Oldbaldguy

For some reason, this model does not get my pulse to thumpin’ like the Corsair did, but, Good Lord, Jay, this is epic in every sense of the word. It might even be too much in that there is no way anyone who has not followed along here on LSP can ever appreciate what you have done - there is too much perfection to see and we simply are too big to see it all anyway. Could you have done this were you an ordinary man on the street and not an engineer?

A tidbit about all this ‘who was first’ stuff has stuck with me for years. There was a quasi government project two decades ago to build an accurate and flyable replica of the Wright’s first airplane in time for the hundredth anniversary of their feat and fly it on the world stage at the Wright Monument in North Carolina, just like the Wrights did. I think NASA and maybe some other big names were involved. Everything moved forward apace and the airplane was abuilding but they needed a pilot. Enter a couple of hot shot astronaut/test pilot types - a guy and a gal - as candidates because they were the best of the best, had lots of experience and could fly anything, etc. My master caution light strobed away in my head while reading this. Both were accomplished pilots but therein lies the rub - they were skilled pilots who knew how to fly things that fly. When the wrights first flew their canard biplane in 1903 no such people or equipment existed so there were no preconceived ideas about how things should work. My immediate thought at the time was that wiser heads should have sought out an experienced weight-shift hang glider pilot or someone with no flying experience at all to attempt the flight because that is how Orville and Wilbur had to approach the mission. But it seems that would have been neither marketable nor the American Way so, in the end, they picked one who immediately wrecked the replica, I believe while still on the rails or, at best, at the end of the track. Although it could have flown, twitchy canard and all, it never did. Tourists, spectators, media and big donors disappeared long before the ersatz Wright brother strapped to the wing could pick the sand from her teeth. There were no follow-up attempts that I know of; no efforts to see if they could unlearn enough to go back to the good old days. Apparently, it is easier to do the impossible these days than it is to do something that has already been done.

Now that is one snappy paint scheme. Very smart indeed. Might be the best looking Sabre of the bunch.

Very, very nicely done. Everything about it looks right.

Well, math was never my strong point, so you and Dan could be 100% correct. But I’m not dragging mine back out until I see how yours turns out - plan on learning a lot as you go where few or maybe none have gone before. Any idea of a paint scheme yet? A-5As were operational in only three squadrons plus a couple of test units before that, so there aren’t a lot of choices.

“Obvious flaws” failed to send to my address. Please resend. Looks great under primer.

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but I have two of these kits. When they first arrived, I eyeballed the model for a bit and then did the math after comparing the parts to an accurate 1/32 three view drawing. When I tried to match landmarks on the kit to the same landmarks on NAA station drawings, things were pretty out of whack. If I remember correctly, the fuselage is an inch or more too short in a couple of places, for example, and many of the shapes are not quite right. As is, the kit has some significant problems that ought to be resolved if you want an accurate A5A on your shelf, but that’s just me. Very much looking forward to seeing what you can do with it.

As nice as it is, I’m not crazy about the camo scheme but the other two are exceptional. Anything else hiding on your shelves that we need to know about?

I think we need to see Jay work his crazy magic on an early jet next time out.

Very, very nice. Those colors are wonderful on that airplane.

Okay. Five times what I paid and mine came with an ELT that worked.

I wish we had a bug-eyed, stupefied speechless emoji on this site cause I’d give you two or three for your input. In case anyone is interested, the bill for the 250 manhours to change that little gizmo that is no bigger than a shoe box comes to more than three times what my first airplane cost me with full tanks, new tires and a fresh annual. Amazing stuff.

Every one of your posts is like Christmas morning.

