I have been pondering for months whether to build a new classic as my Tucker has a great many flights on it. I have this 10 year old JD Falcon but it has very low air time ,flights. It has had a Rustler/40, ST/40, Evolution/36 in it and it always seemed like a kite and underpowered. The clear was going bad on the body so I put one of my ST/46ABC motors in it and clear coated the entire frame with KBS clearcoat. Don and I went to the Hunterville field to day and I flew it on 63ft .018 lines. After I got the handle dialed in it was almost the perfect plane. I had to use a Three Blade 9/6 for ground clearance. I have a taller gear but it is not painted yet. The small Three Blade worked perfect. I ran in a four cycle the entire flight and it was pulling hard all the time at 5.2 sec. Ten year old plane with four different motors and it has maybe 50 flights on it. In now weights just at 51 ounces. The Falcon is a big plane with modern numbers and they flew these with Fox 35's back in the day

Ed,

Your Falcon looks like the Model Airplane News version. The rudder was too big, the fuselage too fat, the span was wrong, and the airfoil was wrong. Inspite of all that they flew well, but not as good as John's. The version that I kitted was the actual airplane, developed from John's actual templates, and is better yet.

Yes, it sounds like you needed nose weight. John's Falcon weighed in the high 50s and was certainly more than the old Fox should have handled, but he flew it effortlessly. He was a master of trim.

Looking back, the Fox .35 days were interesting. It was normal to have the lines slack a little going over the top of the wing over. Have no fear, it always came back out at the bottom. It was also normal to whip the airplane into the first loop of the clover, and add bias to the loops and squares in the wind. These were"tricks" that helped us then and now.

The Fox 2-4 run helped along with the proper fuel and some small mods to the engine.  With the Fox we were behind the power curve, but we didn't really know it. This mistake was actually repeated when Lew McFarland flew the larger Shark with a .45. It wasn't until the ST .60 and the OS .46 engines appeared that we found that power vastly improved performance. It is now common to see a .60 in a Shark.  Today, as you have discovered, you can put a LA .46 in the better of the Classic airplanes and they come to life! We now know how good many of these airplane actually are.



Tom N

Tom
   This is one of your kits. I did change the rudder and fin very slightly to look more like the magazine plans. The plane is stock in every way except that.
 Here is the Falcon and Dons Jenkins kit built Vector at the Huntersville field Yesterday.  The Falcon is larger than the Vector except in tail volume.

Bill
   I use Byron 10% nitro. Oil content is about 15-18%. Using Byron it takes 4.25 ounces running a 4cycle most of the flight. I have used the pink stuff and added castor for about 10% total oil and that only uses 3.7 ounces per flight. I have the very first ABC ST/46 in the Falcon. It has over 2500 flights on it. It is the motor that I did the testing for Brian Gardner before he  started selling them. I run the same fuel in my two ST/35's that I converted to ABC. They use 3 ounces of fuel to do the pattern and are a lot more powerful than a Fox 35.
Ed