Had a fun suggest come in from
@Morgajus for an asymetric aircraft challenge - and he found a great article about some of them too
https://hushkit.net/2017/12/05/top-ten-asymmetric-aircraft/
I love the discussions and ideas that have been tossed around in this thread, and there are more than just a couple of them I'd love to build a plane for.
Looking at the primary goals for the forum challenge for the past couple years, I want to stay true to a couple elements.
- should encourage new designers to try their hand for the first time
- theme should appeal to a wide audience to encourage participation
- should be flexible enough to not stifle individual innovation or interests
- should encourage sharing of research of aviation history (and RC history too!)
With these ideas in mind, and looking across the responses in the thread, I think that the Classic to Modern challenge might be a great one to do next. With the core structure being "design a modern foam board RC airplane based on an existing balsa plane design" it enables people to pick from a very wide range of topics - jets, amphibious craft, warbirds, biplanes, bombers, racers, golden age, wings and wacky fantasy things too! It also encourages dipping into history, both for the radio control history for where these plans came from, and the aviation history of the craft or theory or animal that inspired the plans.
As usual, I don't want to prohibit anyone from using different construction methods, and to encourage designers to step beyond our world of foam board, I can see a point bonus for well documented construction techniques other than flat folded foam board ("FT Masters" style forming, hot wire cut foam, fiberglass laminating, etc).
In fact, we could end up with some "throw downs" between builders in this wider challenge - like I'm interested in bringing some FT Master Class forming into my world and would enjoy a little friendly competition using that technique to build craft that look every bit as good as their balsa inspiration.
I also think this challenge could go a bit quicker than previous challenges I've run since we would be building from some existing materials. My goal would be to wrap this up in mid-January so it doesn't conflict with the annual Build-uary or April Showers challenges
Maybe we even wrap this up by November to avoid the major holiday schedule conflicts?
So what do you all think? I'm not looking for a 100% consensus, but I do want this to appeal to a wide number of forum members. If there are tweaks that can make this even more appealing to specific forum members I'm happy to think about how we can make it happen. BUT if we tweak the challenge for a specific builder, they darn well better finish a great challenge entry!
