Just For the Fun of it
Bill Winter
Although we are never fulfilled by flying airplanes we did not design, we confess to affairs of the heart with the virtuoso creations of others. Carl Goldberg's immortal Zipper, Jim Walker's fantastic Fireball, Howard Bonner's Smog Hog, for example, are among them. And there are clever sport jobs that some of us can never forget.
One that this author can never forget is the Veco Dakota, the bumblebee of model aviation. Designed by Joe Wagner, it was a 2-ft., all-balsa biplane with an area of 161 sq. in. Power was the then-new K&B Infant .02 engine, which had opened new worlds in small models. Actually, it could fly on the K&B Infant .02 (the Cox .010 which came along later had perhaps double the Infant's power) or even an .09. When we opened the box back in the Forties, we thought Joe and Gil Henry (who ran Veco) had been cooping in an unventilated closet. Absurd!
The thing had a deep cabin fuselage which provided a gap between the wings equal to the chord. The sheet wings and stab were glued rigidly in place. There was no way to adjust anything (except a small rudder tab). 'Twas a blessing in disguise, because we all were prevented from lousing things up. The wings, moreover, were single-surfaced with a huge leading edge/spar shaped and notched — a cave man's Jedelsky. One stuck a few ribs into the notches and glued on the sheet. It had tremendous left thrust decreed by a firewall you could stick in only the way they wanted it.
The Dakota weighed a ton. One expected a basket of splinters on the first flight. It was unbustable. Considering the power of an Infant, it would not surprise us to hear that the power loading was measured in light years. Since Free Flighters lived in fear of torque, the tremendous left thrust on a little biplane seemed as reasonable as perpetual motion.
Every Dakota flew on the first attempt. In the same way, power turns were tight left, kind of squishy nose up, and even on the Infant the improbable Dakota maintained altitude at 10 to 15 feet, and climbed imperceptibly. It carried a fixed right rudder tab. When power died, the flight pattern swung over into a steep right glide. No model with a good glide is for small fields. Joe had the first small-field Free Flight airplane — the nearest thing ever to automatic flight, we think.
A guy 35 miles south of us, in Danbury, CT, gilded the lily by sheeting the wings on the bottom (still heavier), painting the crate (heavier still), and adding pen cells and lights for night flying — all on the puny Infant. It flew! We raised our kids on Dakotas. Showed them how to start the engine, and told them to get lost. Dakotas buzzed around the pasture all day long.
Years later, at early RC sessions, there was always someone with a FF Dakota (for laughs), and the thing would come down the line, just grazing car tops, circling each car, and we'd all roll on the ground in raucous hilarity. One guy had an .065, and that Dakota climbed steeply straight ahead like a lively Buzzard Bombshell. When later kids demanded to go with us on weekend radio flying, but speedily got bored and wanted to eat, we'd hand them a beat-up Dakota (which they put together — it was that easy) and they would fly with their buddies from sunrise to sundown.
Once, when the kids busted the last prop for an OK .049, we took a broken-bladed 9-6 and sawed off both blades, leaving a fat hub with just enough finger purchase to flip. The next thing we knew, this dumb crate was circling tightly skyward, and it hooked a thermal. The only time we ever saw a brick in lift! It came down a half-mile away. Now, these things were not sanded, nor even clear-doped. They either were oil-soaked wood, or had been daubed with a sloppy coat of color, usually red.
(To digress, the Guillow Trixter Profile Trainer, designed by Lou Andrews, was the nearest thing to a Dakota in CL. We gave kits to our demanding kids and told them to ask us to come down to the park when they could fly it. That took about three weeks. Such battered, glued-together all-balsa profiles one never did see.)
When writing the "Scrap Box" for Model Airplane News we'd mention those Dakotas. Then Gil Henry would groan, because he had to go back into production. One time the inquiries from South America alone required a special run. The crate that could not die — Clarence Haught did an enlarged version for Model Aviation (built-up wings). He, too, like so many others, had fond memories. The same was true of Ernie Wrisley's Dakota Grande monster RC.
What was the true story?
What was the true story behind the Dakota? Whatever happened to Joe Wagner? Here he is:
"I've been both amused and amazed at the Dakota variations that have appeared in Model Aviation. It has turned out to be a very adaptable design, to say the least. Here's a little background on how the Dakota (and Sioux) came to be.
