October 2006 17
BY ERNIE HEYWORTH Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
In flight the CW-1 has a buoyant appearance. It is lightly loaded and properly powered.
This is a great fun-scale flier!
I’M INTO electric-powered model
aircraft and wanted a simple,
friendly flier with which to put one
of those new outrunner motors into
action. I’ve constructed J-3 Cubs,
Cessnas, etc., but I had never built
a pusher. The old CW-1 looked
cute, and its curved tail feathers
looked like an easy laminating
challenge. I was hooked.
The fact that you can run electric
motors in both directions allowed
me to use a conventional propeller.
In addition, light and slow has
always been fun—especially doing
touch-and-gos.
In the search for an airplane I
found Don Srull RC plans for the
CW-1 Junior that I had put up in
my basement-rafter library years
ago. His design was good, but the
model’s 36-inch wingspan was too
small.
I wanted to build something that
spanned roughly 50 inches. I also
wanted to use a lighter and more
powerful motor than the old 480
canned electric or a .30-size gas
engine. These needs became the
new ground rules, and the Curtiss
Junior came into focus on the
drawing board.
I live in upstate New York, near
A Golden Age classic turns out to
be a natural for electric power
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:24 AM Page 1718 MODEL AVIATION
There’s no chance of a propeller strike on takeoff! It’s simple in design and form but has an understated elegance.
Curtiss-Wright CW-1: A Brief History
This airplane was developed during 1929 and the early 1930s, during the Great Depression; luxury airplanes weren’t
selling then. At the Buffalo, New York, plant design center, Glenn Curtiss and Walter Beech (of the later Beech Aircraft
Corporation) decided to build a light, inexpensive airplane. It was to be constructed at the Saint Louis, Missouri, plant, which
needed work or faced shutdown.
Curtiss and Beech wanted an airplane that would weigh less than 1,000 pounds and hoped to sell it for roughly $1,500.
Today’s ultralights weigh approximately 300 pounds and have 50-horsepower engines. They cruise at 70 mph and cost
roughly $8,000. The ultralights and the Junior are almost the same size.
The CW-1’s design came from the English Buzzard and the wood Curtiss-Robertson Skeeter. Glenn never outgrew his
love for the pusher-type aircraft. His first designs were pushers that were similar to the Wright brothers’ Wright Flyer.
Glenn’s June Bug and other aircraft he developed were advancements beyond the Wright Flyer. His team made design
changes to the early June Bug such as adding wheels, pontoons, ailerons, bigger engines, and better controls. He established
the aeronautical leading edge of the time.
The Wrights and Curtiss locked each other up in court battles over the invention of all airplanes and all motor flying
machines. This patent fight set the US back in the design progress of airplanes at the outbreak of World War I. The
Europeans took the leading-edge development. They added tractor engines, better wing structures, and much greater
performance to the basic airplane.
The US government finally paid off Glenn and Orville to settle their dispute so that the Americans could catch up with
the Europeans. Curtiss and the Wrights then collaborated to make radial engines and some of the greatest airplanes of World
War II.
The CW-1 Junior was a bit of a joke among the pilots of the day. It looked a little like the Aeronca C-3 “Flying Bathtub”
or a cross between a seaplane and a sailplane, but it sold well during hard times.
The Junior was easy to fly, it had a low stall speed, it could land in small farm fields, it had a metal frame, and it had good
visibility for photo surveying. Air-show pilots loved this airplane; the large wing let them park it into the wind.
The CW-1 was a money-maker for giving rides, although a few passengers walked into the pusher propeller. The
barnstormers used it to do the flying farmer routine. Most of them put more powerful engines on them. The Szekely wasn’t
dependable; it threw oil and often blew a jug into the pusher propeller.
The Curtiss-Wright Junior certainly has left its mark on aviation history, and it is worth modeling. MA
—Ernie Heyworth
Designed in: Buffalo, New York
Manufactured in: Saint Louis, Missouri
Year of manufacture: 1931
Engine: Szekely SR-3(45 horsepower,
three cylinders)
Quantity manufactured: 270 airplanes
in 1931
Wingspan: 39 feet, 6 inches
Length: 21 feet, 3 inches
Construction: Metal frame
Landing speed: 28 mph
Cruising speed: 50 mph
Top speed: 80 mph
Weight: 975 pounds
Range: 200 miles
Airtime: Three hours
Altitude: 12,000 feet
Cost: $1,490
Today’s cost: $45,000
Full-Scale Specifications:October 2006 19
The author holding the model gives a sense of its size. This
airplane has many interesting design features.
The dummy three-cylinder engine covers the
functional Nippy Black electric motor.
the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. As a
tour guide there I’ve watched the museum shop restore
two full-scale Juniors, and I saw one of them fly. I also
found, on the computer, that the Old Rhinebeck
Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York, has a beautiful
orange-and-tan CW-1 that has been flying regularly.
Obtaining documentation then became easy. I’m not
driven too deeply into scale details, but all the answers to
questions of size and shape were available. The Curtiss
Museum’s staff gave me Paul Matt’s historical drawings
and the opportunity to film the two airplanes on the floor.
CONSTRUCTION
The Junior’s construction consists of basic modeling.
Well, it’s basic to old-timers who have bent balsa sticks
into a curved laminate. Oh yes, and to modelers who
have made two right halves or forgotten to put waxed
paper over the print!
I tried to minimize the wire bending by using wooden
cabanes. If you want to bend wire for a more scalelike look
instead of employing wood, use Paul Matt’s drawings from
Historical Aviation Album, 1972.Write to Box 33, Temple
City CA 91780, for information and pricing. I would
rather schedule a root canal than bend wire or
fingerprint a windshield with glue.
If you can get two copies of the print
for this model, you can cut paper print
templates of the fuselage formers,
wing ribs, and fuselage sides. You can
also use old-fashioned carbon paper,
your computer scanner, or a photocopy
machine to copy parts off the drawing.
Precut the wing ribs, fuselage formers, fuselage
sides, and motor support parts. Take your time with
these and make them as accurate as you can. I use
3M Super 77 spray contact glue to hold the paper to
the wood while cutting the parts. Let the spray glue
set for five minutes so it won’t stick there forever.
Stabilizers: It’s surprisingly easy to laminate the
stabilizers’ front edge. The curves are extremely
slow.
Make a row of pins on the inside of the curves that
are shown on the stabilizer drawing. Use white glue
full-strength to wet the wood, and then put the three
pieces of thin wood together. Bend the wet sticks
around the pins. Put in pins as needed on the outside
to form the laminate to the lines on the print.
Let this structure dry overnight. If you don’t care
to laminate the stabilizers, use lightweight 3/16 sheet
for the stabilizers.
Now that you have warmed up your building
skills, let’s tackle the fuselage.
Fuselage: It’s important to mark the position of the
cabanes and the formers on the inside of the two 1/16
x 3-inch fuselage side sheets. Remember lefts and
rights. I put them back to back to mark them off.
Pin the 1/8 x 1/4-inch longeron sticks to the plans.
Add the fuselage sides on edge top-side down, and
then insert formers F-1, F-4, F-7, F-8, F-9, and F-10
into the fuselage halves. Also put in the two F-5
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 1920 MODEL AVIATION
The parts layout on the sheet balsa. The fuselage longerons have
been pinned to the plans.
One of the fuselage sides is fitted and fitted against the
longerons, and the formers are positioned to begin the crutch
assembly.
The other fuselage side is set in place, and clamps are used to
hold the assembly in alignment until the glue sets.
The landing-gear wire press-fits into the slot between two
plywood formers. It is simple and secure!
The curved LEs of the stabilizer and the fin are laminated from
strips of balsa and pinned over the plans until the glue dries.
The wing construction is light and strong. The spar is shearwebbed
for extra strength, and the center-section is sheeted.
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 20October 2006 21
The four cabane struts glue to the fuselage sides and are plenty
rigid and strong.
The motor-mount pylon is attached to the sheeted centersection.
The motor is mounted to a plywood plate.
Ernie came up with a simple and accurate method of aligning the
cabane struts. Text has details.
Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
formers with enough of a gap to allow your landing-gear
wire to slide between them.
Let the structure dry, unpin it, take it off the board,
turn it over, and put the two 1/8 x 1/4-inch longerons on
the curved bottom of the fuselage. Start thinking about
getting the cabanes glued onto the lines inside the
fuselage sides.
Getting the cabanes in correctly worried me the most.
Remember that the final alignment is when you drill the
holes in the wing plywood ribs to join the wing to the
fuselage.
Find the drawing template that will be used between
the wing and the fuselage. Transfer the template to
two stiff pieces of corrugated or cardboard. Pin them
onto the fuselage. Notch the longerons for the cabanes
to slide through.
You will have to shim inside the fuselage where the
Type: RC fun-scale pusher
Construction: Balsa, plywood
Finish: Krylon, Oracote
Wing: 53 inches
Wing area: 385 square inches
Weight: 35 ounces
Wing loading: 13.4 ounces per square foot
Airfoil: Clark Y, Phillips entry
Stall speed: 10 mph
Radio: Hitec Laser 4
Servos: Two HS-85s, two HS-205s
Motor: Nippy Black UBR 2510/114
ESC: Castle Creations Phoenix-35
Batteries: Three 2100 mAh Li-Poly
Propellers: 10 x 6, 8 x 6 three-blade
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:07 PM Page 21See page 191 for Full-Size Plans listing
22 MODEL AVIATION
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:29 AM Page 22cabanes touch the fuselage sides. To do
this I used scrap 1/8 x 1/2 balsa that was
approximately an inch long. This helps to
align the cabanes at the top, where they
should be roughly 31/4 inches apart and 31/2
inches fore and aft to the centers of the 1/2
spruce cabanes.
I clamped the cabanes to the W-2 ribs in
the wing before gluing them in. This was
to ensure the alignment. You can connect
the front and back cabanes with a piece of
1/8 x 1/2 spruce.
Wing: The construction used on the wing
is a basic style. The ailerons are
unnecessary, but you can decide to leave
them off or add them to the wing. After
you frame up the wing halves, join the two
wing sides onto the dihedral braces at 5° or
21/2 inches up at one of the tips.
Put the W-2 ribs that join the fuselage
cabanes into the wing. Don’t glue them in
just yet, and don’t drill the holes that join
the wing to the cabanes. Align these ribs
vertically the best you can to the cabanes.
If you can clamp the W-2 ribs to the
cabanes, do so. They should be roughly 3
inches apart. After you’re satisfied with the
fit, glue the W-2 ribs in permanently.
Sheet the top and bottom center-section
of the wing with 1/16 sheet balsa.
Using the 1 x 4 x 18 soft-balsa block,
rough-cut the nose parts, N-1, N-2, and N-
3. Cut and rough-shape F-2 and F-6 to the
three-views.
Cut the M-1 and the M-2 plywood
pieces. The two M-1s set the motor angle
of 3° positive thrust. An additional 2° of
positive comes from the wing itself, for a
total of 5° positive.
Cut 1/8 inch into the top of the wing.
Insert M-2 into the wing, over the center
two ribs. Glue the three pieces together and
into the wing to form your motor platform.
Mount your servos into the servo tray
outside the airplane, and then put them in
the model. Run the pushrods and mount the
control horns. I make my own horns from
1/32 plywood.
Put the speed controller in the space in
front of the motor. Run all the wires to the
fuselage on plugs so you can unplug and
carry the wing separately. I taped all the
wires from the wing together and down
into the front cockpit behind the pilot.
The wing struts are a pain. They are not
needed to fly, but they look nice. I put
plastic hinges on each end of the struts and
then screwed them to the wing and
fuselage.
Finish: It was easer for me to paint the top
cockpit area and then cover this area with
film. To prime and sand the wood and
plastic I used a water-soluble varnish with
a talcum powder mixed into it.
The varnish is Minwax Polycrylic. It’s
quick drying, has a low odor, is
nonflammable, and washes up with water.
You can use any fine-bodied powder in
approximately a 50/50 mix. Then when
you’re tired of sanding and before panting
and covering, give the area a clear coat of
the Polycrylic.
The colored paint that works best for
me is Krylon. It’s inexpensive, quick to
dry, and can be coated before the 72-hour
drying time that is stipulated on most spray
cans. Best of all, it comes in many
different colors that even match the
covering.
If your thing is detailing, make the three
motor jugs yourself. Williams Bros. used
to sell a plastic variety. I use Oracote for
covering, but most of the low-temperature,
softer, lighter films will work.
