The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!

[Papa]

Since all you working stiffs appear to have nothing better to do here's something to get your teeth into.

What was the Goodest Model you have ever had and why?
What was the Baddest Model you have ever had and why?
What was the Ugliest Model you have ever had and why?

Retired stiff LOL.

Jack.

[sihinch]

OK, here goes.....

Goodest - PZ Trojan.  It was just a nice, stable, gently flyer, that would go exactly where you wanted it, had no bad habbits or vices, and would handle lots of wind and do aerobatics.  I've often wondered about getting another.......

Baddest - I didn't like the little HobbyKing Bearcat.  I couldn't get it to go where I wanted it to. It was fast, and looked OK, but it would move up and down in pitch.  I just couldn't fall in love with it.

Ugliest - that's tough.  I think I'll go with my DC3, which some of you call "Unlucky Chucky."  It runs on 2S with 2 brushed motors, and would stall very easily.  Anyway, since it was my 4th plane, and 1st twin, and didn't have oodles of power, I crashed it a lot.  So it has a rather squashed nose.  I still have it, and it still flies.  I'm actually quite attached to it.

[Frank v B]

The goodest- a tie between the Nooner and the Chilli Breeze (.25 size pattern ship).  The Nooner was a great flyer with a 100 watt Speed 400 and superb with an brushless inrunner 400 producing 250watts (unlimited verical).  The Chilli Breeze was a 48" .25 pattern ship built from Bristish plans.  It was light (3 lbs, 1 oz), had about 500 foot vertical.  It flew even better with a 42mm brushless outrunner with about 450 watts.  Never quite optimized it for electric before it was lost at the TEMAC funfly.  May just have to build a new one.

The baddest- EFlite Brio.10  Have had two of them (one bought, one given).  It had a nasty habit of wanting to fall out of the sky without any notice if it flew too slowly.  Had it with a .10 and a 480 in it.  No difference.  Gave the 480 away to a friend and cautioned him about slowing it down.... but that's how he lost it.

The ugliest- My MINI-TARKA from British plans.  If ugly planes last longer, this one will last forever.  34" span, 16 oz, 250 watt inrunner 2700 kv with a 5x5 prop on 3 cells.  The wing and fuselage have been re-glued and patched but it just wants to keep on flying.  Converted from a Norvel .061, to a speed 400 on 8 cells, to the current brushless set-up.  Absolutely ballistic, tracks well, glides well, easy to hand-launch.  Almost made "my favourite"... if it were not for this "ugly" category

Frank

[eric]

Here's mine -

Goodest:  Fledgling - designed for Speed 600 brushed, it flew well but came alive with a Power 15 on 3s lipo. It was my second plane and flies like its on rails.

Baddest:  Kangke Monocoupe 90A EP - looked good, but just a horrendously poor flier model with the worst adverse yaw you ever saw. Even with crazy differential (one aileron completely non-moving) it still required full rudder to bring it around. It was also so short coupled that it was pitchy beyond belief, even with huge expo. Now residing in the Michigan landfill.

Ugliest:  Northeast Sailplane Virus - really ugly, but a great, relaxing flyer on a small brushless and 2s lipo. I fly it on the beach and out over the water at the cottage, taking off and landing from a 20 foot grass strip (the top of our well head). Its that controllable and easy to fly...but uuugly!!!

[thehaze]

Goodest- Hands down, F27Q Strkyer. It's usually the first and last plane I fly anytime I'm at the field. It's an awesome plane and no matter how much abuse I put it through (i.e. pancaking it on the field at full speed on a low pass resulted in nothing more than a bent prop blade) it plows on and asks me "Is that all you got?" Plus it does awesome inverted flat spins (aka The Boomerang) on command. Although I will give a big thumbs up to the PZ T-28 which would be my runner up. Every intermediate pilot should own one at some time.

Baddest- No contest.... Great Planes F-20 Tigershark EDF. It had everything going for it a first glance. Great price, looked fantastic, assembled quickly, and promised wicked speed. I owned two of them. First one wrecked when the latches (which someone at the factory forgot to glue) for the EDF cover blew off in flight, resulting in a severe loss of propulsion. The second one, sent to me by Great Planes as an act of contrition, did a full speed dive into the beans when it was unable to pull out of a split s. I don't know if the elevator was too small, or if it was being washed out by the wings but when you pushed it hard, the elevator control seemed to give up and wait for something bad to happen. If I hadn't ever met up with this bucket of crap I would have said that any of Mike McConnville's designs would have taken the prize here.

Ugliest- GWS e-starter. Not that it was a particularly ugly design. It's because it looked like I used a hack saw to cut the control surfaces from the foam. Not my finest build to be sure. The plane, to it's credit, flew perfectly fine. That is until I pushed it too hard and folded the wings on it.