"By 1947 I was getting tired of competition-style Free Flight models," Joe warms up. "They didn't satisfy my desire for realism in flight; no real airplane climbed like a rocket on a 20-second engine run and then spent the rest of its flight gliding. I wanted to fly gas models like real airplanes — engine runs in minutes instead of seconds.
"I did some experimenting with Class A and B models, but always had the problem of getting the airplanes back again. They glided too well after the engine stopped. Oddly enough, I never lost one. One made the longest in-sight flight I ever witnessed; from about 8 a.m. until well after 5 p.m. on an almost totally windless, cloudless day. I'll never forget that flight.
"Anyway, when the 1/2 A engines arrived, I was overjoyed. They allowed me to design models small enough to be:
- inefficient gliders;
- tight circlers; and
- very easy to build.
"When I moved to California in 1949, I had my prototype Dakota pretty well worked out. Its original name was the Rigid Midget, for obvious reasons. When Veco kitted it several changes were made. Gil Henry had an Indian-name fixation: Chief, Papoose, Squaw, etc. Another reason for change was the limitation of die-cutting: the widest piece of die-cut wood we could then produce was 2 1/2 in. A third reason was the overabundance of parts in inventory from the Papoose, probably the worst-selling kit in modeling history.
"It modified the Rigid Midget into the Dakota," Joe goes on. "I also redesigned a somewhat larger monoplane of mine into the Sioux as a companion to the Dakota. And to make Veco's initial Free Flight offering into a full trio, I also designed the low-wing 1/2 A sport model called the Navajo (because it looked like the Navion). Only the Dakota and Sioux were placed on the market. The reason was simple enough: both the Dakota and Sioux were stable and adaptable enough to fly successfully with any of the 1/2 A engines then on the market, from the Torp Junior .035 to the OK Cub .099.
"It amuses me to see enlarged versions of the Dakota designed to take the greater power of modern 1/2 A engines. I have a Dakota right now with a Black Widow, and it flies about the same as a Cub .074 used to. As for the Sioux (this columnist built a Sioux in bed to ward off the ravages of the flu), although the design was as versatile as the Dakota, it was never as popular — sales ratio was about 10-6 in favor of the biplane. I think that much of this was due to the too-heavy wing of the Sioux, which reduced its ability to switch from a left power circle to a right gliding circle. Its wing had been designed to use up as much surplus Papoose wood inventory as possible. Thus the Sioux ended up with what must have been the strongest wings ever put on a 1/2 A FF model.
"Once, when the late Hi Johnson and I were out sport flying," Joe recalls, "his Sioux landed in a tree. I climbed the tree and tossed the Sioux down to Hi. He tried to catch it but missed. The wing caught him directly across the forehead — and knocked him cold. He was out for maybe 10 minutes, in spite of my efforts to revive him. And for the next week he sported a bruise across the brow that looked as if he had been hit by a baseball bat. Now that's a strong wing. The model was undamaged."
"The Sioux I built for my own fun flying used the type of wing construction I later put in the Taylor Cub and Comanche PAA-Load models. I also used a lighter-weight landing gear instead of the ex-Papoose and Sioux kit stuff — not duplicates of the Veco kits, but of my own original designs, which were better fliers than the kits. I have been flying examples of these ships around these parts (New Wilmington, PA) for six years — with a wide variety of engines, from Cox Pee Wees, to ancient Cub .049s, to the newest Black Widows (with Babe Bee tanks, however). I have given serious thought to making a limited production run of my original designs of the Dakota and Sioux."
Joe isn't much for politicking, and he doesn't like the rigidity of rules. He took up long-distance bicycling (the regional rep for the League of American Wheelmen, America's oldest bicycling organization at 102 years). He's put in some 30,000 miles in the last five years on his faithful old Rudge Royale 10-speed. Then he got interested in road-running. For the last three years he's done a fair amount of racing, mostly 6.2-mile events; he has won a few medals and trophies (in his plus-50 age group).
Joe has given up all forms of AMA and FAI competition, but now is a leader of the Bald Eagle Squadron and is active in the Flying Aces Club. "I am flying models in the old-fashioned way: from schoolyards, farmers' fields, and athletic fields. A couple of other old-timers have joined me in this sort of activity, and our little, old-fashioned airplanes flitting around in local skies have drawn a goodly amount of local interest."
