The Jerkline Special was in the June, 1960 American Modeler. One of my flying pals built one. It was pretty cool. I liked it because it looked so ungainly with the fat fuselage and thick airfoil, yet it flew great. It gave one the element of surprise in combat, kinda like a Y&O 8-8 prop. It didn't look very dangerous. I remember the Joplin posse coming to a KC contest in 1961 and to the 1962 Nats with Jerklines. As I remember, they took them to the Nats in a box using popcorn as packing material. I always wanted to build one, but never got around to it. Steve Fauble sent me his Barry Baxter plans. They didn't look quite the same as I'd remembered. I thought I'd read that the original had an NACA 0018 airfoil. I was about to email Wild Bill to ask him about the airfoil when I heard that he'd died. Mike Griffin kindly sent me a copy of the original magazine article, and that got me excited again. If anybody has the magazine plans, I'd like to get a copy.
The airfoil is 18% thick, but it's not an NACA 0018, by the way.
I had a copy of the magazine article on my desk when a local stunt flier called. We were talking about Bill's passing and telling Wild Bill stories. "You could tell he was an engineer", said the caller, "He had no sense of esthetics. His airplanes were ugly." I was outraged. I pointed to the Jerkline article and asserted that it was the coolest looking control line airplane ever.
Topic: Jerkline pics (Read 3009 times)