Half A Diorama

[dale gleason]

My wife won a raffle prize at a Tulsa meet, some neglected Cox planes. I cleaned them up, they looked surprisingly nice to me. I even ran the engines briefly. Having quite a few Cox head tools and other stuff, I put together a little hangar for them.  It took over 60 years, but, I finally got a plastic gas model airplane.
dg

[Tim Wescott]

Where's the stepladder with Barbie on it washing the wings?

[Larry Renger]

   Both tose planes are my designs! 

[Mark Mc]

  Both tose planes are my designs! 

Cool!  As you're the designer, maybe you could 'splain something for me.  I've seen the reference to an "auto pilot" for those planes.  What did that little lever do when engaged?

Mark

[Larry Renger]

There was a lever pivoted with the bellcrank that had a little weight on the outboard side. The switch could disengage the bellcrank from the lever so the bellcrank then did nothing. The pushrod was driven by the lever.

When the model turns into the wind, it slows down and the lever moves forward as a result, giving a touch of down elevator to counter the tendency to climb.  Going downwind the model speeds up, the lever moves rearward and you get a touch of up elevator to counter the drop.  It actually got patented!   

That little Cessna 150 turned out to be a great flyer. I just lucked into a super combination of balance and aerodynamics.  The other two in the series, the P-39 and Comanche flew fine, but just didn't feel as good.

The models were quite small, and really only needed a .020 for power.  .049s were much cheaper because of the volume of production.  The solution was to design a really, really bad prop to get rid of excess power!