The full-scale Curtiss Junior was used
in air shows and was decorated with many
wild colors and decorations. The two
airplanes in the Curtiss Museum are light
blue and silver or maroon and silver. Those
were the factory colors. I made mine
orange and tan, similar to Rhinebeck’s, but
I used more orange on the bottom; that was
for better visibility.
Trimming and Flying: The motor angle is
set at 5°, as noted on the plans, using the
stabilizer incidence as the base reference.
Expect to fine-tune the thrust angle using
washers or wood shims between the motor
mount and the firewall. The final motor
placement will depend on the propeller, motor,
and battery you choose. Remember that with
the motor mounted near the CG, tiny changes
in the thrust angle will make a big difference.
And because the motor is centrally located,
we don’t have the luxury of its also working as
ballast; plan on adding nose weight. I normally
build heavily and had to add 3.5 ounces into
the nose block.
The control throws are as follows: elevator,
5/8 inch; rudder, 5/8 inch; ailerons, 1/8 inch up,
down 0 inches. (These measurements are each
way totally.) I fly with a lot of throw. Adjust to
your style of flying with the amount of throw
you use.
The ailerons are not needed! I finally
coupled mine to the rudder with a Y connector
and cut the throws way down to the ailerons.
Use differential throw on the ailerons (more up
throw than down).
The balance point is on the front of the
main wing spar.
The ground handling was terrible at first. I
moved the main wheels forward and stiffened
the tail wheel. This change is included on the
plans.
The model flies like a Cub. Being a pusher
instead of a tractor didn’t seem to make a big
difference.
Be sure to paint some pilots and put them
in to help you enjoy this old-time Curtiss.
Send me a picture when you’re finished!
See my Web site—http://geocities.com/
ernieheyworth—for more construction
pictures. MA
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:05 PM Page 18
Edition: Model Aviation - 2006/10
Page Numbers: 17,18,19,20,21,22,24
Edition: Model Aviation - 2006/10
Page Numbers: 17,18,19,20,21,22,24
October 2006 17
BY ERNIE HEYWORTH Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
In flight the CW-1 has a buoyant appearance. It is lightly loaded and properly powered.
This is a great fun-scale flier!
I’M INTO electric-powered model
aircraft and wanted a simple,
friendly flier with which to put one
of those new outrunner motors into
action. I’ve constructed J-3 Cubs,
Cessnas, etc., but I had never built
a pusher. The old CW-1 looked
cute, and its curved tail feathers
looked like an easy laminating
challenge. I was hooked.
The fact that you can run electric
motors in both directions allowed
me to use a conventional propeller.
In addition, light and slow has
always been fun—especially doing
touch-and-gos.
In the search for an airplane I
found Don Srull RC plans for the
CW-1 Junior that I had put up in
my basement-rafter library years
ago. His design was good, but the
model’s 36-inch wingspan was too
small.
I wanted to build something that
spanned roughly 50 inches. I also
wanted to use a lighter and more
powerful motor than the old 480
canned electric or a .30-size gas
engine. These needs became the
new ground rules, and the Curtiss
Junior came into focus on the
drawing board.
I live in upstate New York, near
A Golden Age classic turns out to
be a natural for electric power
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:24 AM Page 1718 MODEL AVIATION
There’s no chance of a propeller strike on takeoff! It’s simple in design and form but has an understated elegance.
Curtiss-Wright CW-1: A Brief History
This airplane was developed during 1929 and the early 1930s, during the Great Depression; luxury airplanes weren’t
selling then. At the Buffalo, New York, plant design center, Glenn Curtiss and Walter Beech (of the later Beech Aircraft
Corporation) decided to build a light, inexpensive airplane. It was to be constructed at the Saint Louis, Missouri, plant, which
needed work or faced shutdown.
Curtiss and Beech wanted an airplane that would weigh less than 1,000 pounds and hoped to sell it for roughly $1,500.
Today’s ultralights weigh approximately 300 pounds and have 50-horsepower engines. They cruise at 70 mph and cost
roughly $8,000. The ultralights and the Junior are almost the same size.
The CW-1’s design came from the English Buzzard and the wood Curtiss-Robertson Skeeter. Glenn never outgrew his
love for the pusher-type aircraft. His first designs were pushers that were similar to the Wright brothers’ Wright Flyer.
Glenn’s June Bug and other aircraft he developed were advancements beyond the Wright Flyer. His team made design
changes to the early June Bug such as adding wheels, pontoons, ailerons, bigger engines, and better controls. He established
the aeronautical leading edge of the time.
The Wrights and Curtiss locked each other up in court battles over the invention of all airplanes and all motor flying
machines. This patent fight set the US back in the design progress of airplanes at the outbreak of World War I. The
Europeans took the leading-edge development. They added tractor engines, better wing structures, and much greater
performance to the basic airplane.
The US government finally paid off Glenn and Orville to settle their dispute so that the Americans could catch up with
the Europeans. Curtiss and the Wrights then collaborated to make radial engines and some of the greatest airplanes of World
War II.
The CW-1 Junior was a bit of a joke among the pilots of the day. It looked a little like the Aeronca C-3 “Flying Bathtub”
or a cross between a seaplane and a sailplane, but it sold well during hard times.
The Junior was easy to fly, it had a low stall speed, it could land in small farm fields, it had a metal frame, and it had good
visibility for photo surveying. Air-show pilots loved this airplane; the large wing let them park it into the wind.
The CW-1 was a money-maker for giving rides, although a few passengers walked into the pusher propeller. The
barnstormers used it to do the flying farmer routine. Most of them put more powerful engines on them. The Szekely wasn’t
dependable; it threw oil and often blew a jug into the pusher propeller.
The Curtiss-Wright Junior certainly has left its mark on aviation history, and it is worth modeling. MA
—Ernie Heyworth
Designed in: Buffalo, New York
Manufactured in: Saint Louis, Missouri
Year of manufacture: 1931
Engine: Szekely SR-3(45 horsepower,
three cylinders)
Quantity manufactured: 270 airplanes
in 1931
Wingspan: 39 feet, 6 inches
Length: 21 feet, 3 inches
Construction: Metal frame
Landing speed: 28 mph
Cruising speed: 50 mph
Top speed: 80 mph
Weight: 975 pounds
Range: 200 miles
Airtime: Three hours
Altitude: 12,000 feet
Cost: $1,490
Today’s cost: $45,000
Full-Scale Specifications:October 2006 19
The author holding the model gives a sense of its size. This
airplane has many interesting design features.
The dummy three-cylinder engine covers the
functional Nippy Black electric motor.
the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. As a
tour guide there I’ve watched the museum shop restore
two full-scale Juniors, and I saw one of them fly. I also
found, on the computer, that the Old Rhinebeck
Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York, has a beautiful
orange-and-tan CW-1 that has been flying regularly.
Obtaining documentation then became easy. I’m not
driven too deeply into scale details, but all the answers to
questions of size and shape were available. The Curtiss
Museum’s staff gave me Paul Matt’s historical drawings
and the opportunity to film the two airplanes on the floor.
CONSTRUCTION
The Junior’s construction consists of basic modeling.
Well, it’s basic to old-timers who have bent balsa sticks
into a curved laminate. Oh yes, and to modelers who
have made two right halves or forgotten to put waxed
paper over the print!
I tried to minimize the wire bending by using wooden
cabanes. If you want to bend wire for a more scalelike look
instead of employing wood, use Paul Matt’s drawings from
Historical Aviation Album, 1972.Write to Box 33, Temple
City CA 91780, for information and pricing. I would
rather schedule a root canal than bend wire or
fingerprint a windshield with glue.
If you can get two copies of the print
for this model, you can cut paper print
templates of the fuselage formers,
wing ribs, and fuselage sides. You can
also use old-fashioned carbon paper,
your computer scanner, or a photocopy
machine to copy parts off the drawing.
Precut the wing ribs, fuselage formers, fuselage
sides, and motor support parts. Take your time with
these and make them as accurate as you can. I use
3M Super 77 spray contact glue to hold the paper to
the wood while cutting the parts. Let the spray glue
set for five minutes so it won’t stick there forever.
Stabilizers: It’s surprisingly easy to laminate the
stabilizers’ front edge. The curves are extremely
slow.
Make a row of pins on the inside of the curves that
are shown on the stabilizer drawing. Use white glue
full-strength to wet the wood, and then put the three
pieces of thin wood together. Bend the wet sticks
around the pins. Put in pins as needed on the outside
to form the laminate to the lines on the print.
Let this structure dry overnight. If you don’t care
to laminate the stabilizers, use lightweight 3/16 sheet
for the stabilizers.
Now that you have warmed up your building
skills, let’s tackle the fuselage.
Fuselage: It’s important to mark the position of the
cabanes and the formers on the inside of the two 1/16
x 3-inch fuselage side sheets. Remember lefts and
rights. I put them back to back to mark them off.
Pin the 1/8 x 1/4-inch longeron sticks to the plans.
Add the fuselage sides on edge top-side down, and
then insert formers F-1, F-4, F-7, F-8, F-9, and F-10
into the fuselage halves. Also put in the two F-5
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 1920 MODEL AVIATION
The parts layout on the sheet balsa. The fuselage longerons have
been pinned to the plans.
One of the fuselage sides is fitted and fitted against the
longerons, and the formers are positioned to begin the crutch
assembly.
The other fuselage side is set in place, and clamps are used to
hold the assembly in alignment until the glue sets.
The landing-gear wire press-fits into the slot between two
plywood formers. It is simple and secure!
The curved LEs of the stabilizer and the fin are laminated from
strips of balsa and pinned over the plans until the glue dries.
The wing construction is light and strong. The spar is shearwebbed
for extra strength, and the center-section is sheeted.
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 20October 2006 21
The four cabane struts glue to the fuselage sides and are plenty
rigid and strong.
The motor-mount pylon is attached to the sheeted centersection.
The motor is mounted to a plywood plate.
Ernie came up with a simple and accurate method of aligning the
cabane struts. Text has details.
Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
formers with enough of a gap to allow your landing-gear
wire to slide between them.
Let the structure dry, unpin it, take it off the board,
turn it over, and put the two 1/8 x 1/4-inch longerons on
the curved bottom of the fuselage. Start thinking about
getting the cabanes glued onto the lines inside the
fuselage sides.
Getting the cabanes in correctly worried me the most.
Remember that the final alignment is when you drill the
holes in the wing plywood ribs to join the wing to the
fuselage.
Find the drawing template that will be used between
the wing and the fuselage. Transfer the template to
two stiff pieces of corrugated or cardboard. Pin them
onto the fuselage. Notch the longerons for the cabanes
to slide through.
You will have to shim inside the fuselage where the
Type: RC fun-scale pusher
Construction: Balsa, plywood
Finish: Krylon, Oracote
Wing: 53 inches
Wing area: 385 square inches
Weight: 35 ounces
Wing loading: 13.4 ounces per square foot
Airfoil: Clark Y, Phillips entry
Stall speed: 10 mph
Radio: Hitec Laser 4
Servos: Two HS-85s, two HS-205s
Motor: Nippy Black UBR 2510/114
ESC: Castle Creations Phoenix-35
Batteries: Three 2100 mAh Li-Poly
Propellers: 10 x 6, 8 x 6 three-blade
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:07 PM Page 21See page 191 for Full-Size Plans listing
22 MODEL AVIATION
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:29 AM Page 22cabanes touch the fuselage sides. To do
this I used scrap 1/8 x 1/2 balsa that was
approximately an inch long. This helps to
align the cabanes at the top, where they
should be roughly 31/4 inches apart and 31/2
inches fore and aft to the centers of the 1/2
spruce cabanes.
I clamped the cabanes to the W-2 ribs in
the wing before gluing them in. This was
to ensure the alignment. You can connect
the front and back cabanes with a piece of
1/8 x 1/2 spruce.
Wing: The construction used on the wing
is a basic style. The ailerons are
unnecessary, but you can decide to leave
them off or add them to the wing. After
you frame up the wing halves, join the two
wing sides onto the dihedral braces at 5° or
21/2 inches up at one of the tips.
Put the W-2 ribs that join the fuselage
cabanes into the wing. Don’t glue them in
just yet, and don’t drill the holes that join
the wing to the cabanes. Align these ribs
vertically the best you can to the cabanes.
If you can clamp the W-2 ribs to the
cabanes, do so. They should be roughly 3
inches apart. After you’re satisfied with the
fit, glue the W-2 ribs in permanently.
Sheet the top and bottom center-section
of the wing with 1/16 sheet balsa.
Using the 1 x 4 x 18 soft-balsa block,
rough-cut the nose parts, N-1, N-2, and N-
3. Cut and rough-shape F-2 and F-6 to the
three-views.
