet 2 length which stopped it spinning down, with my profile Hawk I moved the wings as far forward as I could get away and that cured the problem too. I don't think it is a dihedral problem, my anhedral Harrier and Starfighters didn't spiral down except once when the Starfighter stalled under power at the top of the climb and spiralled down under power but managed to right itself before it hit the ground and flew off like a good'un. I think the weight of the motor low down in the model helps too.

The me163 looks great. I'm in the process of covering mine at the moment. It's built from the kit as per the plan. Do you think down thrust alone will help the flight characteristics or does it really need the redesigned wing to work?

Hard to be 100% sure but most likely the re-shaped trough had most benefit on the looping front, so you are probably fine to use the standard wing.