Back in the mid 60's my dad was interested in building balsa planes. Life was great, he had a good job, a nice house, plenty of room to work.
And then the kids came into the picture and ruined his fun.
Numerous plans he had purchased went into storage, the house filled with toys, pets, etc and decades passed. As a kid I remember looking at the plans he had, folding and unfolding them and thinking about building the planes myself. The Navion plan was probably unfolded and folded incorrectly hundreds of times.
A few years ago my dad gave me the plans as I was getting deep in to the hobby. Sadly, the Navion plan was in bad shape from being handled and poorly folded so many times. I figured it was a lost cause, but there was no harm in trying to salvage them if I could. At the time I worked for a manufacturing company which had an estimating department with large scanners/printers. I taped up the torn sheet taking care to line things up as best I could. The folds were so bad in areas that the paper was long gone. With it taped and ready I had it scanned as a .pdf and was amazed at how well it worked. The pics below show the taped up original and the newly scanned version.
This was absolutely a plane I wanted to build, even though it was designed for control line and we're in the age of RC. Just over a year ago Model Airplane News held a "Build to Win" contest, where all contestants started with the same generic core design - essentially a low-wing "Stick" - and they created their own masterpiece from there. Searching for design inspiration I pulled out the Navion plan and found it was almost exactly the same size as the Contest Airframe, so I used it for my design. When the contest ended my version of the Navion was awarded Honorable Mention - not too bad for my first real kit bash attempt.
The contest airplane looks a bit like the Navion and it flies well even though it is way too heavy due to the electric retracts and my heavy building techniques. But I still wanted a better version of the Navion, and this contest is giving me the reason to finally build it! It may not be done in time, but it's something I've wanted to do for decades and it's time to pull the trigger.
Some of the engineering to update from C/L to RC I've already done, such as making the rudder operable and building the tail section from stick instead of sheet. The plane was never designed to have ailerons so I'll need to tackle that project, along with determining how to add retracts in a plan that never had them. This should be an interesting project for me, so thanks and curses to Willsonman for starting the contest!
And then the kids came into the picture and ruined his fun.
Numerous plans he had purchased went into storage, the house filled with toys, pets, etc and decades passed. As a kid I remember looking at the plans he had, folding and unfolding them and thinking about building the planes myself. The Navion plan was probably unfolded and folded incorrectly hundreds of times.
A few years ago my dad gave me the plans as I was getting deep in to the hobby. Sadly, the Navion plan was in bad shape from being handled and poorly folded so many times. I figured it was a lost cause, but there was no harm in trying to salvage them if I could. At the time I worked for a manufacturing company which had an estimating department with large scanners/printers. I taped up the torn sheet taking care to line things up as best I could. The folds were so bad in areas that the paper was long gone. With it taped and ready I had it scanned as a .pdf and was amazed at how well it worked. The pics below show the taped up original and the newly scanned version.
This was absolutely a plane I wanted to build, even though it was designed for control line and we're in the age of RC. Just over a year ago Model Airplane News held a "Build to Win" contest, where all contestants started with the same generic core design - essentially a low-wing "Stick" - and they created their own masterpiece from there. Searching for design inspiration I pulled out the Navion plan and found it was almost exactly the same size as the Contest Airframe, so I used it for my design. When the contest ended my version of the Navion was awarded Honorable Mention - not too bad for my first real kit bash attempt.
The contest airplane looks a bit like the Navion and it flies well even though it is way too heavy due to the electric retracts and my heavy building techniques. But I still wanted a better version of the Navion, and this contest is giving me the reason to finally build it! It may not be done in time, but it's something I've wanted to do for decades and it's time to pull the trigger.
Some of the engineering to update from C/L to RC I've already done, such as making the rudder operable and building the tail section from stick instead of sheet. The plane was never designed to have ailerons so I'll need to tackle that project, along with determining how to add retracts in a plan that never had them. This should be an interesting project for me, so thanks and curses to Willsonman for starting the contest!