Kites and their aerodynamics
Before the days of mammoth metal airplanes, "old" aviators referred to their fragile machines as "kites." We still sometimes use the word to describe slower, lightly loaded models. Kites and airplanes are kissing cousins, and an amazing amount of kite technology applies closely to towing gliders, soaring and Free Flight.
Kites are more than springtime novelties to amuse kids. Experts are deeper into design (even using computers) than virtually any of our crack Wakefield, Nordic or Power people. Much of their impressive work — we are thinking of airplane-type kites — appears in Kite Lines, successor to Kite Tales. (Subscription to Kite Lines, the quarterly international journal of kiting, is $9.00. Address: 7106-A Campfield Rd., Baltimore, MD 21207.)
As a country boy, before TV and even household radio, and only summer-boarder kids to play with, we "discovered" kites. The extent of our expertise was that the longer the tail, the more stable the things became. Sometimes a "flight" lasted all day. Tie the line to a stake and go home for lunch. Fly on a spool of thread, then two spools, the kite becoming a speck. How high and how far could one press his luck? If the wind came up, you were in deep trouble with thread!
When we got into rubber-powered models, we doubled and tripled the size of every "fuselage" or "commercial" design that came along, built them feather-light, and thought we were good when some thermal held them up for five minutes or so — we didn't know about thermals. The birds always knew when such a model was in lift. We didn't. They'd chatter and flit about it. Have you noticed that with your Old-Timers?
Jim DeLaurier and tethered-aerodynamics research
This story begins with a letter from Jim DeLaurier, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, Institute of Aerospace Studies, in Downsview, Ont., Canada. It seems that Jim, a lad in 1956, had inquired of us at Model Airplane News about modeling in the Chicago region, which led to his becoming a member of the celebrated Chicago Aeronuts and enjoying several years of Free Flight. But what he was asking in 1981 was what ever happened to a tandem-winged Rubber job (based on the Langley Aerodrome but with landing gear added) submitted to MAN in 1957. We blamed that on Uncle Sam's P.O. He also said that, like Charlie Storch and Bill Biggs, he had "sustained his activities toward kites," and enclosed a copy of an article he'd published a few years ago in Kite Tales.
What makes Jim of interest to us is his lifetime interest in airplane kites. Because he mixed aeromodeling observations in his scientific development of kites — a few of which we are pleased to show in remarkable photos — a sport modeler may wonder if a plane really is a kite, or if a kite is indeed a plane. In his high school days, Jim used a typical modeler's cut-and-try approach to achieve stable, high lift/drag ratio kites that would fly almost overhead. What puzzled him was that a towed or tethered glider usually was unstable, even though the machine was stable in free flight. Towing or tethering gave a more complicated dynamic system than the free-flying vehicle alone — also true of some kites. If you steer your glider on launch, you know what he is talking about.
Finding that much interest exists in cable-flight vehicle systems, such as towed re-entry decelerators, towed sailplanes, towed under-water devices (upside-down kites), and aerodynamically-shaped tethered balloons, he did his Ph.D. research on developing a computational method of predicting stability of such systems, using a tethered kite in the Stanford open-throat wind tunnel. (This research is documented in NASA contractor report CR2021, but he warns that the kite was purposely unstable at various combinations of wind speed and cable length.)
Jim was hired to develop an aerodynamic shape for a 200,000 cu. ft. balloon which would be stable. All previous balloons that were tethered had side-to-side hunting traits. Among other things, there was only a narrow range of fin size and location that yielded dynamic stability. Afterwards, Jim applied his new knowledge to further development of airplane kites.
As with towing model gliders, moving the line attachment point forward improved tow stability. The addition of an underslung fin enhanced stability (as it did for Sal Taibi's FF Spacer in the power regime). When Jim added a large forward fin, the kite flew nearly overhead and quickly recovered from any atmospheric disturbance. (Charlie Grant did that with early-day rubber-powered pushers and got them to fly straight-line for up to 2,000 feet or more — that before 1920.)
Because Jim's kite had a good aerodynamically-shaped wing and operated at an efficient angle to the airflow, it developed lift of from one to two pounds. Decreasing the tail area or adding tail weight produced instability — also gospel for aircraft, man-carrying or model. Also, the lower the wing loading of the kite, the smaller the fin areas required for stability. This suggests we could improve many RC models (bigger fins?) that snap when inadequately handled.
