OK Mark, I think I counted maybe 7 questions, maybe. Now you will find out how dumb I can be on soom subjects. First off I really don't have a good handle on what a 5.8 is? I'm thinking that it is the same engine that they use in some racing events? I think I had one way back when I was trying to fly RC, it was made by K&B and may have been loop scavenged? Well anyway if its that engine it should work OK as the one I had throttled pretty good and was pretty powerful to boot.
     I started with a Webra (I broke the K&B in a crash) 32, then a Webra 36 then on to a Nelson. I did this over a 2 year period and it has been pretty much Nelson sense then although I have 3 Thunder Tiger Pro 36s that I use in my for fun carrier planes and have found it to be a great little engine (now that you cant buy them new anymore). If you are comfortable with the 5.8 then it should be fine. I trust the one you have has a throttle on it?
     Now as far as planes go I'm not much of a fan of the Nostalgia planes. I find it very painful to watch the Nostalgia planes fly and then when they try to land them it kinda turns into a dive bombing event (the deck being the target and the plane the bomb. I think one of the better people to ask about Nostalgia is Mike Potter up in the north west. He has quite a few nostalgia planes and has flow most of them a time or two. Nostalgia and AMA Profile don't have all that much in common. You mentioned the Brodak Bearcat which I think is one of the pettiest planes around and is a genuine nostalgia plane. I have seen several of these planes fly carrier and none of them were equipped with a slider and ALL of them were damaged everytime they tried to land them on the deck (not my cup of tea).
     Now as far as AMA Profile Carrier is concerned a good learner plane would be the MO-1 (don't throw rocks at me) as it is easy to build, easy to repair, and fairly easy to fly. As you must know by now there are not any kits on the market (other than the Brodak Guardian) for carrier planes. There are plans for the MO-1 in built up form and in foam wing form. I have plans for Dick Perry's MO-1 (built up) which is an excellent carrier plane which I used the first 4 years I was in carrier. The other foam wing MO-1 is a design by Bill Bischoff which he won several nationals with, also a very good plane and I have the plans for it. These planes are very straight foreward in there construction and everything is hanging out in the slip stream so you can see it all.
     I'm going to have to stop for now and look up some info on the bell-cranks so will continue this later today or tomarrow. eric

     OK Mark, I think I counted maybe 7 questions, maybe. Now you will find out how dumb I can be on soom subjects. First off I really don't have a good handle on what a 5.8 is? I'm thinking that it is the same engine that they use in some racing events? I think I had one way back when I was trying to fly RC, it was made by K&B and may have been loop scavenged? Well anyway if its that engine it should work OK as the one I had throttled pretty good and was pretty powerful to boot.
     eric

No the 5.8 is Schneurle, ABC.  They were made in 4.9, 5.8 and 6.5 cc. models.  Also, both front and rear intake.  IIR, there were also some 6.6 conversion piston/liner sets floating around, so that you could fly class 1 and class 2 with the same design plane.  In profile, you can plug in an OS 4b carb and you are ready to fly.

The loop scavenged engine was the K&B .35 plain bearing, that was very similar to the K&B .40s that were so popular.  It was brought out mainly for slow rat and slow combat (when those events had to be plain bearing) but never really caught on.  It was a ringed engine.

    Well I sent a reply (a big reply) and I got this message that another message had come in and maybe I better review it and so on and so forth and my sent reply turned into smoke I guess. I really wish that message didn't exist as I have lost many replies that Ive sent in the past. so I'll take this up tomarrow. eric

Mark,

You want a GS (now Brodak) Bearcat and a K&B 5.8...  Coming right up...

I moved the LG to the fuselage because the wing mounted LG break when you hit the deck.  I built a straight wing because I didn't want to deal with dihedral.  I put the bellcrank and leadouts external because it was easier.  Don't like the idea of a slider use a fixed leadout guide.  

This model will easily hang above 45 degrees.  Get it too high and stall the wing and you can get a classic over the top spin entry and up to 2 turns in the spin before it hits the ground.  The CG is far enough back that the spin usually goes flat and the model almost hits in a three point stance on the LG.