Cut the M-1 and the M-2 plywood
pieces. The two M-1s set the motor angle
of 3° positive thrust. An additional 2° of
positive comes from the wing itself, for a
total of 5° positive.
Cut 1/8 inch into the top of the wing.
Insert M-2 into the wing, over the center
two ribs. Glue the three pieces together and
into the wing to form your motor platform.
Mount your servos into the servo tray
outside the airplane, and then put them in
the model. Run the pushrods and mount the
control horns. I make my own horns from
1/32 plywood.
Put the speed controller in the space in
front of the motor. Run all the wires to the
fuselage on plugs so you can unplug and
carry the wing separately. I taped all the
wires from the wing together and down
into the front cockpit behind the pilot.
The wing struts are a pain. They are not
needed to fly, but they look nice. I put
plastic hinges on each end of the struts and
then screwed them to the wing and
fuselage.
Finish: It was easer for me to paint the top
cockpit area and then cover this area with
film. To prime and sand the wood and
plastic I used a water-soluble varnish with
a talcum powder mixed into it.
The varnish is Minwax Polycrylic. It’s
quick drying, has a low odor, is
nonflammable, and washes up with water.
You can use any fine-bodied powder in
approximately a 50/50 mix. Then when
you’re tired of sanding and before panting
and covering, give the area a clear coat of
the Polycrylic.
The colored paint that works best for
me is Krylon. It’s inexpensive, quick to
dry, and can be coated before the 72-hour
drying time that is stipulated on most spray
cans. Best of all, it comes in many
different colors that even match the
covering.
If your thing is detailing, make the three
motor jugs yourself. Williams Bros. used
to sell a plastic variety. I use Oracote for
covering, but most of the low-temperature,
softer, lighter films will work.
The full-scale Curtiss Junior was used
in air shows and was decorated with many
wild colors and decorations. The two
airplanes in the Curtiss Museum are light
blue and silver or maroon and silver. Those
were the factory colors. I made mine
orange and tan, similar to Rhinebeck’s, but
I used more orange on the bottom; that was
for better visibility.
Trimming and Flying: The motor angle is
set at 5°, as noted on the plans, using the
stabilizer incidence as the base reference.
Expect to fine-tune the thrust angle using
washers or wood shims between the motor
mount and the firewall. The final motor
placement will depend on the propeller, motor,
and battery you choose. Remember that with
the motor mounted near the CG, tiny changes
in the thrust angle will make a big difference.
And because the motor is centrally located,
we don’t have the luxury of its also working as
ballast; plan on adding nose weight. I normally
build heavily and had to add 3.5 ounces into
the nose block.
The control throws are as follows: elevator,
5/8 inch; rudder, 5/8 inch; ailerons, 1/8 inch up,
down 0 inches. (These measurements are each
way totally.) I fly with a lot of throw. Adjust to
your style of flying with the amount of throw
you use.
The ailerons are not needed! I finally
coupled mine to the rudder with a Y connector
and cut the throws way down to the ailerons.
Use differential throw on the ailerons (more up
throw than down).
The balance point is on the front of the
main wing spar.
The ground handling was terrible at first. I
moved the main wheels forward and stiffened
the tail wheel. This change is included on the
plans.
The model flies like a Cub. Being a pusher
instead of a tractor didn’t seem to make a big
difference.
Be sure to paint some pilots and put them
in to help you enjoy this old-time Curtiss.
Send me a picture when you’re finished!
See my Web site—http://geocities.com/
ernieheyworth—for more construction
pictures. MA
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:05 PM Page 18
Edition: Model Aviation - 2006/10
Page Numbers: 17,18,19,20,21,22,24
October 2006 17
BY ERNIE HEYWORTH Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
In flight the CW-1 has a buoyant appearance. It is lightly loaded and properly powered.
This is a great fun-scale flier!
I’M INTO electric-powered model
aircraft and wanted a simple,
friendly flier with which to put one
of those new outrunner motors into
action. I’ve constructed J-3 Cubs,
Cessnas, etc., but I had never built
a pusher. The old CW-1 looked
cute, and its curved tail feathers
looked like an easy laminating
challenge. I was hooked.
The fact that you can run electric
motors in both directions allowed
me to use a conventional propeller.
In addition, light and slow has
always been fun—especially doing
touch-and-gos.
In the search for an airplane I
found Don Srull RC plans for the
CW-1 Junior that I had put up in
my basement-rafter library years
ago. His design was good, but the
model’s 36-inch wingspan was too
small.
I wanted to build something that
spanned roughly 50 inches. I also
wanted to use a lighter and more
powerful motor than the old 480
canned electric or a .30-size gas
engine. These needs became the
new ground rules, and the Curtiss
Junior came into focus on the
drawing board.
I live in upstate New York, near
A Golden Age classic turns out to
be a natural for electric power
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:24 AM Page 1718 MODEL AVIATION
There’s no chance of a propeller strike on takeoff! It’s simple in design and form but has an understated elegance.
Curtiss-Wright CW-1: A Brief History
This airplane was developed during 1929 and the early 1930s, during the Great Depression; luxury airplanes weren’t
selling then. At the Buffalo, New York, plant design center, Glenn Curtiss and Walter Beech (of the later Beech Aircraft
Corporation) decided to build a light, inexpensive airplane. It was to be constructed at the Saint Louis, Missouri, plant, which
needed work or faced shutdown.
Curtiss and Beech wanted an airplane that would weigh less than 1,000 pounds and hoped to sell it for roughly $1,500.
Today’s ultralights weigh approximately 300 pounds and have 50-horsepower engines. They cruise at 70 mph and cost
roughly $8,000. The ultralights and the Junior are almost the same size.
The CW-1’s design came from the English Buzzard and the wood Curtiss-Robertson Skeeter. Glenn never outgrew his
love for the pusher-type aircraft. His first designs were pushers that were similar to the Wright brothers’ Wright Flyer.
Glenn’s June Bug and other aircraft he developed were advancements beyond the Wright Flyer. His team made design
changes to the early June Bug such as adding wheels, pontoons, ailerons, bigger engines, and better controls. He established
the aeronautical leading edge of the time.
The Wrights and Curtiss locked each other up in court battles over the invention of all airplanes and all motor flying
machines. This patent fight set the US back in the design progress of airplanes at the outbreak of World War I. The
Europeans took the leading-edge development. They added tractor engines, better wing structures, and much greater
performance to the basic airplane.
The US government finally paid off Glenn and Orville to settle their dispute so that the Americans could catch up with
the Europeans. Curtiss and the Wrights then collaborated to make radial engines and some of the greatest airplanes of World
War II.
The CW-1 Junior was a bit of a joke among the pilots of the day. It looked a little like the Aeronca C-3 “Flying Bathtub”
or a cross between a seaplane and a sailplane, but it sold well during hard times.
The Junior was easy to fly, it had a low stall speed, it could land in small farm fields, it had a metal frame, and it had good
visibility for photo surveying. Air-show pilots loved this airplane; the large wing let them park it into the wind.
The CW-1 was a money-maker for giving rides, although a few passengers walked into the pusher propeller. The
barnstormers used it to do the flying farmer routine. Most of them put more powerful engines on them. The Szekely wasn’t
dependable; it threw oil and often blew a jug into the pusher propeller.
The Curtiss-Wright Junior certainly has left its mark on aviation history, and it is worth modeling. MA
—Ernie Heyworth
Designed in: Buffalo, New York
Manufactured in: Saint Louis, Missouri
Year of manufacture: 1931
Engine: Szekely SR-3(45 horsepower,
three cylinders)
Quantity manufactured: 270 airplanes
in 1931
Wingspan: 39 feet, 6 inches
Length: 21 feet, 3 inches
Construction: Metal frame
Landing speed: 28 mph
Cruising speed: 50 mph
Top speed: 80 mph
Weight: 975 pounds
Range: 200 miles
Airtime: Three hours
Altitude: 12,000 feet
Cost: $1,490
Today’s cost: $45,000
Full-Scale Specifications:October 2006 19
The author holding the model gives a sense of its size. This
airplane has many interesting design features.
The dummy three-cylinder engine covers the
functional Nippy Black electric motor.
the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. As a
tour guide there I’ve watched the museum shop restore
two full-scale Juniors, and I saw one of them fly. I also
found, on the computer, that the Old Rhinebeck
Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York, has a beautiful
orange-and-tan CW-1 that has been flying regularly.
Obtaining documentation then became easy. I’m not
driven too deeply into scale details, but all the answers to
questions of size and shape were available. The Curtiss
Museum’s staff gave me Paul Matt’s historical drawings
and the opportunity to film the two airplanes on the floor.
CONSTRUCTION
The Junior’s construction consists of basic modeling.
Well, it’s basic to old-timers who have bent balsa sticks
into a curved laminate. Oh yes, and to modelers who
have made two right halves or forgotten to put waxed
paper over the print!
I tried to minimize the wire bending by using wooden
cabanes. If you want to bend wire for a more scalelike look
instead of employing wood, use Paul Matt’s drawings from
Historical Aviation Album, 1972.Write to Box 33, Temple
City CA 91780, for information and pricing. I would
rather schedule a root canal than bend wire or
fingerprint a windshield with glue.
If you can get two copies of the print
for this model, you can cut paper print
templates of the fuselage formers,
wing ribs, and fuselage sides. You can
also use old-fashioned carbon paper,
your computer scanner, or a photocopy
machine to copy parts off the drawing.
Precut the wing ribs, fuselage formers, fuselage
sides, and motor support parts. Take your time with
these and make them as accurate as you can. I use
3M Super 77 spray contact glue to hold the paper to
the wood while cutting the parts. Let the spray glue
set for five minutes so it won’t stick there forever.
Stabilizers: It’s surprisingly easy to laminate the
stabilizers’ front edge. The curves are extremely
slow.
Make a row of pins on the inside of the curves that
are shown on the stabilizer drawing. Use white glue
full-strength to wet the wood, and then put the three
pieces of thin wood together. Bend the wet sticks
around the pins. Put in pins as needed on the outside
to form the laminate to the lines on the print.
Let this structure dry overnight. If you don’t care
to laminate the stabilizers, use lightweight 3/16 sheet
for the stabilizers.
Now that you have warmed up your building
skills, let’s tackle the fuselage.
Fuselage: It’s important to mark the position of the
cabanes and the formers on the inside of the two 1/16
x 3-inch fuselage side sheets. Remember lefts and
rights. I put them back to back to mark them off.
Pin the 1/8 x 1/4-inch longeron sticks to the plans.
Add the fuselage sides on edge top-side down, and
then insert formers F-1, F-4, F-7, F-8, F-9, and F-10
into the fuselage halves. Also put in the two F-5
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 1920 MODEL AVIATION
The parts layout on the sheet balsa. The fuselage longerons have
been pinned to the plans.
One of the fuselage sides is fitted and fitted against the
longerons, and the formers are positioned to begin the crutch
assembly.
The other fuselage side is set in place, and clamps are used to
hold the assembly in alignment until the glue sets.
The landing-gear wire press-fits into the slot between two
plywood formers. It is simple and secure!
The curved LEs of the stabilizer and the fin are laminated from
strips of balsa and pinned over the plans until the glue dries.
The wing construction is light and strong. The spar is shearwebbed
for extra strength, and the center-section is sheeted.
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 20October 2006 21
The four cabane struts glue to the fuselage sides and are plenty
rigid and strong.
The motor-mount pylon is attached to the sheeted centersection.
The motor is mounted to a plywood plate.
Ernie came up with a simple and accurate method of aligning the
cabane struts. Text has details.
Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
formers with enough of a gap to allow your landing-gear
wire to slide between them.
Let the structure dry, unpin it, take it off the board,
turn it over, and put the two 1/8 x 1/4-inch longerons on
the curved bottom of the fuselage. Start thinking about
getting the cabanes glued onto the lines inside the
fuselage sides.
Getting the cabanes in correctly worried me the most.
Remember that the final alignment is when you drill the
holes in the wing plywood ribs to join the wing to the
fuselage.
Find the drawing template that will be used between
the wing and the fuselage. Transfer the template to
two stiff pieces of corrugated or cardboard. Pin them
onto the fuselage. Notch the longerons for the cabanes
to slide through.
