Mud Duck
About six years ago, one Saturday morning in early spring, I felt an irresistible urge to glue something together. Being between buillding projects, I turned to the scrap shelf, rounded up an assortment of leftover parts - the fuselage I'd scratch-built for a never completed Electric, the forward stabilizer from an aborted canard glider, and a wing from a derelict Swizzie Stick - and started gluing.
GEE BEE Flight Box: An easy-to-build flight box from the "Golden Age"
The Gee Bee R-1 looks like a flying barrel, and that gave me an idea: Why not take advantage of that shape and construct a flight box in the shape of a Gee Bee racer? The stubby shape and short wings seem to naturally lend themselves to a round container with a pair of handles. The handles/wings could open out to form field table tops, and the whole thing could be made from old corrugated boxes! The only "difficult" piece/part is the cowling for the engine. I shopped for a plastic mixing bowl that was mine or ten inches across the rim. I found the size I needed for the project in the housewares section; it was the largest bowl in a set of three. The smaller ones will serve as cowls for flying projects.
Lazy Duck
THIS DESIGN RESULTED from attempts to sidestep some of the problems and/or frustrations in conventional glow-engine-powered RC flying. Balsa is good but not sacred, engines don't have to be out front, planes don't have to be oily when you finish flying, and one big point, a personal philosophy if you will, flying models don't have to look like full-size planes. While Scale models really look good, there is great satisfaction in operating a plane designed just for the sake of modeling.