We note that the kite designer draws a unique stability plotting chart. Visualize an upside-down T. The upright is graduated in cycles/seconds (frequency of oscillation), and the base, to the left, in damping factors (stabilizing, we'd guess) and, to the right, amplification factors (presumably destabilizing). This seems uncannily like the way we'd graph a pitching moment curve for an aircraft. You may not know what that is, but you use it when you cope with fore-and-aft stability techniques on your model.
If the kite design falls to the left of the upright of the inverted T, it is in the stable region, and vice versa. We find that far easier to interpret than more familiar airplane-type stability charts. Just consider that the early Wright gliders were flown or tethered like kites and that, when in 1903 the man-carrying machine electrified mankind, it was merely a kite with an engine and a pilot to "control" it. Perhaps it could have been flown like a kite in a 60-mile wind with a stout rope! Have fun with your "kite" this weekend!
Letters and projects: Robert Benjamin
Many people write to chat about the things they do. Here, at random, is Robert Benjamin, an artist. You can't see his letterhead, but it displays a tiny profile of a Cessna 120 — and we've been lost on that for five minutes. We modelers are always fascinated by profiles, especially if you happened to have flown the real ship. The proportions are perfect for rubber or RC scale — long nose, great well back. When you took off in the 120, you did not let the tail come well up, but allowed the ship to "fly off" with the tail perhaps two-thirds of the way up to "normal." The 120 has a great airfoil for RC scale, but a rubber guy probably would substitute a flat-bottom. The 120 has flaps, but about the only way you can see the difference is to aim a very steep approach from high up (a dive really) and watch the spot as you put flaps down and up. You'll see the spot shift slightly in line with the plane.
Benjamin was looking for reference material on the Aeronca K for quarter scale. He said he already had been through Wylam, Westburg, Cleveland, and Repla-Tech. He even phoned Comet (he had their rubber kit) but they had nothing left but kit plans. Paul Matt published the K drawings in his wonderful Historical Aviation Album series of books (P.O. Box 33, Temple City, CA 91780).
"The project in mind," Bob tells us, "involves a quarter-scale lovely, detailed enough to compete, powered by the beautiful OS Gemini I recently weakened and bought. It would be criminal to cowl over those cylinder heads, and everyone and his brother builds a C-3, hence the 'K.'"
"The photos are of a 53-in. Sport Scale Super Great Lakes based on the Winner Models (Nick Ziroli) kit which is no longer available. Finish is 1/4-oz. glass, Sig resin, Silray, butyrate clear, auto primer, and Superpoxy. Power is a 'tame' baffled Supertigre .60, with home-brew muffler/scale exhaust. A World Engines Expert 5 helps me steer it.
"I made no attempt to reproduce a specific color scheme," Bob goes on; "this one is to help me get over 'Scale nerves' while I build something more accurate. The project about to hit the bench is a Sig J-3 (this was prior to release of Sig's Quarter Scale J-3) to be modified for scale accuracy and matched to a local restored Cub on which I have logged time. Power will be a G-Mark twin .30.
"As you may have guessed from the Great Lakes, I am a die-hard 'silk and dope' builder. Although I have used foam, MonoKote, and all that, I honestly feel that, even though such materials have certain specialized uses, the general departure from 'traditional' methods has done the hobby some harm.
"Quick and easy methods tend, I feel, to encourage many new modelers, especially in RC, where there is a lot of exposure to that sort of thing, to 'plateau' at being able to iron on the plastic. They are deprived of the need to develop the skills that used to be prerequisite to showing up at the field with a smooth, shiny airplane. I realize this is a bit of an oversimplification, but you know what I am talking about.
"I take a lot of kidding in the local club," Bob admits, "about hiding the seams in plastic covering, etc., but I think I have made my point and have gotten a couple of guys to try something they might otherwise not have done. Working through the Civil Air Patrol squadron, I found four or five boys who were beginning to build control line and simple Free Flight models. Since I build everything from rubber scale through CL and RC that I can find the time for, there is a good variety of models in the shop to demonstrate on. With a good helping of patience and a little help from the Lord, I may actually be able to get a few real modelers started.