You will have to shim inside the fuselage where the
Type: RC fun-scale pusher
Construction: Balsa, plywood
Finish: Krylon, Oracote
Wing: 53 inches
Wing area: 385 square inches
Weight: 35 ounces
Wing loading: 13.4 ounces per square foot
Airfoil: Clark Y, Phillips entry
Stall speed: 10 mph
Radio: Hitec Laser 4
Servos: Two HS-85s, two HS-205s
Motor: Nippy Black UBR 2510/114
ESC: Castle Creations Phoenix-35
Batteries: Three 2100 mAh Li-Poly
Propellers: 10 x 6, 8 x 6 three-blade
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:07 PM Page 21See page 191 for Full-Size Plans listing
22 MODEL AVIATION
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:29 AM Page 22cabanes touch the fuselage sides. To do
this I used scrap 1/8 x 1/2 balsa that was
approximately an inch long. This helps to
align the cabanes at the top, where they
should be roughly 31/4 inches apart and 31/2
inches fore and aft to the centers of the 1/2
spruce cabanes.
I clamped the cabanes to the W-2 ribs in
the wing before gluing them in. This was
to ensure the alignment. You can connect
the front and back cabanes with a piece of
1/8 x 1/2 spruce.
Wing: The construction used on the wing
is a basic style. The ailerons are
unnecessary, but you can decide to leave
them off or add them to the wing. After
you frame up the wing halves, join the two
wing sides onto the dihedral braces at 5° or
21/2 inches up at one of the tips.
Put the W-2 ribs that join the fuselage
cabanes into the wing. Don’t glue them in
just yet, and don’t drill the holes that join
the wing to the cabanes. Align these ribs
vertically the best you can to the cabanes.
If you can clamp the W-2 ribs to the
cabanes, do so. They should be roughly 3
inches apart. After you’re satisfied with the
fit, glue the W-2 ribs in permanently.
Sheet the top and bottom center-section
of the wing with 1/16 sheet balsa.
Using the 1 x 4 x 18 soft-balsa block,
rough-cut the nose parts, N-1, N-2, and N-
3. Cut and rough-shape F-2 and F-6 to the
three-views.
Cut the M-1 and the M-2 plywood
pieces. The two M-1s set the motor angle
of 3° positive thrust. An additional 2° of
positive comes from the wing itself, for a
total of 5° positive.
Cut 1/8 inch into the top of the wing.
Insert M-2 into the wing, over the center
two ribs. Glue the three pieces together and
into the wing to form your motor platform.
Mount your servos into the servo tray
outside the airplane, and then put them in
the model. Run the pushrods and mount the
control horns. I make my own horns from
1/32 plywood.
Put the speed controller in the space in
front of the motor. Run all the wires to the
fuselage on plugs so you can unplug and
carry the wing separately. I taped all the
wires from the wing together and down
into the front cockpit behind the pilot.
The wing struts are a pain. They are not
needed to fly, but they look nice. I put
plastic hinges on each end of the struts and
then screwed them to the wing and
fuselage.
Finish: It was easer for me to paint the top
cockpit area and then cover this area with
film. To prime and sand the wood and
plastic I used a water-soluble varnish with
a talcum powder mixed into it.
The varnish is Minwax Polycrylic. It’s
quick drying, has a low odor, is
nonflammable, and washes up with water.
You can use any fine-bodied powder in
approximately a 50/50 mix. Then when
you’re tired of sanding and before panting
and covering, give the area a clear coat of
the Polycrylic.
The colored paint that works best for
me is Krylon. It’s inexpensive, quick to
dry, and can be coated before the 72-hour
drying time that is stipulated on most spray
cans. Best of all, it comes in many
different colors that even match the
covering.
If your thing is detailing, make the three
motor jugs yourself. Williams Bros. used
to sell a plastic variety. I use Oracote for
covering, but most of the low-temperature,
softer, lighter films will work.
The full-scale Curtiss Junior was used
in air shows and was decorated with many
wild colors and decorations. The two
airplanes in the Curtiss Museum are light
blue and silver or maroon and silver. Those
were the factory colors. I made mine
orange and tan, similar to Rhinebeck’s, but
I used more orange on the bottom; that was
for better visibility.
Trimming and Flying: The motor angle is
set at 5°, as noted on the plans, using the
stabilizer incidence as the base reference.
Expect to fine-tune the thrust angle using
washers or wood shims between the motor
mount and the firewall. The final motor
placement will depend on the propeller, motor,
and battery you choose. Remember that with
the motor mounted near the CG, tiny changes
in the thrust angle will make a big difference.
And because the motor is centrally located,
we don’t have the luxury of its also working as
ballast; plan on adding nose weight. I normally
build heavily and had to add 3.5 ounces into
the nose block.
The control throws are as follows: elevator,
5/8 inch; rudder, 5/8 inch; ailerons, 1/8 inch up,
down 0 inches. (These measurements are each
way totally.) I fly with a lot of throw. Adjust to
your style of flying with the amount of throw
you use.
The ailerons are not needed! I finally
coupled mine to the rudder with a Y connector
and cut the throws way down to the ailerons.
Use differential throw on the ailerons (more up
throw than down).
The balance point is on the front of the
main wing spar.
The ground handling was terrible at first. I
moved the main wheels forward and stiffened
the tail wheel. This change is included on the
plans.
The model flies like a Cub. Being a pusher
instead of a tractor didn’t seem to make a big
difference.
Be sure to paint some pilots and put them
in to help you enjoy this old-time Curtiss.
Send me a picture when you’re finished!
See my Web site—http://geocities.com/
ernieheyworth—for more construction
pictures. MA
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:05 PM Page 18
Edition: Model Aviation - 2006/10
Page Numbers: 17,18,19,20,21,22,24
October 2006 17
BY ERNIE HEYWORTH Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
In flight the CW-1 has a buoyant appearance. It is lightly loaded and properly powered.
This is a great fun-scale flier!
I’M INTO electric-powered model
aircraft and wanted a simple,
friendly flier with which to put one
of those new outrunner motors into
action. I’ve constructed J-3 Cubs,
Cessnas, etc., but I had never built
a pusher. The old CW-1 looked
cute, and its curved tail feathers
looked like an easy laminating
challenge. I was hooked.
The fact that you can run electric
motors in both directions allowed
me to use a conventional propeller.
In addition, light and slow has
always been fun—especially doing
touch-and-gos.
In the search for an airplane I
found Don Srull RC plans for the
CW-1 Junior that I had put up in
my basement-rafter library years
ago. His design was good, but the
model’s 36-inch wingspan was too
small.
I wanted to build something that
spanned roughly 50 inches. I also
wanted to use a lighter and more
powerful motor than the old 480
canned electric or a .30-size gas
engine. These needs became the
new ground rules, and the Curtiss
Junior came into focus on the
drawing board.
I live in upstate New York, near
A Golden Age classic turns out to
be a natural for electric power
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:24 AM Page 1718 MODEL AVIATION
There’s no chance of a propeller strike on takeoff! It’s simple in design and form but has an understated elegance.
Curtiss-Wright CW-1: A Brief History
This airplane was developed during 1929 and the early 1930s, during the Great Depression; luxury airplanes weren’t
selling then. At the Buffalo, New York, plant design center, Glenn Curtiss and Walter Beech (of the later Beech Aircraft
Corporation) decided to build a light, inexpensive airplane. It was to be constructed at the Saint Louis, Missouri, plant, which
needed work or faced shutdown.
Curtiss and Beech wanted an airplane that would weigh less than 1,000 pounds and hoped to sell it for roughly $1,500.
Today’s ultralights weigh approximately 300 pounds and have 50-horsepower engines. They cruise at 70 mph and cost
roughly $8,000. The ultralights and the Junior are almost the same size.
The CW-1’s design came from the English Buzzard and the wood Curtiss-Robertson Skeeter. Glenn never outgrew his
love for the pusher-type aircraft. His first designs were pushers that were similar to the Wright brothers’ Wright Flyer.
Glenn’s June Bug and other aircraft he developed were advancements beyond the Wright Flyer. His team made design
changes to the early June Bug such as adding wheels, pontoons, ailerons, bigger engines, and better controls. He established
the aeronautical leading edge of the time.
The Wrights and Curtiss locked each other up in court battles over the invention of all airplanes and all motor flying
machines. This patent fight set the US back in the design progress of airplanes at the outbreak of World War I. The
Europeans took the leading-edge development. They added tractor engines, better wing structures, and much greater
performance to the basic airplane.
The US government finally paid off Glenn and Orville to settle their dispute so that the Americans could catch up with
the Europeans. Curtiss and the Wrights then collaborated to make radial engines and some of the greatest airplanes of World
War II.
The CW-1 Junior was a bit of a joke among the pilots of the day. It looked a little like the Aeronca C-3 “Flying Bathtub”
or a cross between a seaplane and a sailplane, but it sold well during hard times.
The Junior was easy to fly, it had a low stall speed, it could land in small farm fields, it had a metal frame, and it had good
visibility for photo surveying. Air-show pilots loved this airplane; the large wing let them park it into the wind.
The CW-1 was a money-maker for giving rides, although a few passengers walked into the pusher propeller. The
barnstormers used it to do the flying farmer routine. Most of them put more powerful engines on them. The Szekely wasn’t
dependable; it threw oil and often blew a jug into the pusher propeller.
The Curtiss-Wright Junior certainly has left its mark on aviation history, and it is worth modeling. MA
—Ernie Heyworth
Designed in: Buffalo, New York
Manufactured in: Saint Louis, Missouri
Year of manufacture: 1931
Engine: Szekely SR-3(45 horsepower,
three cylinders)
Quantity manufactured: 270 airplanes
in 1931
Wingspan: 39 feet, 6 inches
Length: 21 feet, 3 inches
Construction: Metal frame
Landing speed: 28 mph
Cruising speed: 50 mph
Top speed: 80 mph
Weight: 975 pounds
Range: 200 miles
Airtime: Three hours
Altitude: 12,000 feet
Cost: $1,490
Today’s cost: $45,000
Full-Scale Specifications:October 2006 19
The author holding the model gives a sense of its size. This
airplane has many interesting design features.
The dummy three-cylinder engine covers the
functional Nippy Black electric motor.
the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. As a
tour guide there I’ve watched the museum shop restore
two full-scale Juniors, and I saw one of them fly. I also
found, on the computer, that the Old Rhinebeck
Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York, has a beautiful
orange-and-tan CW-1 that has been flying regularly.
Obtaining documentation then became easy. I’m not
driven too deeply into scale details, but all the answers to
questions of size and shape were available. The Curtiss
Museum’s staff gave me Paul Matt’s historical drawings
and the opportunity to film the two airplanes on the floor.
CONSTRUCTION
The Junior’s construction consists of basic modeling.
Well, it’s basic to old-timers who have bent balsa sticks
into a curved laminate. Oh yes, and to modelers who
have made two right halves or forgotten to put waxed
paper over the print!
I tried to minimize the wire bending by using wooden
cabanes. If you want to bend wire for a more scalelike look
instead of employing wood, use Paul Matt’s drawings from
Historical Aviation Album, 1972.Write to Box 33, Temple
City CA 91780, for information and pricing. I would
rather schedule a root canal than bend wire or
fingerprint a windshield with glue.
If you can get two copies of the print
for this model, you can cut paper print
templates of the fuselage formers,
wing ribs, and fuselage sides. You can
also use old-fashioned carbon paper,
your computer scanner, or a photocopy
machine to copy parts off the drawing.
Precut the wing ribs, fuselage formers, fuselage
sides, and motor support parts. Take your time with
these and make them as accurate as you can. I use
3M Super 77 spray contact glue to hold the paper to
the wood while cutting the parts. Let the spray glue
set for five minutes so it won’t stick there forever.
Stabilizers: It’s surprisingly easy to laminate the
stabilizers’ front edge. The curves are extremely
slow.
Make a row of pins on the inside of the curves that
are shown on the stabilizer drawing. Use white glue
full-strength to wet the wood, and then put the three
pieces of thin wood together. Bend the wet sticks
around the pins. Put in pins as needed on the outside
to form the laminate to the lines on the print.
Let this structure dry overnight. If you don’t care
to laminate the stabilizers, use lightweight 3/16 sheet
for the stabilizers.
Now that you have warmed up your building
skills, let’s tackle the fuselage.
Fuselage: It’s important to mark the position of the
cabanes and the formers on the inside of the two 1/16
x 3-inch fuselage side sheets. Remember lefts and
rights. I put them back to back to mark them off.
Pin the 1/8 x 1/4-inch longeron sticks to the plans.
Add the fuselage sides on edge top-side down, and
then insert formers F-1, F-4, F-7, F-8, F-9, and F-10
into the fuselage halves. Also put in the two F-5
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 1920 MODEL AVIATION
The parts layout on the sheet balsa. The fuselage longerons have
been pinned to the plans.
