February 2003 93
DO YOU LIKE models of jet aircraft? How
would you like to fly a jet model without the
expense and trouble of ducted-fan or turbine
propulsion systems? If this sounds good to
you, welcome to the world of Slope jets. Not
many things in model aviation look as good
as a Navy jet flying over the ocean or a lake,
unless it’s a ground-attack jet flying over
terrain.
Learning about the history of jet aircraft
from the Grumman Iron Works, the
Lockheed Skunk Works, the McDonnell
Douglas Phantom Works, or the Sukhoi
Design Bureau gets our juices flowing.
Reading the history of air combat over
Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, or the Persian Gulf
makes us start thinking about a jet for our
next Slope-model project.
Some worry about how well they fly.
Models optimized for Scale often have
limitations on flight performance as
compared to, say, a One Design Racer. If the
wing area were larger the jets would fly in
lighter lift, but then they wouldn’t look
scale. Modeling the jet intakes forces us to have impressive frontal
area, especially for a glider. Blunt trailing structures such as jet
exhausts work against good glider design. Military aircraft often
have external equipment such as radomes and other drag-producing
structures, not to mention engines and ordnance hanging beneath
the wings of many bombers.
The job of the Slope-jet designer is to make an airplane that
looks real but flies without the thrust of a jet engine, and sculpting
skills are as important as “running the numbers.” It’s not easy, but
in recent years we’ve built and flown some good-looking airplanes
that fly much better than expected. The more experienced the
designer, the better the model will fly.
The first Slope jet I saw fly was Bob Power’s McDonnell
Douglas F-4 Phantom, converted from a Royal balsa kit intended
for a .60 engine in the nose. The airplane looks great but requires
extreme lift and high skill to fly. Bob’s Phantom will not roll with
Dave Garwood, 5 Birch Ln., Scotia NY 12302; E-mail: [email protected]
RADIO CONTROL SLOPE SOARING
The author prepares to launch Bob Powers’ F-4 Phantom in 1982. Bob converted it for
Slope Soaring from an already-built Royal balsa kit. Lou Garwood photo.
Brian Laird’s own-design, scratch-built Messerschmitt Me 262
Stormbird at the 2002 Southern California PSS Festival.
The author’s Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, a carrier-borne groundattack
airplane, converted from a Yellow Aircraft ducted-fan kit.
Dan Sampson’s Su-25 Frogfoot in air-show markings, built from
Carlski Maaskovitch Design Bureau drawings and fuselage mold.
02sig3.QXD 11.21.02 1:52 pm Page 93
the original-size ailerons. It’s also tricky to land on its low wing.
I got over my fear of big frontal area with Walt Bub’s
Grumman A-6 Intruder, which was designed for Slope from the
beginning. Using a Slope airfoil and big ailerons on a wing slightly
stretched in span, this airplane flies like the Sig Ninja—a Slope
aileron trainer. On its maiden flight of two hours, the transmitter
was passed among four pilots twice. Walt works out of Willington,
Connecticut, and while his Intruder is out of production he’s
working on a Cessna A-37 Dragonfly mold.
I see a hand up in the back of the room. Okay, Joe Sloper
A Walt Bub Grumman A-6 Intruder, molded from styrene, was
built and flown by Dave Garwood. Photo by Joe Chovan.
Steve Savoie’s own-design, scratch-built, 120-inch-span Lockheed
U-2/TR-1 spyplane. The model carries down-looking camera.
mentions that he hasn’t seen Slope jet kits on the shelf at his local
hobby shop and wonders where to find them. There are three basic
sources: an original design, a modification of an existing kit, or a
specialty sailplane maker.
1) Design your own model. You hard-core builders can get any
jet type you want, in the size you want, and modeled in the weight
you want if you do it all yourself. Examples of this strategy are
Lynsel Miller’s English Electric Canberra and Northeast Aero
Design Works’ Walter Bub’s ([email protected]) Grumman
A-6 Intruder.
Start with three-view drawings. My favorite plans and photo
documentation source is Bob’s Aircraft Documentation in Costa
Mesa, California (www.bobsairdoc.com).
Steve Savioe from Down East Maine began with a large block
of foam and a few yards of fiberglass cloth
to design and model his large Scale
Lockheed U-2/TR-1 Dragon Lady. Crossdresser
that he is, his first few flights were
aerotowed at Elmira 2000, followed by his
slope debut at Soar Utah 2000, where Steve
took aerial photos of the landscape.
Brian Laird’s
([email protected]) owndesign,
scratch-built Messerschmitt Me 262
Stormbird flown at the Southern California
PSS Festival in 2001 and 2002 is but one of
several in a long line of original-design
model aircraft. Another is his Aérospatiale
Caravelle airliner. Probably the best-known
Power Scale Soaring (PSS) designer in the
country, Brian has been imagining,
building, and producing highly innovative
models at Slope Scale
(http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepag
es/slope_scale) in Moreno Valley,
California, for many years.
The Carlski Maaskovitch Design Bureau
([email protected]) in Corona,
California, is known for designing and
prototyping the most exotic PSS models,
including the Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot—
Soviet Bloc counterpart to the NATO
Fairchild A-10 Warthog—and a huge B-29
Superfortress that carries and drops an X-
15 rocket plane.
