C-47 with Waco CG4-A Glider

SlingShot

Maneuvering With Purpose
WacoSilentWings.jpg
c-47.jpg


So I was watching "A Bridge Too
Far" and thought about this: Unrauv has C-47 plans and the glider is potentially a straightforward, boxy FT design. Wouldn't be cool to tow this baby?
 
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F106DeltaDart

Elite member
I have built a foam board Waco CG-4 for slope soaring, and it’s an incredibly stable platform. You could literally “park” it in the sky and hand off the controller to a buddy. Unfortunately, it met its end when I left college a few years ago. I am working on a modded HobbyKing C-47 that will hopefully serve as the tow plane for another Waco. Good luck with the project!!
 

SlingShot

Maneuvering With Purpose
I have built a foam board Waco CG-4 for slope soaring, and it’s an incredibly stable platform. You could literally “park” it in the sky and hand off the controller to a buddy. Unfortunately, it met its end when I left college a few years ago. I am working on a modded HobbyKing C-47 that will hopefully serve as the tow plane for another Waco. Good luck with the project!!

Nice! How big? Any plans?
 

F106DeltaDart

Elite member
Nice! How big? Any plans?
56” Wingspan. Sorry, no plans, but it was a fairly straightforward build. I just scaled up a 3 view drawing to the right wingspan, and printed off the fuselage sections tiled together. I used that as a template, and used a Clark Y for the airfoil. I recommend placing your servos forward of the CG, and going with long pushrods. With that short nose, it takes a fair bit of weight to balance out the long tail.
 

SlingShot

Maneuvering With Purpose
Wow! I certainly hope the National Aircraft Corp earned themselves an indictment.


Production[edit]
From 1942-1945, the Ford Motor Company's plant in Kingsford, Michigan, built 4,190 Model CG-4A gliders for use in combat operations during World War II. The Kingsford plant built more CG-4A gliders than any other company in the nation at much less cost than other manufacturers. The other primary builders of the Model CG-4A gliders were located in Troy, Ohio; Greenville, Michigan; Astoria, New York; Kansas City, Missouri and St. Paul, Minnesota.

The 16 companies that were prime contractors for manufacturing the CG-4A were:

The factories ran 24-hour shifts to build the gliders. One night-shift worker in the Wicks Aircraft Company factory in Kansas City wrote,

“On one side of the huge bricked-in room is a fan running, on the other a cascade of water to keep the air from becoming too saturated with paint. The men man the paint sprayers covering the huge wings of the glider with the Khaki or Blue and finishing it off with that thrilling white star enclosed in a blue circle that is winging its way around the world for victory ...
The wings are first covered with a canvas fabric stretched on like wallpaper over plywood then every seam, hold, open place, closed place, and edge is taped down with the all adhesive dope that not only makes the wings airtight, but covers my hands, my slacks, my eyebrows, my hair, and my tools with a fast-drying coat that peels off like nail polish or rubs off with a thinner that burns like Hell.[9]