One of the fuselage sides is fitted and fitted against the
longerons, and the formers are positioned to begin the crutch
assembly.
The other fuselage side is set in place, and clamps are used to
hold the assembly in alignment until the glue sets.
The landing-gear wire press-fits into the slot between two
plywood formers. It is simple and secure!
The curved LEs of the stabilizer and the fin are laminated from
strips of balsa and pinned over the plans until the glue dries.
The wing construction is light and strong. The spar is shearwebbed
for extra strength, and the center-section is sheeted.
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 20October 2006 21
The four cabane struts glue to the fuselage sides and are plenty
rigid and strong.
The motor-mount pylon is attached to the sheeted centersection.
The motor is mounted to a plywood plate.
Ernie came up with a simple and accurate method of aligning the
cabane struts. Text has details.
Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
formers with enough of a gap to allow your landing-gear
wire to slide between them.
Let the structure dry, unpin it, take it off the board,
turn it over, and put the two 1/8 x 1/4-inch longerons on
the curved bottom of the fuselage. Start thinking about
getting the cabanes glued onto the lines inside the
fuselage sides.
Getting the cabanes in correctly worried me the most.
Remember that the final alignment is when you drill the
holes in the wing plywood ribs to join the wing to the
fuselage.
Find the drawing template that will be used between
the wing and the fuselage. Transfer the template to
two stiff pieces of corrugated or cardboard. Pin them
onto the fuselage. Notch the longerons for the cabanes
to slide through.
You will have to shim inside the fuselage where the
Type: RC fun-scale pusher
Construction: Balsa, plywood
Finish: Krylon, Oracote
Wing: 53 inches
Wing area: 385 square inches
Weight: 35 ounces
Wing loading: 13.4 ounces per square foot
Airfoil: Clark Y, Phillips entry
Stall speed: 10 mph
Radio: Hitec Laser 4
Servos: Two HS-85s, two HS-205s
Motor: Nippy Black UBR 2510/114
ESC: Castle Creations Phoenix-35
Batteries: Three 2100 mAh Li-Poly
Propellers: 10 x 6, 8 x 6 three-blade
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:07 PM Page 21See page 191 for Full-Size Plans listing
22 MODEL AVIATION
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:29 AM Page 22cabanes touch the fuselage sides. To do
this I used scrap 1/8 x 1/2 balsa that was
approximately an inch long. This helps to
align the cabanes at the top, where they
should be roughly 31/4 inches apart and 31/2
inches fore and aft to the centers of the 1/2
spruce cabanes.
I clamped the cabanes to the W-2 ribs in
the wing before gluing them in. This was
to ensure the alignment. You can connect
the front and back cabanes with a piece of
1/8 x 1/2 spruce.
Wing: The construction used on the wing
is a basic style. The ailerons are
unnecessary, but you can decide to leave
them off or add them to the wing. After
you frame up the wing halves, join the two
wing sides onto the dihedral braces at 5° or
21/2 inches up at one of the tips.
Put the W-2 ribs that join the fuselage
cabanes into the wing. Don’t glue them in
just yet, and don’t drill the holes that join
the wing to the cabanes. Align these ribs
vertically the best you can to the cabanes.
If you can clamp the W-2 ribs to the
cabanes, do so. They should be roughly 3
inches apart. After you’re satisfied with the
fit, glue the W-2 ribs in permanently.
Sheet the top and bottom center-section
of the wing with 1/16 sheet balsa.
Using the 1 x 4 x 18 soft-balsa block,
rough-cut the nose parts, N-1, N-2, and N-
3. Cut and rough-shape F-2 and F-6 to the
three-views.
Cut the M-1 and the M-2 plywood
pieces. The two M-1s set the motor angle
of 3° positive thrust. An additional 2° of
positive comes from the wing itself, for a
total of 5° positive.
Cut 1/8 inch into the top of the wing.
Insert M-2 into the wing, over the center
two ribs. Glue the three pieces together and
into the wing to form your motor platform.
Mount your servos into the servo tray
outside the airplane, and then put them in
the model. Run the pushrods and mount the
control horns. I make my own horns from
1/32 plywood.
Put the speed controller in the space in
front of the motor. Run all the wires to the
fuselage on plugs so you can unplug and
carry the wing separately. I taped all the
wires from the wing together and down
into the front cockpit behind the pilot.
The wing struts are a pain. They are not
needed to fly, but they look nice. I put
plastic hinges on each end of the struts and
then screwed them to the wing and
fuselage.
Finish: It was easer for me to paint the top
cockpit area and then cover this area with
film. To prime and sand the wood and
plastic I used a water-soluble varnish with
a talcum powder mixed into it.
The varnish is Minwax Polycrylic. It’s
quick drying, has a low odor, is
nonflammable, and washes up with water.
You can use any fine-bodied powder in
approximately a 50/50 mix. Then when
you’re tired of sanding and before panting
and covering, give the area a clear coat of
the Polycrylic.
The colored paint that works best for
me is Krylon. It’s inexpensive, quick to
dry, and can be coated before the 72-hour
drying time that is stipulated on most spray
cans. Best of all, it comes in many
different colors that even match the
covering.
If your thing is detailing, make the three
motor jugs yourself. Williams Bros. used
to sell a plastic variety. I use Oracote for
covering, but most of the low-temperature,
softer, lighter films will work.
The full-scale Curtiss Junior was used
in air shows and was decorated with many
wild colors and decorations. The two
airplanes in the Curtiss Museum are light
blue and silver or maroon and silver. Those
were the factory colors. I made mine
orange and tan, similar to Rhinebeck’s, but
I used more orange on the bottom; that was
for better visibility.
Trimming and Flying: The motor angle is
set at 5°, as noted on the plans, using the
stabilizer incidence as the base reference.
Expect to fine-tune the thrust angle using
washers or wood shims between the motor
mount and the firewall. The final motor
placement will depend on the propeller, motor,
and battery you choose. Remember that with
the motor mounted near the CG, tiny changes
in the thrust angle will make a big difference.
And because the motor is centrally located,
we don’t have the luxury of its also working as
ballast; plan on adding nose weight. I normally
build heavily and had to add 3.5 ounces into
the nose block.
The control throws are as follows: elevator,
5/8 inch; rudder, 5/8 inch; ailerons, 1/8 inch up,
down 0 inches. (These measurements are each
way totally.) I fly with a lot of throw. Adjust to
your style of flying with the amount of throw
you use.
The ailerons are not needed! I finally
coupled mine to the rudder with a Y connector
and cut the throws way down to the ailerons.
Use differential throw on the ailerons (more up
throw than down).
The balance point is on the front of the
main wing spar.
The ground handling was terrible at first. I
moved the main wheels forward and stiffened
the tail wheel. This change is included on the
plans.
The model flies like a Cub. Being a pusher
instead of a tractor didn’t seem to make a big
difference.
Be sure to paint some pilots and put them
in to help you enjoy this old-time Curtiss.
Send me a picture when you’re finished!
See my Web site—http://geocities.com/
ernieheyworth—for more construction
pictures. MA
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:05 PM Page 18
Edition: Model Aviation - 2006/10
Page Numbers: 17,18,19,20,21,22,24
October 2006 17
BY ERNIE HEYWORTH Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
In flight the CW-1 has a buoyant appearance. It is lightly loaded and properly powered.
This is a great fun-scale flier!
I’M INTO electric-powered model
aircraft and wanted a simple,
friendly flier with which to put one
of those new outrunner motors into
action. I’ve constructed J-3 Cubs,
Cessnas, etc., but I had never built
a pusher. The old CW-1 looked
cute, and its curved tail feathers
looked like an easy laminating
challenge. I was hooked.
The fact that you can run electric
motors in both directions allowed
me to use a conventional propeller.
In addition, light and slow has
always been fun—especially doing
touch-and-gos.
In the search for an airplane I
found Don Srull RC plans for the
CW-1 Junior that I had put up in
my basement-rafter library years
ago. His design was good, but the
model’s 36-inch wingspan was too
small.
I wanted to build something that
spanned roughly 50 inches. I also
wanted to use a lighter and more
powerful motor than the old 480
canned electric or a .30-size gas
engine. These needs became the
new ground rules, and the Curtiss
Junior came into focus on the
drawing board.
I live in upstate New York, near
A Golden Age classic turns out to
be a natural for electric power
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:24 AM Page 1718 MODEL AVIATION
There’s no chance of a propeller strike on takeoff! It’s simple in design and form but has an understated elegance.
Curtiss-Wright CW-1: A Brief History
This airplane was developed during 1929 and the early 1930s, during the Great Depression; luxury airplanes weren’t
selling then. At the Buffalo, New York, plant design center, Glenn Curtiss and Walter Beech (of the later Beech Aircraft
Corporation) decided to build a light, inexpensive airplane. It was to be constructed at the Saint Louis, Missouri, plant, which
needed work or faced shutdown.
Curtiss and Beech wanted an airplane that would weigh less than 1,000 pounds and hoped to sell it for roughly $1,500.
Today’s ultralights weigh approximately 300 pounds and have 50-horsepower engines. They cruise at 70 mph and cost
roughly $8,000. The ultralights and the Junior are almost the same size.
The CW-1’s design came from the English Buzzard and the wood Curtiss-Robertson Skeeter. Glenn never outgrew his
love for the pusher-type aircraft. His first designs were pushers that were similar to the Wright brothers’ Wright Flyer.
Glenn’s June Bug and other aircraft he developed were advancements beyond the Wright Flyer. His team made design
changes to the early June Bug such as adding wheels, pontoons, ailerons, bigger engines, and better controls. He established
the aeronautical leading edge of the time.
The Wrights and Curtiss locked each other up in court battles over the invention of all airplanes and all motor flying
machines. This patent fight set the US back in the design progress of airplanes at the outbreak of World War I. The
Europeans took the leading-edge development. They added tractor engines, better wing structures, and much greater
performance to the basic airplane.
The US government finally paid off Glenn and Orville to settle their dispute so that the Americans could catch up with
the Europeans. Curtiss and the Wrights then collaborated to make radial engines and some of the greatest airplanes of World
War II.
The CW-1 Junior was a bit of a joke among the pilots of the day. It looked a little like the Aeronca C-3 “Flying Bathtub”
or a cross between a seaplane and a sailplane, but it sold well during hard times.
The Junior was easy to fly, it had a low stall speed, it could land in small farm fields, it had a metal frame, and it had good
visibility for photo surveying. Air-show pilots loved this airplane; the large wing let them park it into the wind.
The CW-1 was a money-maker for giving rides, although a few passengers walked into the pusher propeller. The
barnstormers used it to do the flying farmer routine. Most of them put more powerful engines on them. The Szekely wasn’t
dependable; it threw oil and often blew a jug into the pusher propeller.
The Curtiss-Wright Junior certainly has left its mark on aviation history, and it is worth modeling. MA
—Ernie Heyworth
Designed in: Buffalo, New York
Manufactured in: Saint Louis, Missouri
Year of manufacture: 1931
Engine: Szekely SR-3(45 horsepower,
three cylinders)
Quantity manufactured: 270 airplanes
in 1931
Wingspan: 39 feet, 6 inches
Length: 21 feet, 3 inches
Construction: Metal frame
Landing speed: 28 mph
Cruising speed: 50 mph
Top speed: 80 mph
Weight: 975 pounds
Range: 200 miles
Airtime: Three hours
Altitude: 12,000 feet
Cost: $1,490
Today’s cost: $45,000
Full-Scale Specifications:October 2006 19
The author holding the model gives a sense of its size. This
airplane has many interesting design features.
The dummy three-cylinder engine covers the
functional Nippy Black electric motor.
the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. As a
tour guide there I’ve watched the museum shop restore
two full-scale Juniors, and I saw one of them fly. I also
found, on the computer, that the Old Rhinebeck
Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York, has a beautiful
orange-and-tan CW-1 that has been flying regularly.
Obtaining documentation then became easy. I’m not
driven too deeply into scale details, but all the answers to
questions of size and shape were available. The Curtiss
Museum’s staff gave me Paul Matt’s historical drawings
and the opportunity to film the two airplanes on the floor.
CONSTRUCTION
The Junior’s construction consists of basic modeling.
Well, it’s basic to old-timers who have bent balsa sticks
into a curved laminate. Oh yes, and to modelers who
have made two right halves or forgotten to put waxed
paper over the print!
