In 1990, I started working on the Shortest Straw (Garry, Glenn and I usually called it the "Straw"). We had been flying the competition fun-fly events (nothing like fun-flys today...). Those fun-flys had lots of crazt events. Snips, Dixie Double Death, Figure 8 touch-n-go's, etc. The 3 of us flew these events almost every weekend, somewhere. We were using all sorts of airplanes, and never quite happy with what we had. We learned that we needed something with light loading, lots of drag to slow quickly, really low stall speeds, lots of power for quick acceleration, something fairly neutral so it would fly upside down with little trim impact, tail dragger, lots of control surface area, and not a lot of top speed.
While plunking around at the hobby shop and scouting a desirable wing profile, I noticed a Revel Model kit of a large submarine. There was a hydrofoil on it that looked like a super thick, symetrical wing. It had a fairly blunt leading edge. Steve (Hobby Shop owner) let us open the kit, and pull it out. It was a two-piece hydrofoil, so we could get to the root of the foil. I stood it up on a piece of paper and traced around it. The next week, I took it to work and blew it up on the copying machine, until I got to about the size I wanted, and the airfoil was born for the Shortest Straw.
We were constantly scratch building airplanes, so I kept some of that cheap unfinished paneling from Lowe's in my storage room. I think it was 3mm. I would cut parts out, use a sanding block on the stained side to remove the oily surface so CA would stick, and build with that. I built lots of ply fuselages with that stuff. I framed up a fuse about the size of that used on the Goldberg Eagle 63, used the scroll saw to remove most of the wood (we called it "cheesing"). I built up a large set of tail feathers and tacked them on, temporarily hung a .40 on the front and main gear on the bottom, and cut a wing saddle in the top of the fuse in a spot that would allow me to hit CG on the spar. Real basic back yard experimenting.
I built this thing up, balanced it on the spar, and started flying it. I kept moving the CG aft until it was almost uncontrollable with a near empty tank of fuel. Blew my mind. It pretty much did what I wanted, quick, yet would slow down immediately in the air, stop on a dime, etc. I added wingtip plates about 1/2" larger than the flat tip ribs and I could hog it around at just about a fast walking pace without it dropping out of the air. The tip plates also acted like a skid when doing taxi races. I ripped the tail feathers off in flight, the covered stick version of the horizontal stab just couldn't handle the abuse. I built another airplane from the scraps with a sheeted built-up horizontal stab. Glenn still has an original, I hope to get a photo to put here. This wasn't the end.... I'll write more in another post about the Shortest Straw II and III (a pair of III's are under construction, now...)
Here's a pic of the rib...