[Andy Hoffer]

Here's mine -

Goodest:  Fledgling - designed for Speed 600 brushed, it flew well but came alive with a Power 15 on 3s lipo. It was my second plane and flies like its on rails.

Baddest:  Kangke Monocoupe 90A EP - looked good, but just a horrendously poor flier model with the worst adverse yaw you ever saw. Even with crazy differential (one aileron completely non-moving) it still required full rudder to bring it around. It was also so short coupled that it was pitchy beyond belief, even with huge expo. Now residing in the Michigan landfill.

Ugliest:  Northeast Sailplane Virus - really ugly, but a great, relaxing flyer on a small brushless and 2s lipo. I fly it on the beach and out over the water at the cottage, taking off and landing from a 20 foot grass strip (the top of our well head). Its that controllable and easy to fly...but uuugly!!!

I really like your ski rigging on the Fledgling!

Andy

[Ededge2002]

I had a plane that I would put into two classes. My first Formosa. Purchased used with about 200 flights on it from Dave from pinnacle. I flew it,  I crashed it, I fixed it and I got it dirty. Its probably been my best plane and with about 500 flights its possibly the ugliest. I even gave it to a friend to fly with hopes it would die...  a year later he gave it back in about the same condition. Ugly

Worst Ace Wizard back in my Cox TD.051 days. I tried and tried to get it to run right/fly and in 40 or so attempts had just one unrepeatable flight.   

[eric]

Hi Andy;

Those skiis were my first attempt and a real dog's breakfast of parts I had lying about. Springs from a china plate display frame, paper clips, fishing snaps, picture hanging wire covered in white shrink tube, skii bases from a discarded election sign and the spines from one of those Christmas tangerine boxes. The weird thing is, they work great!

Eric

[Frank v B]

Eric

re: your Baddest:  Kangke Monocoupe 90A EP - looked good, but just a horrendously poor flier model with the worst adverse yaw you ever saw.

I have this plane and forgot how bad it was.  The trick to flying it was to have the CG about 1/2" back from the leading edge of the wing and it flew fine.  No differential needed.  It was almost unflyable with any CG aft of it.  Having it on the spar would make it squirrely as **** even though the spar is very far forward.

I maidened one for someone last year, immediately moved the CG close to the leading edge and it flew fine.

Suspect the large round cowl played havoc with the prop wash.  The only theory I can come up with.

Poor Michigan landfill.


Frank van Beurden

[piker]

O.K. I'm in.  Not an easy thing to do as there have been many planes over the years (although I have not had nearly as many as a lot of you guys).  I'm probably forgetting some at this point, but here's what I can think of now:

Goodest: Probably my CL215 Water Bomber.  Sure, nothing special by today's standards, but back in '97 when it first flew, it was considered to be a large, complicated model.  Add to that the fact that it was a scratch built, scale, twin engine, flying boat, and the fact that it was my most consistent and reliable flyer, especially from water, AND the fact that I flew it regularly for many years (and I still plan to have it a regularly used part of my fleet when I finish recovering it), and you have a plane that holds a place in history... at least my history    I've had many planes that I've really enjoyed, but the 215 is the only plane I've actually worn out and felt it worth the effort to strip down, refurbish, recover, and update the power system.  Of all my seaplanes, this has been the most fun to fly.  It'll be even better with a lighter, more efficient power system.

Badest:  Although I don't blame the design... Another flying boat, the Balsa USA "Laker".  This is a Laddie Mikulasko design that I'm sure would have been a great model if it had survived long enough.  The saga begins at the fist EMFSO Float Fly in, roughly, year 2000.  I brought the Astro 40, on 20 NiCad cells, powered Laker out to the float fly for its test flight.  The first take-off went well, but for some reason the power dropped way back (didn't stop) to a point where it was not enough to sustain flight.  MUCH to the design's credit, I was able to bring the plane around for a nice landing.  This attempt repeated two or three more times that day with no change in result.

After the float fly I attempted to solve the power fading issue.  I eventually did, though I can't remember exactly what it was, but I think it had to do with improperly worked in brushes that eventually seated properly and solved the problem.  Good!  Off to the pond for the anticipated great first real flight with this plane (I already knew it flew well from the earlier test hops).  To make a long story a bit shorter, the plane would porpoise so much during the take-off attempt that it would result in a nose dive into the water and a fried ESC (the esc was in the nacelle) would result.  This happened over and over during several attempts over several weeks.  I even asked Laddie for his advice, which never worked for me, probably because I never got to the point of finding the CG sweet spot.  BTW, I had assumed for years that the Jeti ESC's that I was using must be REALY intolerant of moisture as they weren't getting THAT wet, if at all.  Years later the light bulb went on in my head and I realized it wasn't a water problem, but rather an over loading problem when the prop would hit the water.  I have a bag of at least 10, $100 ESC's that were fried from those trials.