I tried to minimize the wire bending by using wooden
cabanes. If you want to bend wire for a more scalelike look
instead of employing wood, use Paul Matt’s drawings from
Historical Aviation Album, 1972.Write to Box 33, Temple
City CA 91780, for information and pricing. I would
rather schedule a root canal than bend wire or
fingerprint a windshield with glue.
If you can get two copies of the print
for this model, you can cut paper print
templates of the fuselage formers,
wing ribs, and fuselage sides. You can
also use old-fashioned carbon paper,
your computer scanner, or a photocopy
machine to copy parts off the drawing.
Precut the wing ribs, fuselage formers, fuselage
sides, and motor support parts. Take your time with
these and make them as accurate as you can. I use
3M Super 77 spray contact glue to hold the paper to
the wood while cutting the parts. Let the spray glue
set for five minutes so it won’t stick there forever.
Stabilizers: It’s surprisingly easy to laminate the
stabilizers’ front edge. The curves are extremely
slow.
Make a row of pins on the inside of the curves that
are shown on the stabilizer drawing. Use white glue
full-strength to wet the wood, and then put the three
pieces of thin wood together. Bend the wet sticks
around the pins. Put in pins as needed on the outside
to form the laminate to the lines on the print.
Let this structure dry overnight. If you don’t care
to laminate the stabilizers, use lightweight 3/16 sheet
for the stabilizers.
Now that you have warmed up your building
skills, let’s tackle the fuselage.
Fuselage: It’s important to mark the position of the
cabanes and the formers on the inside of the two 1/16
x 3-inch fuselage side sheets. Remember lefts and
rights. I put them back to back to mark them off.
Pin the 1/8 x 1/4-inch longeron sticks to the plans.
Add the fuselage sides on edge top-side down, and
then insert formers F-1, F-4, F-7, F-8, F-9, and F-10
into the fuselage halves. Also put in the two F-5
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 1920 MODEL AVIATION
The parts layout on the sheet balsa. The fuselage longerons have
been pinned to the plans.
One of the fuselage sides is fitted and fitted against the
longerons, and the formers are positioned to begin the crutch
assembly.
The other fuselage side is set in place, and clamps are used to
hold the assembly in alignment until the glue sets.
The landing-gear wire press-fits into the slot between two
plywood formers. It is simple and secure!
The curved LEs of the stabilizer and the fin are laminated from
strips of balsa and pinned over the plans until the glue dries.
The wing construction is light and strong. The spar is shearwebbed
for extra strength, and the center-section is sheeted.
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 20October 2006 21
The four cabane struts glue to the fuselage sides and are plenty
rigid and strong.
The motor-mount pylon is attached to the sheeted centersection.
The motor is mounted to a plywood plate.
Ernie came up with a simple and accurate method of aligning the
cabane struts. Text has details.
Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
formers with enough of a gap to allow your landing-gear
wire to slide between them.
Let the structure dry, unpin it, take it off the board,
turn it over, and put the two 1/8 x 1/4-inch longerons on
the curved bottom of the fuselage. Start thinking about
getting the cabanes glued onto the lines inside the
fuselage sides.
Getting the cabanes in correctly worried me the most.
Remember that the final alignment is when you drill the
holes in the wing plywood ribs to join the wing to the
fuselage.
Find the drawing template that will be used between
the wing and the fuselage. Transfer the template to
two stiff pieces of corrugated or cardboard. Pin them
onto the fuselage. Notch the longerons for the cabanes
to slide through.
You will have to shim inside the fuselage where the
Type: RC fun-scale pusher
Construction: Balsa, plywood
Finish: Krylon, Oracote
Wing: 53 inches
Wing area: 385 square inches
Weight: 35 ounces
Wing loading: 13.4 ounces per square foot
Airfoil: Clark Y, Phillips entry
Stall speed: 10 mph
Radio: Hitec Laser 4
Servos: Two HS-85s, two HS-205s
Motor: Nippy Black UBR 2510/114
ESC: Castle Creations Phoenix-35
Batteries: Three 2100 mAh Li-Poly
Propellers: 10 x 6, 8 x 6 three-blade
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:07 PM Page 21See page 191 for Full-Size Plans listing
22 MODEL AVIATION
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:29 AM Page 22cabanes touch the fuselage sides. To do
this I used scrap 1/8 x 1/2 balsa that was
approximately an inch long. This helps to
align the cabanes at the top, where they
should be roughly 31/4 inches apart and 31/2
inches fore and aft to the centers of the 1/2
spruce cabanes.
I clamped the cabanes to the W-2 ribs in
the wing before gluing them in. This was
to ensure the alignment. You can connect
the front and back cabanes with a piece of
1/8 x 1/2 spruce.
Wing: The construction used on the wing
is a basic style. The ailerons are
unnecessary, but you can decide to leave
them off or add them to the wing. After
you frame up the wing halves, join the two
wing sides onto the dihedral braces at 5° or
21/2 inches up at one of the tips.
Put the W-2 ribs that join the fuselage
cabanes into the wing. Don’t glue them in
just yet, and don’t drill the holes that join
the wing to the cabanes. Align these ribs
vertically the best you can to the cabanes.
If you can clamp the W-2 ribs to the
cabanes, do so. They should be roughly 3
inches apart. After you’re satisfied with the
fit, glue the W-2 ribs in permanently.
Sheet the top and bottom center-section
of the wing with 1/16 sheet balsa.
Using the 1 x 4 x 18 soft-balsa block,
rough-cut the nose parts, N-1, N-2, and N-
3. Cut and rough-shape F-2 and F-6 to the
three-views.
Cut the M-1 and the M-2 plywood
pieces. The two M-1s set the motor angle
of 3° positive thrust. An additional 2° of
positive comes from the wing itself, for a
total of 5° positive.
Cut 1/8 inch into the top of the wing.
Insert M-2 into the wing, over the center
two ribs. Glue the three pieces together and
into the wing to form your motor platform.
Mount your servos into the servo tray
outside the airplane, and then put them in
the model. Run the pushrods and mount the
control horns. I make my own horns from
1/32 plywood.
Put the speed controller in the space in
front of the motor. Run all the wires to the
fuselage on plugs so you can unplug and
carry the wing separately. I taped all the
wires from the wing together and down
into the front cockpit behind the pilot.
The wing struts are a pain. They are not
needed to fly, but they look nice. I put
plastic hinges on each end of the struts and
then screwed them to the wing and
fuselage.
Finish: It was easer for me to paint the top
cockpit area and then cover this area with
film. To prime and sand the wood and
plastic I used a water-soluble varnish with
a talcum powder mixed into it.
The varnish is Minwax Polycrylic. It’s
quick drying, has a low odor, is
nonflammable, and washes up with water.
You can use any fine-bodied powder in
approximately a 50/50 mix. Then when
you’re tired of sanding and before panting
and covering, give the area a clear coat of
the Polycrylic.
The colored paint that works best for
me is Krylon. It’s inexpensive, quick to
dry, and can be coated before the 72-hour
drying time that is stipulated on most spray
cans. Best of all, it comes in many
different colors that even match the
covering.
If your thing is detailing, make the three
motor jugs yourself. Williams Bros. used
to sell a plastic variety. I use Oracote for
covering, but most of the low-temperature,
softer, lighter films will work.
The full-scale Curtiss Junior was used
in air shows and was decorated with many
wild colors and decorations. The two
airplanes in the Curtiss Museum are light
blue and silver or maroon and silver. Those
were the factory colors. I made mine
orange and tan, similar to Rhinebeck’s, but
I used more orange on the bottom; that was
for better visibility.
Trimming and Flying: The motor angle is
set at 5°, as noted on the plans, using the
stabilizer incidence as the base reference.
Expect to fine-tune the thrust angle using
washers or wood shims between the motor
mount and the firewall. The final motor
placement will depend on the propeller, motor,
and battery you choose. Remember that with
the motor mounted near the CG, tiny changes
in the thrust angle will make a big difference.
And because the motor is centrally located,
we don’t have the luxury of its also working as
ballast; plan on adding nose weight. I normally
build heavily and had to add 3.5 ounces into
the nose block.
The control throws are as follows: elevator,
5/8 inch; rudder, 5/8 inch; ailerons, 1/8 inch up,
down 0 inches. (These measurements are each
way totally.) I fly with a lot of throw. Adjust to
your style of flying with the amount of throw
you use.
The ailerons are not needed! I finally
coupled mine to the rudder with a Y connector
and cut the throws way down to the ailerons.
Use differential throw on the ailerons (more up
throw than down).
The balance point is on the front of the
main wing spar.
The ground handling was terrible at first. I
moved the main wheels forward and stiffened
the tail wheel. This change is included on the
plans.
The model flies like a Cub. Being a pusher
instead of a tractor didn’t seem to make a big
difference.
Be sure to paint some pilots and put them
in to help you enjoy this old-time Curtiss.
Send me a picture when you’re finished!
See my Web site—http://geocities.com/
ernieheyworth—for more construction
pictures. MA
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:05 PM Page 18
Edition: Model Aviation - 2006/10
Page Numbers: 17,18,19,20,21,22,24
October 2006 17
BY ERNIE HEYWORTH Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
In flight the CW-1 has a buoyant appearance. It is lightly loaded and properly powered.
This is a great fun-scale flier!
I’M INTO electric-powered model
aircraft and wanted a simple,
friendly flier with which to put one
of those new outrunner motors into
action. I’ve constructed J-3 Cubs,
Cessnas, etc., but I had never built
a pusher. The old CW-1 looked
cute, and its curved tail feathers
looked like an easy laminating
challenge. I was hooked.
The fact that you can run electric
motors in both directions allowed
me to use a conventional propeller.
In addition, light and slow has
always been fun—especially doing
touch-and-gos.
In the search for an airplane I
found Don Srull RC plans for the
CW-1 Junior that I had put up in
my basement-rafter library years
ago. His design was good, but the
model’s 36-inch wingspan was too
small.
I wanted to build something that
spanned roughly 50 inches. I also
wanted to use a lighter and more
powerful motor than the old 480
canned electric or a .30-size gas
engine. These needs became the
new ground rules, and the Curtiss
Junior came into focus on the
drawing board.
I live in upstate New York, near
A Golden Age classic turns out to
be a natural for electric power
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:24 AM Page 1718 MODEL AVIATION
There’s no chance of a propeller strike on takeoff! It’s simple in design and form but has an understated elegance.
Curtiss-Wright CW-1: A Brief History
This airplane was developed during 1929 and the early 1930s, during the Great Depression; luxury airplanes weren’t
selling then. At the Buffalo, New York, plant design center, Glenn Curtiss and Walter Beech (of the later Beech Aircraft
Corporation) decided to build a light, inexpensive airplane. It was to be constructed at the Saint Louis, Missouri, plant, which
needed work or faced shutdown.
Curtiss and Beech wanted an airplane that would weigh less than 1,000 pounds and hoped to sell it for roughly $1,500.
Today’s ultralights weigh approximately 300 pounds and have 50-horsepower engines. They cruise at 70 mph and cost
roughly $8,000. The ultralights and the Junior are almost the same size.
The CW-1’s design came from the English Buzzard and the wood Curtiss-Robertson Skeeter. Glenn never outgrew his
love for the pusher-type aircraft. His first designs were pushers that were similar to the Wright brothers’ Wright Flyer.
Glenn’s June Bug and other aircraft he developed were advancements beyond the Wright Flyer. His team made design
changes to the early June Bug such as adding wheels, pontoons, ailerons, bigger engines, and better controls. He established
the aeronautical leading edge of the time.
The Wrights and Curtiss locked each other up in court battles over the invention of all airplanes and all motor flying
machines. This patent fight set the US back in the design progress of airplanes at the outbreak of World War I. The
Europeans took the leading-edge development. They added tractor engines, better wing structures, and much greater
performance to the basic airplane.
The US government finally paid off Glenn and Orville to settle their dispute so that the Americans could catch up with
the Europeans. Curtiss and the Wrights then collaborated to make radial engines and some of the greatest airplanes of World
War II.
The CW-1 Junior was a bit of a joke among the pilots of the day. It looked a little like the Aeronca C-3 “Flying Bathtub”
or a cross between a seaplane and a sailplane, but it sold well during hard times.
The Junior was easy to fly, it had a low stall speed, it could land in small farm fields, it had a metal frame, and it had good
visibility for photo surveying. Air-show pilots loved this airplane; the large wing let them park it into the wind.
The CW-1 was a money-maker for giving rides, although a few passengers walked into the pusher propeller. The
barnstormers used it to do the flying farmer routine. Most of them put more powerful engines on them. The Szekely wasn’t
dependable; it threw oil and often blew a jug into the pusher propeller.
