Bob Palmer's Go Devil

[Bill Mohrbacher]

Does anyone have color pictures of Bob's Go-Devil?  Were plans ever published for the ORIGINAL?  Who made the kit?  What engine did Bob Originally use?

Thanks folks!

[FLOYD CARTER]

Bob PaLmer claimed to have flown his Go Devil with an O&R 23 glo.  That was hard to believe, so I built one with an O&R 29 glo.  It was under powered for stunt, so his story is still in question.

His typical paint was overall cream with red trim and black striping.  This may have not applied to a lightly-built Go Devil.

[James Lee]

At one of the early VSC banquets, Bob Palmer was invited to speak.  He gave a rather detailed and fascinating description of some of his modeling exploits....   One of the stories was about the Go Devil with the O&R...   He didn't say if it was 23 or 29.   But, He said he won the contest with that plane.   The 60 size sparkers of the day put too much pressure on his prosthetic device, so he decided to try the smaller motor....   And, about that time the Fox 35 came out.  Since Palmer won a big event with a small motor, many followed that lead....   He was probably using the Orwick in his Go Devil originally...
I have an Atwood Super Champion .63 in mine.
Jim 

[Will Davis]

At one of the early VSC banquets, Bob Palmer was invited to speak.  He gave a rather detailed and fascinating description of some of his modeling exploits....   One of the stories was about the Go Devil with the O&R...   He didn't say if it was 23 or 29.   But, He said he won the contest with that plane.   The 60 size sparkers of the day put too much pressure on his prosthetic device, so he decided to try the smaller motor....   And, about that time the Fox 35 came out.  Since Palmer won a big event with a small motor, many followed that lead....   He was probably using the Orwick in his Go Devil originally...
I have an Atwood Super Champion .63 in mine.
Jim 

The VSC was either 1993 or 1994 , I was at the banquet that Bob Palmer gave the speach .

One part of the story was about the small engine on the go devil,  I remember him talking about having it covered up in the pits . he asked the judges what would score good , they said if you do a verticle 8 you will score well, he said put me down for two of them.

I guess this was before a set schedule was set ,  or at different kind of stunt  event . I remember the speech was very detailed and informative about his career  .. the highlight of my trip,

[Brett Buck]

A tad off topic, but if you look at the Go Devil carefully, you can see how it evolved into the Chief, and from it into the Nobler. Quite a story about Bob and GMA and the Nobler. George was a protege of Bob Palmer. The video interview with George is fascinating.

   George's engineering reasoning that underlies the Nobler is fascinating. The Nobler, of course, is a modified Chief. But it's very unclear that he accurately diagnosed the roll problems he was having with the modified Chief, and then made the necessary change (longer tail) as a result of the diagnosis. George himself was very vague when I asked him about it, but it seems clear that he was driving the airplane to stall and snap roll (constrained by the lines, of course) and lengthening the tail cured it (just like would happen if you lengthened the tail on a Ringmaster).

    The other half of the equation was that he realized, with the advent of appearance points, that to be competitive, you had to apply a good finish, and that was going to weigh a lot more than the few coats of dope they were using at the time. Instead of making all sorts of sputtering arguments about how you had to go to extremes saving weight as a moral imperative, he figured it was going to come out in the low-mid 40's and designed it accordingly.

     Brett

[Mel Gray]

Hi Bill,

Attached are plans for the Burbank Mfg. version.  Don't know if this kitted version is faithful to the original or not.  Looks pretty "old time" to me.

Mel

[pipemakermike]

I built one and used it to win the UK CLAPA champs on 2 consecutive years powered by a LA 46 converted to spark with a timer unit built by Don Hutchinson.
Here is a picture of the finished model.
Mine wasn't a great flyer  and had a tendency to stall if turned too tight.  I always suspected that the flaps stired up the airflow over the tail and I always meant to tweak the flap movement to a tiny amount to see if that changed anything.  The model crashed on its last flight in competition when it was quite windy and it pancaked into the runway at the bottom of a vertical eight.  It is repairable but times move on and I plan to build a Viking for my next vintage efforts.

[Brett Buck]

Mine wasn't a great flyer  and had a tendency to stall if turned too tight.  I always suspected that the flaps stired up the airflow over the tail and I always meant to tweak the flap movement to a tiny amount to see if that changed anything. 

   If those teeny flaps screwed up the air over the stab, think how bad it must be with the 10x as large flaps on a Nobler! I haven't looked at the G0-Devil in a long time - does it have a pointy airfoil? Because I would guess it should be fine even without the flaps if everything else is OK.

     Brett