But wait!  I DID finally get the plane in the air that summer by timing the last bounce correctly and forcing the thing to the blue yonder.  It was finally flying and flying well, even did a nice loop and roll, then suddenly, I lost complete control and the Laker spun into the ground.  No, not the nice soft water, the hard packed construction zone clay at the side of the pond.  The plane was a TOTAL write-off.  I have a picture of the millions of balsa bits and covering scraps that were left.  Know what the problem was?  Dead Rx battery pack... and I had charged that morning, with only about 2 minutes of flight time on it.  The pack was obviously screwed.  Now you know why I support BEC's   

Ugliest:  Two planes come to mind.  The plane that I've been the most embarrassed by over the years has been the CL-215 Water Bomber.  I've had that plane for so long, and it would take a lot of abuse, that the covering job just got uglier and uglier over the years.  But the plane was one I could not retire, so I had to keep bringing it out with the ugly covering job (and some damaged areas too).  That's why I'm recovering it.

But the other plane was the inspiration for the Speed 400 Sport (Piker) pylon race class .  Someone from the EMFSO (around '95 I think) gave away copies of a British plan for a plane called the Ohm-watt.  It was a simple box fuselage, sheet tail, Jedelsky wing, rail and rubber band motor mounted plane that was as simple as you can get (at the time) and flew great!  A bunch of people built them, and everyone's wings folded and the planes crashed.  Mine, for some reason, didn't fold, and I flew that plane for at least a couple of years (It was painted some ugly green / blue / purple colour).  I eventually "designed" a better version of that plane that had a full section wing and closed in nose.  I called that plane "Shorty" and that was my first Piker class racer.  These planes were a lot of fun to own because they were small (could be assembled in the front seat of the car for winter flying), easy to launch and fly, and could be flown almost anywhere.  They could handle the wind and were quite sporty for a rudder/elevator plane.   

So there ya go.

[gordonbw]

Best: In terms of fun/$, has to be my Multiplex Cularis.  Has completed its fourth season and still performing well.  A close second would be my E-Flite Mini-Pulse.  I have high hopes for my current Eindecker build as well.

Worst:  Way too many unsuccessful planes in my history!  If I had to choose one, well, many years ago I bought a Windrider EPP Sukhoi kit from Alex Lee's 'basement sale'.  I thought EPP foam was supposed to be robust -- not so much, as it turned out in this case.  And the control surfaces were so flimsy that the plane was pretty much uncontrollable.

Ugliest: Even longer ago Robert Pike kitted a Speed 400 foamie called the Duck-E, and I think I got his last one. I don't have a picture, but it was very odd looking -- motor and prop mounted high on a pylon, long nose like a duck's bill.  It flew great and provided a lot of fun for me at the old 14th Avenue field.

[piker]

The Duck-E was UGLY?   

O.K.  I agree.  The Duck-E was an attempt at an even slower, stock, entry level Sp400 pylon racer than anyone could fly and race.  The fuselage was hot wire cut from a sheet of 2" blue foam and the wings were hot wire cut with a separate LE and aft portion of the wing that glued onto a sheet balsa spar that had the dihedral establish by the supplied cuts in the spar stock.  The Speed 400 motor was high mounted out of rough landing harm's way, and was held on with tape, as were the two servos that operated the simple tail features.  The wing spar was capped with a strip of nylon reinforced tape.

We never did get around to racing these things, but I think I sold about 50 kits for $20 each, basically just to cover the cost of materials.

Another reason for the Duck-E (E for Electric) was that I was going to supply floats that could be taped onto the bottom with simple wooden cross members.  I tried the float version once, and it was unstable (needed more fin area), but I never got around to trying again.

Many people flew the Duck-E and enjoyed it for what it was worth.  I was talking to a guy who had tried for a whole summer to learn to fly on some other plane, then was given a Duck-E by someone (was it Frank V-B?) and flew successfully on the first flight.  A friend, Rod Wooley in Ottawa used his Duck-E to flight train many students too.

Just this past summer, Ken Manual had a new in box Duck-e kit that he bought from me back in the day (1999ish) for sale.  I bought it     You guys may see a duck-E fly again this summer.  BTW, Ken says the inspiration for his FFX fighters was the Duck-E construction concept 

[Andy Hoffer]

Rob:

I love your historical vignettes.

Jack:

This was a great idea.  You get to see everyone's lives flashing before their (our) eyes!

Andy

[Frank v B]

Robert- re the Laker.  I will bet 2 degrees of up-thrust (if a tractor prop) would have solved the problem (pendulum effect).  I suspect the high thrust line of the power pod would make the bow dig in as power was applied..... but then what the heck do i know.

Frank van Beurden

ps: the Duck-E was so ugly it was cute.  It was brilliantly simple.  A Duck-E should do an honour lap around the race course before the first TEMAC pylon race.  It would be a hoot.