The Beech Staggerwing Museum at Tullahoma, Tennessee, in the US has pretty much one of everything Beechcraft built, including a Starship. I pulled up to the front door of the museum one day in my Cessna 182 and the sweet young thing receptionist asked, “Oh! And what model Beech is that?” Honest. That’s how focused this bunch is. So, after looking at all those gorgeous Staggerwings, I ended up poking and prodding the Starship, mainly because it was open and they held it in such disdain that I don’t think they cared. The airplane takes up a lot of space because it is long in every direction. Most canards are fairly close coupled and compact, but the Starship is more like a regular airplane that flies backwards. It’s fuselage is a pencil - round and narrow in cross section. If you are an executive with aspirations of grandeur, there is no way you are going to get in and out of that thing or move around in it with grace and elan. Same can be said for the cockpit. The two front seats are about as easy to scramble into as a Formula 1 car - no way to get in and out of the pit and still appear professional in front of your boss and his girlfriend. Seasoned pilots must have had an awful time with that. And as far as arriving in style, well, there are old Soviet crop dusters that have more ramp appeal. It seems to me that Beech had no idea where Rutan’s head was or where he was trying to take them. Instead of getting the King Air killer they’d hoped for, they got this long-winged, skinny thing that was loud and expensive and that customers looked at all side-eyed, like they expected it to fart in front of their wives. Beech had no idea what they had or what to do with it. Instead of developing the airplane and building a market for it, the board got mad and stomped around blaming Rutan for making them look foolish. The acrimony was palpable and the divorce was downright nasty. Beech was so petty after the dust settled that they towed the fully functional, sub scale proof of concept article that Rutan built for them as part of the contract - it flew and performed very well, BTW, which is why Beech went ahead with the project - to the ramp in front of his facility and ran over it with a bulldozer. Learjets were all the thing for a while years ago but they soon lost ground to fatter, more comfortable corporate jets. People with that kind of money don’t want to be forced to crawl around in their fancy airplane like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Beech boys missed that point and frankly, I don’t think Rutan ever even thought of it - he was laser focused on performance. So the airplane died a horrible death and took whatever promise the canard had with it. Even now, years after the LongEZ proved its worth, performance and economy as a personal airplane, the most popular design extant is the conventional, all aluminum RV series - airplanes with the tail in the back and the engine in the front like Pug Piper and Clyde Cessna intended all along.

Good points. This is where I was hoping we’d go on this topic. I am all but certain Rutan made canards a common thing that worked every time. And he used a slide rule, not a computer. His Variviggen didn’t quite connect with builder/fliers but the VariEZ did and the LongEZ did in spades. That airplane flies backwards and does it very well. It was designed from the beginning to be a stable cross country platform - even in IFR - that performed well on minimal horsepower. Then, when Beech tried to take it commercial, they failed miserably. Why???? I think because their Starship looked weird to most buyers. They eventually blamed Rutan for designing a plane for them that they could not sell when maybe it was the Wrights’ fault all along. The Wrights, in their naïveté gave us canards because canards were the answer that worked when they tried it. So why didn’t the follow-on designers improve on the canard design? Could it be the Wrights were their own worst enemies? They were by all accounts a litigious pair and were quick to call in the lawyers when somebody tried to steal their limelight. They even told the Smithsonian that they had to accept and support them as the first to fly in the face of all other evidence or they would take their Flyer out of the museum and go home. Could it be that what we now know as a traditional airplane came to be in a universal sense because the Wrights threatened to pitch a fit whenever anyone was perceived to infringe on their patents? I can’t answer that question with any degree of certainty, but wouldn’t it be something if modern day aviation looks like it does because the original creators’ jealousy forced aeronautical development away from their own work and into the laps of others who came after them, essentially cutting their own throats?

Those Douglas low drag tanks came in three sizes: 150, 300 and 400 gallons. Scooters could carry any of the three, depending on the model of the airplane. The 400 gallon tank was pretty big, however, and apparently was carried on the centerline only - not sure it would fit under the wing what with the gear doors and all. Recommend you check out Tommy’s Tailhook site - he devotes a lot of space to things under wings, Douglas drops in particular. My point being, if Douglas did not build a 450 gallon tank, then the Argentines could not have used them. If they used the 400 gal tanks on their Scooters, then it probably would not have been under the wings.

Respectfully disagree, D, on several counts. Stall a Cub and when it breaks hold the stick back and see what happens. It will not recover itself. Rutan EZ canards were designed to be stall resistant in that the canard would stop flying before the wing did, allowing the nose to drop enough for the wing to continue to fly with no input from the driver - a properly rigged EZ will simply bob its way along without the wing actually stalling til you eventually hit the ground if you were dumb enough to play that game. In other words the canard stalls but the primary lifting surface does not. A conventionally configured airplane does not work like that - once the wing stalls the tail is along for the ride. Aeronautically speaking, a Quickie is a tailless negative stagger, high aspect ratio biplane, not a typical canard. Both wings on a Quickie are primary lifting surfaces. You can’t compare its handling characteristics to an EZ or any other canard because they are nothing alike. I don’t need to google this stuff because I am old enough to have lived it and have been around all sorts of airplanes my entire life. I am not anti canard or ignorant of canards - they work just fine. I was simply curious if anyone on the site had an opinion as to why canards never made much of a dent in the industry. After all, the first airplane was one. I’d have thought more designers would have copied and improved on that design but they did not. The planform we are so used to seeing with the primary lifting surfaces in front of the horizontal stabilizers in back and a long fuselage connecting the two took over at some point and apparently designers never looked back. There is nothing wrong with canards, so I suspect the market - or maybe lawyers or maybe even the mission - made its choice and we’ve stuck with it ever since. But that’s just me. I’ll try to stick with proper modeling topics in the future, but, you know, pinot makes me do weird things, so there’s that.