A K&B won't outrun a Nelson.  But properly setup the only other engine it isn't likely to outrun is Pete Mazur's OS 36 FSR.  

Go for it.

Dave

        Hi Mark that k&b 5.8 with a os 4bk carb like Mike was saying will work very well. I have one on my spearfish running a 9-8 apc or a 9-7 taipan on 60% nitro fuel.  Its good for a consistent 17.9 sec high speed with the 9-8 and almost a 3 min low.   I also have a 5.8 with a carb for a rossi 40 that runs pretty good. 
        As much as I hate to agree with Eric on the mo1 he is right about the ease of building and repair.  The brodak guardian is a very good flying airplane and I would beef up the bellcrank mount. There are some other mods you can make but it flies great as is.  Brodak makes 5 or 6 other kits that could be used for carrier or you could go with just a skyray 35 and add a hook and throttle. That is what I learned to fly carrier with.
        I use brodak bellcranks and Im not sure if any body else makes a 3 line setup unles you make your own.  I think most people use the pull for full throttle and push for low.  I added a couple of pics of my tail hook set up sorry about the one pic with all the light.

Oh well thats all I can think of for now.  Its time for bed.
David

     Maybe I will just hit the Post twice on my replies as I don't see the "another message" either? Man it looks like you have all kinds of information flowing into this topic. It is interesting to see the different ways you can go about this event. I pretty much started carrier in a vacuum and to this day I don't have any carrier fliers that I fly with. I do have a lot of carrier fliers that correspond with me and I with them. I very pleased to say that some of these guys will ask a question and I will answer it and a little while later I will get this message that starts out "Thats interesting, but have you ever thought about doing it this way" and I get this whole new idea of how to do something.
     So anyway I think the 5.8 thing has been pretty well covered although I still don't know what size it is 5.8 (.35 or .40)? Looks like you got some ideas on Nostalgia planes. I think there is a big difference between AMA Profile Carrier and Nostalgia Profile Carrier. I know that some of the carrier fliers will lock their sliders and enter their AMA Carrier planes in the Nostalgia class (which I feel ruins the whole Nostalgia thing) giving up I think 40 points right off the Bat but they will almost always win because the newer planes are easier to fly.
     I found Pete's take on landing with Nostalgia planes interesting. He did describe the desired deck landing that we all hope for (a letter perfect description) but seldom get. Tony would sure know the best way to execute the Nostalgia carrier landing and I'm sure would be able to teach another person how to do it. Now having said that (there's always a catch) I'll elaborate on how I see the Nostalgia landing take place.
     Pete really described the perfect landing so I'll try the same here with the not so perfect landing. I see the Nostalgia pilots flying the HS section of the event and then throttling back for there LS portion and thats when the trouble begins. The plane slows down but not nearly as much as it should to be scale so you are going faster than what is desired. When your 7 laps of LS are over and your deciding on where the deck is and if there will be any help from the wind your attention has drifted away from flying your plane so it has usually increased its speed slightly (the last thing you need at this time).
     So now you have decided to land in the trap area (which seems to have shrunk) so you slow the plane down again and as you approach the deck (at to low an altitude) you give it a little bobble (the tail goes up along with the hook) and the plane instead of slowing actually speeds up a little (totally unlike Pete's description of how it should be done) and you find you have passed over the trap area completely. After doing this for a couple more go arounds you give the signal to land (you got to do it some time) and usually the whole story starts over only this time your under the gun because you have signaled for the landing.
     So the the bobble turns into a little dive (not much of one because you are so low) and things go from bad to worse. If you are lucky you may hit the deck a couple of times with out a hook up (the tail and hook are to high and besides your already past the trap) and thank god you have come down in the water of the bow (happens a lot) so you just keep trying and then bang, you hit the deck hard enough that the plane flattened out (along with the landing) and the hook actually got one of the arresting wires. Wow another successful landing?
     Now if you would have done like Pete described you would have hooked up on the first try. Does the word "Practice ring a bell" I sure hope it does because that is what it will take to do it Pete's way. Practice and a good plane with some washout in the wing tips and Practice along with some more Practice (get the picture).
     The hang with the AMA planes makes it so simple it looks like crap. I try to do my landings from a higher altitude and bring the plane down on an angle to the deck. When the pressure is really on though I come around in the full hang and crap it onto the deck. If I practiced more I could get my landing to look quite nice but you know how that goes, Practice? eric

