Found something I'd forgotten about

[maxmwill]

Was going through the shop where I do my modelling and found something I'd forgotten all about.

A while ago, three years to be exact, while looking through Ebay for some reasonably priced model supplies, including RC modelling, I found a contrarotating electric motor for RC use, and which also had a pair of props mounted.

Intrigued, I bought the silly thing, and a few weeks later, it came in the mail, all the way from Hong Kong.

What I found when I unwrapped it was a small pair of motors, stacked, with one prop shaft going through the other.

The prop diameter was a bit more than 7 inches.

Yes, I know, buyer beware, I should have looked a lot closer at the dimensions listed for it.

And yet, I saw some potential; potential for a rather small model, but potential.

Then packed it away and forgot all about it.

Well, one fictional flying machine based on the real thing, is the canard fighter in Skycrawlers.

And after I dug up my little contraprop motor, I've begun to think if it might do.

So, armed with a three view of the J7W, a calculator, my trusty digital calipers, and a whole lot of wondering, I began shooting numbers.

Using the diameter of the props on the motor, I began to measure and see how things would scale.

Given that the props have a diameter of a bit more than seven inches, I knew the model wouldn't be very big, more like postage stamp size.

Wing span - 22.82"

Length overall - 20.25"

Canard span - 7.875"

Depending on how I construct this, whether I get a piece of stryrofoam and shave that to size for the fuselage and use conventional balsa construction for the wings, canard and vertical tail, I'd guestimate it as somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 to 16 ounces, minus batteries and radio equipment.

Ok, so now a question: Why am I discussing a possible RC model project in this forum? Because this is am RC whif, something that might be appreciated here.

And so, I wait for the brick bats and lit torches.

[PR19_Kit]

Given that the props have a diameter of a bit more than seven inches, I knew the model wouldn't be very big, more like postage stamp size.

Wing span - 22.82"

Length overall - 20.25"

Canard span - 7.875"

They must have VERY large postage stamps around your neck of the woods!   

[pyro-manic]

Sounds good to me! As long as the motor has enough grunt to actually power the thing. Do it!

[Weaver]

Don't see any reason why a whiff RC project shouldn't be on here - go for it I say! Sounds interesting...

[maxmwill]

Well, seeing as I used to fly RC flying wings with a minimum span of just over 2 meters, and scale with a span of just under 5 feet span, something with a span of just over 22 inches is about postage stamp size.

[maxmwill]

Well, when I was but a wee lad, no bigger than a minute, playing truant on really nice days, back in the misty and halcyon time of childhood, the gift I was given when I turned 5 was a Guillow kit, that I spent more than a few nights putting together(found that Elmer's glue worked the best, and allayed my mother's fear that I'd start sniffing glue, something that was reported a lot in the news at the time, and learned the value of a thick piece of styro foam), and it actually flew, after a fashion, especially since the day I took it out to fly was an exceptionally windy day(looking back, I think it was the really healthy tail wind that made it fly at all).

And after that, a series of Guillow and Comet kits(those were all that were available in the Detroit area back then), and in later years, I discovered peanut scale, and then coconut scale, and in my last year in high school, my first foray into RC(and learned the true nature of the trees that populate the perimeter of every patch of ground that could be used for RC. I realized that not only are trees voracious and rapacious model consumers, but that they also warp the local gravity field to bring far models into their vile and hungry grasp).

Since then, even while gallantly serving the country as a lowly seaman, then airman(my last command was in an A7 squadron), I continued to build and fly models, and even began to realize that even though the pilots in the squadron, being officers and gentlemen, doesn't mean that they are expert RC pilots, even the skipper, who tended to try to fly his model underground.

After the Navy, I had to scramble to make a living, and so fell out of modelling, which I was finally able to pick up a number of years later when I was attending Spartan School of Aeronautics, when I started talking with one of my classmates, who introduced me to plastic modelling, and shortly after, I was able to pick up RC once more.

Since then, after a lot of moving, a couple unfortunately rancorous divorces, I once more found myself trying to start from scratch, only this time, not only did I have a wealth of knowledge simply by dint of having been in near continuous contact with aviation(from a General Aviation standpoint), but was able to begin collecting documentation for building scale models, only as an A&P, I wasn't to build some a bit more realistic looking, at least to me.

But yes, a 22 inch span model is, to me, postage stamp size, as in the perspective of a naval pilot looking from up above at the carrier he is about to land on.