The rain and bugs business was true with the early EZs because the airfoil just didn’t like it but this was resolved relatively quickly by changing the airfoil on the canard. The Long EZ did not stall in the traditional way because the canard would stall first causing the nose to drop, automatically reducing the AOA of the wing with no further action required of the pilot. It was thought that a properly rigged EZ could not stall and depart but that was proved false when someone ventured into that dark corner and found that it would in fact depart when forced into a deep stall. A Cub is no picnic, either, if you are mean to it. Just because they look stodgy and slow does not mean they will not hand you your lunch if pushed. Cross one up at the wrong time and over you will go. Treat a Cub right and you can’t beat it.

I guess the bigger question pertains to why canards simply have not caught on. They obviously work and offer some distinct advantages over tailed airplanes but, when given the choice and with few exceptions, most customers seemed to pick what they are used to. I would have thought that new builders from the Wright brothers’ day would have tried to improve on their tail-forward design but, as far as I know, only Curtiss in the US tried in the very early days with everyone else going with more conventional planforms. The idea is out there and several companies have tried but only a handful of canards have made it to serial production over the years as opposed to the multitudes of tailed airplanes.

Good article. Much of the information I’d already read. Rutan lived on the very tip of the spear for quite some time. Definitely one of the greats who was not at all afraid to defy the status quo. Much of the popularity of his designs came from his pioneering moldless composite construction - foam hacked into shape with a bread knife and cheese grater then covered in fiberglass which carried most of the loads.

It’s the end of the weekend, I’ve mopped and polished all my floors, drunk the last of a tedious bottle of Pinot noir and now I’m bored, so I have a question: If the Wright brothers were actually the first to fly powered heavier than air things (something I doubt) and were the benchmark for all who came after, then why are there so few canard airplanes, like the Wright Flyer, flying around? Outside of the homebuilt Rutan designs, I can’t think of a single one that has met with any degree of success. Or did I miss something?

19 months????? Can’t be! This is like reading your favorite never ending novel - the warm fuzzies just keep on coming.

Oh how I love this site. In one breath we’ve gone from talking about a forlorn Brit turret fighter to French cheeses and wine. What a wonderous modern world we live in.

I saw one of the first of these years ago when I stopped for gas at an airport in Tennessee near Arnold Air Force Station where they tested all sorts of weird stuff back in the day. Had some time to kill so I wandered the airport to see what was afoot and spotted this enormous gray thing outside a big hangar and there may have been one inside the hangar as well - I forget. The folks working on the airplane were very friendly and happy to talk about it. It is big and very gray and casts a big shadow. Is it a Skyraider? No. Will it ever be a Skyraider peer? No. Not big enough, not stout enough, not enough fuel on board, not enough hard points. The closest thing we’ll ever see to a Spad replacement is the A-10. Those shoes are way too big to be filled by a buffed up crop duster. All the same, this thing is very cool looking in a gangly, agricultural implement sort of way. Would make a really nice 1/24 or 1/18 model.

Saw one of these on the ramp in South Dakota about six months ago. Seems to me the orange civilian version is infinitely more appealing as a project than the OD green one, so I hope we get to see your build here on LSP. If you have the same kit I do, then it’s an A model. I think most of the 54s flying now are B models - different landing gear. Frankly, I’m very surprised some outfit like Reskit has not produced a fire fighter conversion for the kit to make it easier for those of us not talented enough to scratch build all that stuff. As for which color of orange is orange enough, that’s hard to say. The airframe I saw looked to be red/orange in the morning light. I suspect just about any paint maker these days produces a color that’s pretty close. They were prefilghting the thing, BTW, and all the support carts, work stands and such were painted the same color. Made for a very eye-catching scene.