The 5.8 was the choice in the eighties and some really had them running well. you will see some go on ebay and they get a pretty good buck for them today.  If you don't have the money for a nelson and want a really good running engine you can't beat the 5.8.  Yes, there were some others out there custom made but the 5.8 k&B held its own. I've seen some with os carb and some running with perry carbs

My first Profile was a GS Bearcat built stock except for a slider which had limited movement because it was in the wing tip, which has a fairly small chord. It flew very well and I loved it. I highly recommend it (I am assuming the Brodak version is basically the same as the GS version.) On windy days, I did the "crash on the deck" approach but never broke out the landing gear, so it couldn't have been too crash-like. On calmer days, the gentle landing approach was fine. But anything but the calmest days tended to require the diving-crash approach because the airplane is so clean it just would not slow down after the downwind leg enough to go into a nose-high attitude before landing. This was particularly a problem because, back then, we would put the deck directly downwind of the circle center, making it really impossible to get the airplane slowed down for landing. Now, at least around here, we have put the deck so that we are actually landing into the wind, and missed landings have become pretty rare. It really makes a difference, whether you are makiing a hanging landing or a three-point gliding landing. Even the diving crashes are better. We don't have take-off problems with this deck position either. After the rules change in 1976, people started putting the wing-tip weight back in the airplanes. Even one ounce was more than enough to keep the outboard wing lagging on takeoff and the lines tight. (Pre-1976, with no wing tip weight to save every ounce in order to maximize high speed with little regard for the low speed, the little bitty airplanes with great big engines sometimes would torque in. But that's history.)
Pete

This is a great thread, good reading and good information. I've noticed a lot of Nostalgia airplanes do have approach and landing problems, moreso than a "prop hanging" type airplane. But I've seen some beautiful approaches, realistic approaches, too. One was Doc Holiday's Profile plane, the Brodak with Bill Calkin's modifications. The long nose planes like Corsairs made it impossible for pilots to see the deck to land with a straight-in approach, they had to learn to arc the approach into the deck, looking out the side, rolling out just before they caught the wire. Control line planes arc into the deck all the time, and Doc's was just perfect that day.

When I land, I do not watch the airplane once I establish an approach angle . I focus on the target, just like flying combat, where you watch the other guy's streamer. Then I just pass the handle through the target, the plane is just flown through the target. Peripheral vision will see the plane. It is a practised skill, but I think just about anyone can do it.  Balloon bustin' works the same way, keeping your eye on the balloon and passing the airplane through it. If you wait until you are close or over the deck to try to land on it, it's just too late. I don't think I've made this very clear, hopefully the idea comes across.

I'm thinking  perhaps a rich running Ringmaster type plane, with the prop on backwards and an arresting hook would make a good trainer just for the appoach and landing?  The wing probably is too large (too much lift) so maybe an old Quickie Rat would make a good trainer for this? Save some of those good looking ships.

I was thinking again, when bringing a racer in to the pits, I also focus on the pit, not the plane so much. It works every time, except for once when I was focusing on the wrong pit. The Rolleys seemed quite surprised when the wrong plane pulled in for fuel.           dg     

This has been fun reading.  I still have the G-S Bearcat and the Brodak Gaurdian which is actually box stock.  After crashing the Gaurdian numerous times I have finally put a catch in the wing for when the slider goes back.  The Bearcat was and is the most fun to fly.  I do not try to hang them with the exception of the Gaurdian.  Do have a SIG SkyRay in the process of being built.  More later,  Having fun,  DOC Holliday

PS:Eric I am still looking at the plans for the Corsair, but, may have my construction.  jeh