The Curtiss-Wright Junior certainly has left its mark on aviation history, and it is worth modeling. MA
—Ernie Heyworth
Designed in: Buffalo, New York
Manufactured in: Saint Louis, Missouri
Year of manufacture: 1931
Engine: Szekely SR-3(45 horsepower,
three cylinders)
Quantity manufactured: 270 airplanes
in 1931
Wingspan: 39 feet, 6 inches
Length: 21 feet, 3 inches
Construction: Metal frame
Landing speed: 28 mph
Cruising speed: 50 mph
Top speed: 80 mph
Weight: 975 pounds
Range: 200 miles
Airtime: Three hours
Altitude: 12,000 feet
Cost: $1,490
Today’s cost: $45,000
Full-Scale Specifications:October 2006 19
The author holding the model gives a sense of its size. This
airplane has many interesting design features.
The dummy three-cylinder engine covers the
functional Nippy Black electric motor.
the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. As a
tour guide there I’ve watched the museum shop restore
two full-scale Juniors, and I saw one of them fly. I also
found, on the computer, that the Old Rhinebeck
Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York, has a beautiful
orange-and-tan CW-1 that has been flying regularly.
Obtaining documentation then became easy. I’m not
driven too deeply into scale details, but all the answers to
questions of size and shape were available. The Curtiss
Museum’s staff gave me Paul Matt’s historical drawings
and the opportunity to film the two airplanes on the floor.
CONSTRUCTION
The Junior’s construction consists of basic modeling.
Well, it’s basic to old-timers who have bent balsa sticks
into a curved laminate. Oh yes, and to modelers who
have made two right halves or forgotten to put waxed
paper over the print!
I tried to minimize the wire bending by using wooden
cabanes. If you want to bend wire for a more scalelike look
instead of employing wood, use Paul Matt’s drawings from
Historical Aviation Album, 1972.Write to Box 33, Temple
City CA 91780, for information and pricing. I would
rather schedule a root canal than bend wire or
fingerprint a windshield with glue.
If you can get two copies of the print
for this model, you can cut paper print
templates of the fuselage formers,
wing ribs, and fuselage sides. You can
also use old-fashioned carbon paper,
your computer scanner, or a photocopy
machine to copy parts off the drawing.
Precut the wing ribs, fuselage formers, fuselage
sides, and motor support parts. Take your time with
these and make them as accurate as you can. I use
3M Super 77 spray contact glue to hold the paper to
the wood while cutting the parts. Let the spray glue
set for five minutes so it won’t stick there forever.
Stabilizers: It’s surprisingly easy to laminate the
stabilizers’ front edge. The curves are extremely
slow.
Make a row of pins on the inside of the curves that
are shown on the stabilizer drawing. Use white glue
full-strength to wet the wood, and then put the three
pieces of thin wood together. Bend the wet sticks
around the pins. Put in pins as needed on the outside
to form the laminate to the lines on the print.
Let this structure dry overnight. If you don’t care
to laminate the stabilizers, use lightweight 3/16 sheet
for the stabilizers.
Now that you have warmed up your building
skills, let’s tackle the fuselage.
Fuselage: It’s important to mark the position of the
cabanes and the formers on the inside of the two 1/16
x 3-inch fuselage side sheets. Remember lefts and
rights. I put them back to back to mark them off.
Pin the 1/8 x 1/4-inch longeron sticks to the plans.
Add the fuselage sides on edge top-side down, and
then insert formers F-1, F-4, F-7, F-8, F-9, and F-10
into the fuselage halves. Also put in the two F-5
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 1920 MODEL AVIATION
The parts layout on the sheet balsa. The fuselage longerons have
been pinned to the plans.
One of the fuselage sides is fitted and fitted against the
longerons, and the formers are positioned to begin the crutch
assembly.
The other fuselage side is set in place, and clamps are used to
hold the assembly in alignment until the glue sets.
The landing-gear wire press-fits into the slot between two
plywood formers. It is simple and secure!
The curved LEs of the stabilizer and the fin are laminated from
strips of balsa and pinned over the plans until the glue dries.
The wing construction is light and strong. The spar is shearwebbed
for extra strength, and the center-section is sheeted.
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 20October 2006 21
The four cabane struts glue to the fuselage sides and are plenty
rigid and strong.
The motor-mount pylon is attached to the sheeted centersection.
The motor is mounted to a plywood plate.
Ernie came up with a simple and accurate method of aligning the
cabane struts. Text has details.
Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
formers with enough of a gap to allow your landing-gear
wire to slide between them.
Let the structure dry, unpin it, take it off the board,
turn it over, and put the two 1/8 x 1/4-inch longerons on
the curved bottom of the fuselage. Start thinking about
getting the cabanes glued onto the lines inside the
fuselage sides.
Getting the cabanes in correctly worried me the most.
Remember that the final alignment is when you drill the
holes in the wing plywood ribs to join the wing to the
fuselage.
Find the drawing template that will be used between
the wing and the fuselage. Transfer the template to
two stiff pieces of corrugated or cardboard. Pin them
onto the fuselage. Notch the longerons for the cabanes
to slide through.
You will have to shim inside the fuselage where the
Type: RC fun-scale pusher
Construction: Balsa, plywood
Finish: Krylon, Oracote
Wing: 53 inches
Wing area: 385 square inches
Weight: 35 ounces
Wing loading: 13.4 ounces per square foot
Airfoil: Clark Y, Phillips entry
Stall speed: 10 mph
Radio: Hitec Laser 4
Servos: Two HS-85s, two HS-205s
Motor: Nippy Black UBR 2510/114
ESC: Castle Creations Phoenix-35
Batteries: Three 2100 mAh Li-Poly
Propellers: 10 x 6, 8 x 6 three-blade
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:07 PM Page 21See page 191 for Full-Size Plans listing
22 MODEL AVIATION
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:29 AM Page 22cabanes touch the fuselage sides. To do
this I used scrap 1/8 x 1/2 balsa that was
approximately an inch long. This helps to
align the cabanes at the top, where they
should be roughly 31/4 inches apart and 31/2
inches fore and aft to the centers of the 1/2
spruce cabanes.
I clamped the cabanes to the W-2 ribs in
the wing before gluing them in. This was
to ensure the alignment. You can connect
the front and back cabanes with a piece of
1/8 x 1/2 spruce.
Wing: The construction used on the wing
is a basic style. The ailerons are
unnecessary, but you can decide to leave
them off or add them to the wing. After
you frame up the wing halves, join the two
wing sides onto the dihedral braces at 5° or
21/2 inches up at one of the tips.
Put the W-2 ribs that join the fuselage
cabanes into the wing. Don’t glue them in
just yet, and don’t drill the holes that join
the wing to the cabanes. Align these ribs
vertically the best you can to the cabanes.
If you can clamp the W-2 ribs to the
cabanes, do so. They should be roughly 3
inches apart. After you’re satisfied with the
fit, glue the W-2 ribs in permanently.
Sheet the top and bottom center-section
of the wing with 1/16 sheet balsa.
Using the 1 x 4 x 18 soft-balsa block,
rough-cut the nose parts, N-1, N-2, and N-
3. Cut and rough-shape F-2 and F-6 to the
three-views.
Cut the M-1 and the M-2 plywood
pieces. The two M-1s set the motor angle
of 3° positive thrust. An additional 2° of
positive comes from the wing itself, for a
total of 5° positive.
Cut 1/8 inch into the top of the wing.
Insert M-2 into the wing, over the center
two ribs. Glue the three pieces together and
into the wing to form your motor platform.
Mount your servos into the servo tray
outside the airplane, and then put them in
the model. Run the pushrods and mount the
control horns. I make my own horns from
1/32 plywood.
Put the speed controller in the space in
front of the motor. Run all the wires to the
fuselage on plugs so you can unplug and
carry the wing separately. I taped all the
wires from the wing together and down
into the front cockpit behind the pilot.
The wing struts are a pain. They are not
needed to fly, but they look nice. I put
plastic hinges on each end of the struts and
then screwed them to the wing and
fuselage.
Finish: It was easer for me to paint the top
cockpit area and then cover this area with
film. To prime and sand the wood and
plastic I used a water-soluble varnish with
a talcum powder mixed into it.
The varnish is Minwax Polycrylic. It’s
quick drying, has a low odor, is
nonflammable, and washes up with water.
You can use any fine-bodied powder in
approximately a 50/50 mix. Then when
you’re tired of sanding and before panting
and covering, give the area a clear coat of
the Polycrylic.
The colored paint that works best for
me is Krylon. It’s inexpensive, quick to
dry, and can be coated before the 72-hour
drying time that is stipulated on most spray
cans. Best of all, it comes in many
different colors that even match the
covering.
If your thing is detailing, make the three
motor jugs yourself. Williams Bros. used
to sell a plastic variety. I use Oracote for
covering, but most of the low-temperature,
softer, lighter films will work.
The full-scale Curtiss Junior was used
in air shows and was decorated with many
wild colors and decorations. The two
airplanes in the Curtiss Museum are light
blue and silver or maroon and silver. Those
were the factory colors. I made mine
orange and tan, similar to Rhinebeck’s, but
I used more orange on the bottom; that was
for better visibility.
Trimming and Flying: The motor angle is
set at 5°, as noted on the plans, using the
stabilizer incidence as the base reference.
Expect to fine-tune the thrust angle using
washers or wood shims between the motor
mount and the firewall. The final motor
placement will depend on the propeller, motor,
and battery you choose. Remember that with
the motor mounted near the CG, tiny changes
in the thrust angle will make a big difference.
And because the motor is centrally located,
we don’t have the luxury of its also working as
ballast; plan on adding nose weight. I normally
build heavily and had to add 3.5 ounces into
the nose block.
The control throws are as follows: elevator,
5/8 inch; rudder, 5/8 inch; ailerons, 1/8 inch up,
down 0 inches. (These measurements are each
way totally.) I fly with a lot of throw. Adjust to
your style of flying with the amount of throw
you use.
The ailerons are not needed! I finally
coupled mine to the rudder with a Y connector
and cut the throws way down to the ailerons.
Use differential throw on the ailerons (more up
throw than down).
The balance point is on the front of the
main wing spar.
The ground handling was terrible at first. I
moved the main wheels forward and stiffened
the tail wheel. This change is included on the
plans.
The model flies like a Cub. Being a pusher
instead of a tractor didn’t seem to make a big
difference.
Be sure to paint some pilots and put them
in to help you enjoy this old-time Curtiss.
Send me a picture when you’re finished!
See my Web site—http://geocities.com/
ernieheyworth—for more construction
pictures. MA
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:05 PM Page 18
Edition: Model Aviation - 2006/10
Page Numbers: 17,18,19,20,21,22,24
October 2006 17
BY ERNIE HEYWORTH Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
In flight the CW-1 has a buoyant appearance. It is lightly loaded and properly powered.
This is a great fun-scale flier!
I’M INTO electric-powered model
aircraft and wanted a simple,
friendly flier with which to put one
of those new outrunner motors into
action. I’ve constructed J-3 Cubs,
Cessnas, etc., but I had never built
a pusher. The old CW-1 looked
cute, and its curved tail feathers
looked like an easy laminating
challenge. I was hooked.
The fact that you can run electric
motors in both directions allowed
me to use a conventional propeller.
In addition, light and slow has
always been fun—especially doing
touch-and-gos.
In the search for an airplane I
found Don Srull RC plans for the
CW-1 Junior that I had put up in
my basement-rafter library years
ago. His design was good, but the
model’s 36-inch wingspan was too
small.
I wanted to build something that
spanned roughly 50 inches. I also
wanted to use a lighter and more
powerful motor than the old 480
canned electric or a .30-size gas
engine. These needs became the
new ground rules, and the Curtiss
Junior came into focus on the
drawing board.
I live in upstate New York, near
A Golden Age classic turns out to
be a natural for electric power
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:24 AM Page 1718 MODEL AVIATION
There’s no chance of a propeller strike on takeoff! It’s simple in design and form but has an understated elegance.
Curtiss-Wright CW-1: A Brief History
This airplane was developed during 1929 and the early 1930s, during the Great Depression; luxury airplanes weren’t
selling then. At the Buffalo, New York, plant design center, Glenn Curtiss and Walter Beech (of the later Beech Aircraft
Corporation) decided to build a light, inexpensive airplane. It was to be constructed at the Saint Louis, Missouri, plant, which
needed work or faced shutdown.
Curtiss and Beech wanted an airplane that would weigh less than 1,000 pounds and hoped to sell it for roughly $1,500.