2) Convert a power-airplane kit. For
experienced Slope builders, conversion
from a fuel-power kit presents many
possibilities. Bob Powers’
([email protected]) F-4 Phantom sat built
but unflown as a powered model, and he
decided to pull off the fixed landing gear,
add a nose cone where the engine used to
go, and fling it off a hill. It looked mighty
cool but didn’t fly terribly well, requiring
massive lift and rolling poorly because the
ailerons were small.
Another example is my Douglas A-4
Skyhawk converted from a Yellow Aircraft
ducted-fan kit. Working to keep it light, I
closed up the retractable-landing-gear bays
and extended the ailerons to the full span of
each wing half. Although it looked pretty
good in the air, it was too light for good
performance and the ailerons were too
sensitive for me during the early flights.
Good model-airplane design is harder than
it looks.
3) Slope-jet kits. Maybe the best option
for us mortals is to buy a kit from one of
the Slope specialty makers. You may have
to hunt a little for a Slope jet or other PSS
model that pleases you, but at least the
design and testing work has been
completed.
Jeff Fukushima
([email protected]) in Monterey
Park, California, is one of the guys I’m
happy to have designing models for us.
You may remember seeing Jeff on the
cover of the August 2000 Model Aviation,
launching his McDonnell Douglas F-18
Hornet at the Cajon Summit PSS festival.
Jeff sells the Hornet and Lockheed P-80
Shooting Star kits through his company,
Vortech Models
(www.geocities.com/vortechmodels/
vortech.htm).
Robert Cavazos ([email protected])
in Moreno Valley, California, is a master
molder and has taken over production of
the Slope Scale line of kits, including three
Slope jets: the Northrop F-20 Tigershark,
the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, and the
BD-5. Find Robert’s company, Cavazos
Sailplane Design, at www.rcglider.com.
George Voss ([email protected]) in
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, has announced
that he’s bringing the beloved Doug
Buchanan British Aerospace Hawk back
into production. You can see photos of
older BAe Hawks on the Soaring
Specialties Web site:
www.soaringspecialties.com.
Denny Maize ([email protected]) at
the Landisburg Naval Air Station in
Pennsylvania (www.polecataero.com) is
working on the mold of another Doug
Buchanan design; the type will be
announced in the spring. I’ll give you a
hint; identify the author of this quote and
the name of the book it appears in: “Fighter
pilots make movies. Bomber pilots make
history.”
New Slope Soaring Column: This column
may look new, but actually it’s resurrected
from times past when Model Aviation ran
bimonthly Slope Soaring columns; I am
honored to follow in the footsteps left by
former columnists Dave Sanders, Wil
Byers, and Mark Triebes.
I did a tour of duty from September
1995 through November 1998, writing 36
MA Thermal Soaring columns and three
Nationals reports. Although I still fly
Thermal, Slope has captured the lion’s
share of my imagination, time, and money
in recent years.
I’ve been flying Slope since 1988 when
I discovered, to my fascination and joy, that
there was an area of persistent lift in the
corner of a field where I was flying an
Electric model. It turns out that it was a
small slope, less than 10 feet high, that was
facing onto the wind. Wow! This is cool! It
wasn’t much lift, but it was there every
time I flew through it. Another Slope addict
was born.
Since then I’ve built more than 50 Slope
airplanes and flown them at 41 sites in 12
states. I’ve flown from slopes 1,800 feet
high and over Armco barriers at beach
parking lots less than three feet high. I hope
to log flights in all 50 states before I’m
done.
I figure my job is to provide information
to the readership that helps them have fun
with Slope sailplanes and to advance their
building and flying skills. I believe the best
way to do that is to concentrate on
identifying resources, providing how-to
information, and documenting trends in the
Slope Soaring scene. When I mention a
specific model airplane, it will generally be
one that I’ve flown or seen flown.
Model Aviation has covered the basics
and answered many of the Slope Soaringnewcomer
questions in a series of four of
my articles: “Introduction to Slope
Soaring” in the January 2000 issue,
“Finding Slope Sites” in the April 2000
issue, “Selecting Slope Sailplanes” in the
July 2000 issue, and “Extreme Slope
Soaring” in the October 2000 issue.
If you’re unable to get those issues, send
me a 9 x 12-inch envelope, self-addressed,
with $1.29 US postage affixed, and I’ll
return a photocopy set of the four articles.
One difference between model-airplane
journalism today and back when Sanders,
Byers, and Triebes were writing is that now
we are solidly in the Information Age. A
great deal of information about the models
available, reviews on how they build and
how they fly, and slope-site-location data is
available on the World Wide Web. If you
don’t have Internet access at home, try it
out at your local library. There is a mindboggling
amount of interesting and helpful
material available with a few keystrokes
and mouse clicks.
I’ll leave you with two Internet Web-site
references. My current preferred search
engine is www.google.com. Type in “slope
soaring,” and you’ll find sites to entertain
yourself for hours.
My current favorite topic-specific Web
site is www.slopeflyer.com. Greg Smith of
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has built a
wonderful site and has demonstrated the
stamina to keep adding new material
through the years. The Web site lists 83
Slope-flying sites in 33 states.
Greg has shown the leadership and
technical savvy to set up “remote
contributor” software so that occasional
contributors can add material. I hope
readers will continue to extend and expand
the list of flying sites and perhaps purchase
a SlopeFlyer.Com T-shirt from the Web
site; that’s one way Greg covers the cost of
running the site. MA
