Jetco Dolphin? Is it worth building?

[frank mccune]

        Hi All:

        I "found" a nib Jetco Dolphin in my stash of kits.  My question is this: Is this kit worth the trouble to build?  How well did they fly?

                                                                                                                    Tia,

                                                                                                                     Frank McCune

[frank mccune]

    Kindly ignore this post!!!

                                                           Frank MCcune

[Keith Renecle]

Why? I had one in '69 but at the age of 19 back then, I was impressed with my Dolphin. I still think that it's a nice looking plane!

Keith R

[Frank Imbriaco]

Started one in 1967 when they first came out. Put one of the "early " non-cored foam wings in it but abandoned it because of the weight. I also liked the looks of it and sort of sorry I gave up on it. BTW, they fly well. A fellow UMAC'er, Wayne Colgan,  won Jr. Stunt( non-appearance points- yes, they had two classes that year for Juniors- I was there) at the 68 Olathe , Kansas NATS with a relatively crude appearing, but light weight Dolphin. Was it Dennis Adamisin who won regular Junior Stunt that year ?

[Steve Helmick]

While I don't think Jetco ever kitted a bad design, they put enough bad wood into most of their kits to compensate for that. Use it for patterns or buy two sets of plans and sell the kit as-is on eBay. Spend the proceeds on some nice light wood.    Steve

[Skip Chernoff]

The Dolphin is a good flyer if the weight is kept down.

[Lyle Spiegel]

There is a replica kit with great wood, all laser cut, sold by Penn Valley Hobby, the kit is sold via their ebay site. Very reasonable $ for what you get.

[Les McDonald]

I built one in 1967 while living in a hotel in downtown Marysville CA.
At the time I knew nothing about how to make a plane fly properly but I recall it worked pretty good.
I did change a few things but the plane basically remained a standard Dolphin.

[Robert Zambelli]

I built two in the early 60s.
One from a kit, powered by a Fox 35.
The other was a "Prolphin", scratchbuilt flying surfaces and profile body, powered by a Fox 29. It was very light.
As I recall, they were both pretty good flyers.
The kit version had somewhat heavy wood - I did a lot of hollowing so the weight was OK.

Didn't Lew McFarland design the Dolphin?

  Bob Z.

ps - if anyone has a set of full-size plans, I would like to borrow them.

[afml]

"Didn't Lew McFarland design the Dolphin?"
Yes he did, as well as several other great designs.
Still remember the red one hanging on the wall in his basement "work area' as Donna called it.
"Tight Lines!"
Wes

[Dave_Trible]

The one I built a couple years ago from an original kit is a sweet flyer.  I did replace the sheet wood with lighter stuff but all the cut parts original.  Fox .35 open face.  38 ounces.  It's very 'dainty' on the lines.  You need to get used to it.  Someday I'd like to enlarge one to .60 size for fun.

Dave

[Ted Fancher]

Bill Fitzgerald (David's late father) built a beautiful mono-koted (rivaled the hot air gun and colored saran wrap work of Larry Fernandez) version powered with a Veco .19BB for WAM Class A stunt in the mid to late '70s, I believe.  It was very competitive and he won an  impressive amount of WAM's bottomless avalanche of stunt awards with it.  I built one about the same time which I took as a back-up to my "original" Pirouette (a stretched rip-off of Billy's Ares) for the 1967 Nats.  It was powered by a small case Johnson .35 which was way too much engine for it.  Flew OK anyhow as I recall but not as well as Bill's.

Ted

[Richard Grogan]

I had a neighbor friend in the 60's that built a Dolphin, and was infatuated in making it a smooth shiny ship. So he used gobs of spackling compound and built a real beaut. He had the combo from America Hobby Center that had a McCoy 40 RC Blue head with the locked throttle plate. The big day came and off to the ball field we went. Cranked it up, ol Mark runs out to the handle and signals a release. And release it did! The Dolphin made a slow ascent in a counter clockwise.The wings seemed level all the way up! By this time the handle was too high in the air for a recovery, so we all were falling down laughing our a**ess off enjoying this unusual FF show! After what seemed like a eternity, the engine quit.It must of been 100-120'in altitude. We all ran for our lives as it headed earth bound.POW! You all know that familiar sound. Nothing to recover but the engine(I still have it) And a pile of white powder(spackling compound). He said the plane was so heavy, it yanked the handle out of his hand. Naw, thats not possible is it? LOL

Moral to the story: Build it light, power it right, good flyer. Repeat.

[Brett Buck]

        I "found" a nib Jetco Dolphin in my stash of kits.  My question is this: Is this kit worth the trouble to build?  How well did they fly?

   The design is really good, it's more-or-less a blown-up Shark 15 with a full fuselage. If it's from Jetco, the wood will be egregiously bad, but you can copy the parts or just replace all the sheet wood with something better.

    Brett