"I have a few projects cooking. A restored CL Veco Brat with a Forster .29 is ready to test; a Comet 54-in. Taylorcraft with a modified structure, an .09 engine, and 3-channel RC is flying — covered with red silk and clear dope."
Modeling materials and changing tastes
Modeling is like light; viewed through a prism, it breaks down into all colors of the rainbow. We recall our own resistance to all new things: fiberglass, foam, iron-ons. We, too, would die for silk and dope — or maybe nylon, which was tougher, or Silron. We'd die before we'd fly a single-channel pulse-rudder jobbie, just because the rudder wiggled; and the same for Galloping Ghost, when it was the only way to go, because both flippers and rudder banged away like blazes. On the ground, the crate acted like a wounded duck.
But since our "reborning" some six years ago, we've latched onto everything. We use MonoKote — and are trying new Corvete materials — on everything but the quarter-scale jobs, where it is Sig Coverall and other polyester cloths. But after resorting to Doc Mathews' neat trick of coating the frame with white glue and then sticking on the cloth with an iron to end the annoying business of making seams stick down, we decided to use silk on the quarter-scale Vagabond flippers. What a joy that was. We had forgotten how fast, neat, and easy silk is to use. There can't be anything easier than wet-covering with silk. Of course, once an iron-on is applied, the job is over — and that's just 50% of the time needed to dope silk.
We joined the International Miniature Aircraft Association (the biggies), and received a fine monthly mag (High Flight) edited by old friend Les Hard, who seems to be in his glory. These folk are more like the EAA tribe — surely more than mere modeling. Pictures of fly-ins all over the land look like gatherings of the home-built clans. Mobile homes and trailers all over the place. One photo shows a guy's prime mover and trailer. So what? Well, the tow vehicle was a Greyhound bus! The trailer was so big it carried five quarter-scale models assembled, plus the chap's sports car for running into town. Everything about IMAA is different. You'll see.
Family, clubs, and newer pilots
We've got two sons who fly RC. One on Long Island, Bob, has been at it for a long time and can thread a needle with a pattern job. The other, Mike, is a tech rep newly stationed in Louisiana. He's just managed takeoffs and landings, but builds like mad. Things he can't use he gives away. We have friends to whom he has handed Cavaliers, Falcons, Champions, Gentle Ladies, etc.
Anyway, in Alexandria, La., which seemed to be the outback at first, Mike encountered a club, the Mid-States RC Club. These guys sound like a bunch of madmen. They can mobilize half a hundred crates on a Sunday and fly screaming scaled-down Phoenixes (called Smokers) and such stuff as the Piece of Cake — without gear; they shoot scraping touch-and-goes from a big abandoned military field in the countryside with haystacks (no people) all around. When I get his phone calls I feel like shooting myself.
At the active AFB, Mike's got a group of guys — all on their own. The base supplied space in which to build. So I sent him an extra Eaglet and Gentle Lady kit. Five of them are building Gentle Ladies and Eaglets are coming out of the woodwork.
Mike built my Kadet and my Top-Flite big J-3 — which he gave to older brother Rob. The J-3 has my customized Aldrich ST .46 with this great man's name embossed on one lug, mine on the other. It is a beautiful flier and I am conniving to steal it! Mike also is in love with the .15 Air Scout and, having tested his first, I can see why. He's built my Evans Sinitar and shipped it here in a big crate, but I will seek a good pilot — my reactions now as slow as molasses.
Via a news blurb and your indulgence, I'd like to introduce one guy, and also Steve Emerson, a beginner buddy from the base. Believe it or not, that Eaglet is Steve's first. It crashed when a buddy-box cable shorted out. So he whipped together a second, and the two guys sneaked out late one night and flew the two Eaglets together like maniacs. They looped and rolled and ended up at 2 a.m. in a burned-out shell of a garage. But they didn't get caught.
I am getting older and quieter these days. I get my real excitement in working with boys and teaching them to make things fly. Years ago I'd become a little impatient with beginners, but now I understand. We owe it to the hobby to bring in youth. If we give them a wholesome, organized way to fly, we'll have more model airplane friends in the future.
One calm weekday we had a ball with successful flying — the Air Scout, a Gentle Lady, and the Eaglet. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we've had some adventures of our own. But we are outta runway.
Bill Winter 4426 Altura Ct. Fairfax, VA 22030
Transcribed from original scans by AI. Minor OCR errors may remain.