Today’s ultralights weigh approximately 300 pounds and have 50-horsepower engines. They cruise at 70 mph and cost
roughly $8,000. The ultralights and the Junior are almost the same size.
The CW-1’s design came from the English Buzzard and the wood Curtiss-Robertson Skeeter. Glenn never outgrew his
love for the pusher-type aircraft. His first designs were pushers that were similar to the Wright brothers’ Wright Flyer.
Glenn’s June Bug and other aircraft he developed were advancements beyond the Wright Flyer. His team made design
changes to the early June Bug such as adding wheels, pontoons, ailerons, bigger engines, and better controls. He established
the aeronautical leading edge of the time.
The Wrights and Curtiss locked each other up in court battles over the invention of all airplanes and all motor flying
machines. This patent fight set the US back in the design progress of airplanes at the outbreak of World War I. The
Europeans took the leading-edge development. They added tractor engines, better wing structures, and much greater
performance to the basic airplane.
The US government finally paid off Glenn and Orville to settle their dispute so that the Americans could catch up with
the Europeans. Curtiss and the Wrights then collaborated to make radial engines and some of the greatest airplanes of World
War II.
The CW-1 Junior was a bit of a joke among the pilots of the day. It looked a little like the Aeronca C-3 “Flying Bathtub”
or a cross between a seaplane and a sailplane, but it sold well during hard times.
The Junior was easy to fly, it had a low stall speed, it could land in small farm fields, it had a metal frame, and it had good
visibility for photo surveying. Air-show pilots loved this airplane; the large wing let them park it into the wind.
The CW-1 was a money-maker for giving rides, although a few passengers walked into the pusher propeller. The
barnstormers used it to do the flying farmer routine. Most of them put more powerful engines on them. The Szekely wasn’t
dependable; it threw oil and often blew a jug into the pusher propeller.
The Curtiss-Wright Junior certainly has left its mark on aviation history, and it is worth modeling. MA
—Ernie Heyworth
Designed in: Buffalo, New York
Manufactured in: Saint Louis, Missouri
Year of manufacture: 1931
Engine: Szekely SR-3(45 horsepower,
three cylinders)
Quantity manufactured: 270 airplanes
in 1931
Wingspan: 39 feet, 6 inches
Length: 21 feet, 3 inches
Construction: Metal frame
Landing speed: 28 mph
Cruising speed: 50 mph
Top speed: 80 mph
Weight: 975 pounds
Range: 200 miles
Airtime: Three hours
Altitude: 12,000 feet
Cost: $1,490
Today’s cost: $45,000
Full-Scale Specifications:October 2006 19
The author holding the model gives a sense of its size. This
airplane has many interesting design features.
The dummy three-cylinder engine covers the
functional Nippy Black electric motor.
the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport. As a
tour guide there I’ve watched the museum shop restore
two full-scale Juniors, and I saw one of them fly. I also
found, on the computer, that the Old Rhinebeck
Aerodrome in Rhinebeck, New York, has a beautiful
orange-and-tan CW-1 that has been flying regularly.
Obtaining documentation then became easy. I’m not
driven too deeply into scale details, but all the answers to
questions of size and shape were available. The Curtiss
Museum’s staff gave me Paul Matt’s historical drawings
and the opportunity to film the two airplanes on the floor.
CONSTRUCTION
The Junior’s construction consists of basic modeling.
Well, it’s basic to old-timers who have bent balsa sticks
into a curved laminate. Oh yes, and to modelers who
have made two right halves or forgotten to put waxed
paper over the print!
I tried to minimize the wire bending by using wooden
cabanes. If you want to bend wire for a more scalelike look
instead of employing wood, use Paul Matt’s drawings from
Historical Aviation Album, 1972.Write to Box 33, Temple
City CA 91780, for information and pricing. I would
rather schedule a root canal than bend wire or
fingerprint a windshield with glue.
If you can get two copies of the print
for this model, you can cut paper print
templates of the fuselage formers,
wing ribs, and fuselage sides. You can
also use old-fashioned carbon paper,
your computer scanner, or a photocopy
machine to copy parts off the drawing.
Precut the wing ribs, fuselage formers, fuselage
sides, and motor support parts. Take your time with
these and make them as accurate as you can. I use
3M Super 77 spray contact glue to hold the paper to
the wood while cutting the parts. Let the spray glue
set for five minutes so it won’t stick there forever.
Stabilizers: It’s surprisingly easy to laminate the
stabilizers’ front edge. The curves are extremely
slow.
Make a row of pins on the inside of the curves that
are shown on the stabilizer drawing. Use white glue
full-strength to wet the wood, and then put the three
pieces of thin wood together. Bend the wet sticks
around the pins. Put in pins as needed on the outside
to form the laminate to the lines on the print.
Let this structure dry overnight. If you don’t care
to laminate the stabilizers, use lightweight 3/16 sheet
for the stabilizers.
Now that you have warmed up your building
skills, let’s tackle the fuselage.
Fuselage: It’s important to mark the position of the
cabanes and the formers on the inside of the two 1/16
x 3-inch fuselage side sheets. Remember lefts and
rights. I put them back to back to mark them off.
Pin the 1/8 x 1/4-inch longeron sticks to the plans.
Add the fuselage sides on edge top-side down, and
then insert formers F-1, F-4, F-7, F-8, F-9, and F-10
into the fuselage halves. Also put in the two F-5
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 1920 MODEL AVIATION
The parts layout on the sheet balsa. The fuselage longerons have
been pinned to the plans.
One of the fuselage sides is fitted and fitted against the
longerons, and the formers are positioned to begin the crutch
assembly.
The other fuselage side is set in place, and clamps are used to
hold the assembly in alignment until the glue sets.
The landing-gear wire press-fits into the slot between two
plywood formers. It is simple and secure!
The curved LEs of the stabilizer and the fin are laminated from
strips of balsa and pinned over the plans until the glue dries.
The wing construction is light and strong. The spar is shearwebbed
for extra strength, and the center-section is sheeted.
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:26 AM Page 20October 2006 21
The four cabane struts glue to the fuselage sides and are plenty
rigid and strong.
The motor-mount pylon is attached to the sheeted centersection.
The motor is mounted to a plywood plate.
Ernie came up with a simple and accurate method of aligning the
cabane struts. Text has details.
Curtiss-Wright
CW-1 Junior
formers with enough of a gap to allow your landing-gear
wire to slide between them.
Let the structure dry, unpin it, take it off the board,
turn it over, and put the two 1/8 x 1/4-inch longerons on
the curved bottom of the fuselage. Start thinking about
getting the cabanes glued onto the lines inside the
fuselage sides.
Getting the cabanes in correctly worried me the most.
Remember that the final alignment is when you drill the
holes in the wing plywood ribs to join the wing to the
fuselage.
Find the drawing template that will be used between
the wing and the fuselage. Transfer the template to
two stiff pieces of corrugated or cardboard. Pin them
onto the fuselage. Notch the longerons for the cabanes
to slide through.
You will have to shim inside the fuselage where the
Type: RC fun-scale pusher
Construction: Balsa, plywood
Finish: Krylon, Oracote
Wing: 53 inches
Wing area: 385 square inches
Weight: 35 ounces
Wing loading: 13.4 ounces per square foot
Airfoil: Clark Y, Phillips entry
Stall speed: 10 mph
Radio: Hitec Laser 4
Servos: Two HS-85s, two HS-205s
Motor: Nippy Black UBR 2510/114
ESC: Castle Creations Phoenix-35
Batteries: Three 2100 mAh Li-Poly
Propellers: 10 x 6, 8 x 6 three-blade
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:07 PM Page 21See page 191 for Full-Size Plans listing
22 MODEL AVIATION
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 11:29 AM Page 22cabanes touch the fuselage sides. To do
this I used scrap 1/8 x 1/2 balsa that was
approximately an inch long. This helps to
align the cabanes at the top, where they
should be roughly 31/4 inches apart and 31/2
inches fore and aft to the centers of the 1/2
spruce cabanes.
I clamped the cabanes to the W-2 ribs in
the wing before gluing them in. This was
to ensure the alignment. You can connect
the front and back cabanes with a piece of
1/8 x 1/2 spruce.
Wing: The construction used on the wing
is a basic style. The ailerons are
unnecessary, but you can decide to leave
them off or add them to the wing. After
you frame up the wing halves, join the two
wing sides onto the dihedral braces at 5° or
21/2 inches up at one of the tips.
Put the W-2 ribs that join the fuselage
cabanes into the wing. Don’t glue them in
just yet, and don’t drill the holes that join
the wing to the cabanes. Align these ribs
vertically the best you can to the cabanes.
If you can clamp the W-2 ribs to the
cabanes, do so. They should be roughly 3
inches apart. After you’re satisfied with the
fit, glue the W-2 ribs in permanently.
Sheet the top and bottom center-section
of the wing with 1/16 sheet balsa.
Using the 1 x 4 x 18 soft-balsa block,
rough-cut the nose parts, N-1, N-2, and N-
3. Cut and rough-shape F-2 and F-6 to the
three-views.
Cut the M-1 and the M-2 plywood
pieces. The two M-1s set the motor angle
of 3° positive thrust. An additional 2° of
positive comes from the wing itself, for a
total of 5° positive.
Cut 1/8 inch into the top of the wing.
Insert M-2 into the wing, over the center
two ribs. Glue the three pieces together and
into the wing to form your motor platform.
Mount your servos into the servo tray
outside the airplane, and then put them in
the model. Run the pushrods and mount the
control horns. I make my own horns from
1/32 plywood.
Put the speed controller in the space in
front of the motor. Run all the wires to the
fuselage on plugs so you can unplug and
carry the wing separately. I taped all the
wires from the wing together and down
into the front cockpit behind the pilot.
The wing struts are a pain. They are not
needed to fly, but they look nice. I put
plastic hinges on each end of the struts and
then screwed them to the wing and
fuselage.
Finish: It was easer for me to paint the top
cockpit area and then cover this area with
film. To prime and sand the wood and
plastic I used a water-soluble varnish with
a talcum powder mixed into it.
The varnish is Minwax Polycrylic. It’s
quick drying, has a low odor, is
nonflammable, and washes up with water.
You can use any fine-bodied powder in
approximately a 50/50 mix. Then when
you’re tired of sanding and before panting
and covering, give the area a clear coat of
the Polycrylic.
The colored paint that works best for
me is Krylon. It’s inexpensive, quick to
dry, and can be coated before the 72-hour
drying time that is stipulated on most spray
cans. Best of all, it comes in many
different colors that even match the
covering.
If your thing is detailing, make the three
motor jugs yourself. Williams Bros. used
to sell a plastic variety. I use Oracote for
covering, but most of the low-temperature,
softer, lighter films will work.
The full-scale Curtiss Junior was used
in air shows and was decorated with many
wild colors and decorations. The two
airplanes in the Curtiss Museum are light
blue and silver or maroon and silver. Those
were the factory colors. I made mine
orange and tan, similar to Rhinebeck’s, but
I used more orange on the bottom; that was
for better visibility.
Trimming and Flying: The motor angle is
set at 5°, as noted on the plans, using the
stabilizer incidence as the base reference.
Expect to fine-tune the thrust angle using
washers or wood shims between the motor
mount and the firewall. The final motor
placement will depend on the propeller, motor,
and battery you choose. Remember that with
the motor mounted near the CG, tiny changes
in the thrust angle will make a big difference.
And because the motor is centrally located,
we don’t have the luxury of its also working as
ballast; plan on adding nose weight. I normally
build heavily and had to add 3.5 ounces into
the nose block.
The control throws are as follows: elevator,
5/8 inch; rudder, 5/8 inch; ailerons, 1/8 inch up,
down 0 inches. (These measurements are each
way totally.) I fly with a lot of throw. Adjust to
your style of flying with the amount of throw
you use.
The ailerons are not needed! I finally
coupled mine to the rudder with a Y connector
and cut the throws way down to the ailerons.
Use differential throw on the ailerons (more up
throw than down).
The balance point is on the front of the
main wing spar.
The ground handling was terrible at first. I
moved the main wheels forward and stiffened
the tail wheel. This change is included on the
plans.
The model flies like a Cub. Being a pusher
instead of a tractor didn’t seem to make a big
difference.
Be sure to paint some pilots and put them
in to help you enjoy this old-time Curtiss.
Send me a picture when you’re finished!
See my Web site—http://geocities.com/
ernieheyworth—for more construction
pictures. MA
10sig1.QXD 8/24/06 12:05 PM Page 18