Hey Everyone! I'm still deciding on whether I want to try to compete or not. I'm going to be doing my best to make it to FFWest next year if my schedule allows, but I'm moving into a new house in a week and won't really have my workshop running until probably late September. That said, might the
Douglas TBD-1 Devastator count? Here's the opening paragraph from Wikipedia. Word is that by the time Japan bombed Pearl Harbor the TBD-1 was decommissioned, therefore not seeing WWII combat, despite at the time of it's wide usage it was considered the most advanced of its time.
"The Douglas TBD Devastator was an American torpedo bomber of the United States Navy, ordered in 1934, it first flew in 1935 and entered service in 1937. At that point, it was the most advanced aircraft flying for the Navy and possibly for any navy in the world. However, the fast pace of aircraft development quickly caught up with it, and by the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the TBD was already outdated."
I'm not sure why I love this plane - I already have a thread (over a year in the making) to build a 70" wildly custom plane that I don't think anyone else would WANT to try to build (nor will I want to make plans for), but building a 36" version running on a smaller motor and a 3s 2200mAh battery sounds fun too. UGH! Too many projects and not enough days off!
Let me know about the TBD-1's worthiness to compete. If I have to up the anti, I'll promise to make the canopy slide open and design my own retracts out of bamboo skewers (I'm kidding, but maybe 3D printable ones)...