Nobler pedigree?

[Andrew Tinsley]

Hello,
I have tried using the search facility, but got nowhere! Can anyone tell me the design dates of the first Nobler, George's plan drawn from memory of the first Nobler and the Green Box Nobler (Plus any other Nobler version by George). A friend of mine want's to enter classic/vintage here in the UK using a Nobler, but doesn't know the design dates. I am sure the Nobler dating has been done to death, but I can't find the posts!

Thanks in advance,

Andrew.

[EddyR]

It was in a magazine in 1952. I have the plans and the magazine. Someone will remember the magazine. It is very different than the kit from 1957. The Brodak is an exact copy of George's 1952 model and they sell the plans and it is quite a bit different than the 1952 magazines plan. Brodak plans are better looking.
Ed

[Brett Buck]

Hello,
I have tried using the search facility, but got nowhere! Can anyone tell me the design dates of the first Nobler, George's plan drawn from memory of the first Nobler and the Green Box Nobler (Plus any other Nobler version by George). A friend of mine want's to enter classic/vintage here in the UK using a Nobler, but doesn't know the design dates. I am sure the Nobler dating has been done to death, but I can't find the posts!

Thanks in advance,

Andrew.

   Original was published in 1952 but was clearly around in 51, the Green Box kit came out in 1957.

    Brett

[Dan McEntee]

 The version published in Model Airplane News was published in either November or December 1951, and that makes it Old Time Stunt legal. George said he didn't think it should be, because it was further advanced that a lot of the other designs, and thus he never flew it in OTS competition, and even lobbied for it's removal from eligibility lists. There was a slightly different version that I have plans for, and that I think Jim Kraft has built and flown a copy of, that dates to 1950 or earlier. I think there may have been at least two different versions that George flew before he published the '51 design and I got that information from George himself.The Green Box Top Flite version (actually, only the label is green) was available as Brett mentioned in 1957 and is often referred to as the '57 Nobler by some. There were a few variations built and flown by Bob Gieseke prior to the 1969 Classic cut off date, and the Top Flite Gieseke Nobler came out in the early seventies, '71 or '72. There was also a .60 size version of the Green Box Nobler that was built and flown in the early 60's by an guy in Iowa, by the name of Jerry Jack, and the model still exists. Jim Lee was able to produce a photo of the model taken in 1964 at a contest in the upper midwest. And Top Flite kitted the less popular Nobler Junior, and there was even an R/C version. That is all of my knowledge of the different iterations of the Nobler.
   Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee

[steve bittner]

Dan you are correct I believe. In 98 or 99 at Brodaks I believe George said he was not home and they needed the plans to publish or for the kit I cant remember which. George told me he was not home where the plans and airplane was, so he drew them from memory. A lot of fellas when the built their second or third plane would have a slightly different wing span due to center spacing joining the wings or the rudder was slightly longer by 1/2 inch etc.

[Brett Buck]

The wing evolved from the Chief as did the stab and elevator and the fuselage is a semi scale Caudron C 4.
I built the MAN version and a 1949 polywog winged Chief side by side for VSC and noticed the stab and elevator were the exact same shape and size except the Nobler stab was thicker and built up. The wings were so similar you could see in influence and he even mentioned this in the tapeed interview.

     Of interest is that the primary problem that George found with the "Chief" was that it "snapped" in hard corners, and his solution was to extend the tail moment by, as I recall, about an inch. The second issue was that with the introduction of appearance points, you had to carry more paint, so he designed it around the idea that it would likely weigh more than previous models. That's where the low/mid 40's design weight comes from.

  George and I had an interesting thread on this on the old RCO forum, unfortunately the archive for that is long gone.

    Brett

[Luiz Carlos Franco]

Gentlemen:

Stunt News for May/June 2002, in celebration of the Nobler´s 50th aniversary, reproduces the installments of G. Aldrich´s original articles in MAN for May and June ´52.

Regards

Luiz

[Andrew Tinsley]

Thanks for the information gentlemen! I had a rough idea of the sequence of the three main versions but I could not put dates to them. I am very surprised that the version drawn by Jim Kraft was 1950 or earlier. It just shows that we have not advanced a hugh amount in design since then. Size and powertrain are the obvious modern differences!

Thank you all,

Andrew.

[Jim Thomerson]

I watched George build a Nobler in 1955.  He built it from the MAN plans.  Now that I know the building them out of the air stories, I find it amusing that he used his 1952 plans to build one.

[afml]

"Of interest is that the primary problem that George found with the "Chief" was that it "snapped" in hard corners,"

Yep! Tis true!
I 'snapped' the outboard wing off the Chief at KIO this year.

"Tight Lines!"

Wes

[dale gleason]

Off track a little, but I watched George win First in Open Stunt and First in Open Combat at a big contest in Longview, Texas in 1956 or maybe '57. Elsewhere I've related observations about that contest, but one thing I may have left out was that George flew Stunt clockwise and Combat (with the first FliteStreak and the new Combat Fox) counter clockwise. He beat some pretty good flyers in Combat that day, and they flew over concrete, he had just one FliteStreak and it survived.

dg

[Brett Buck]

"Of interest is that the primary problem that George found with the "Chief" was that it "snapped" in hard corners,"

Yep! Tis true!
I 'snapped' the outboard wing off the Chief at KIO this year.

  OOPS! Bear in mind they used to build from what we could call medium or hard balsa, not the specially-chosen 4.5 lb superlight stuff we currently seek out. You have to make the spar a lot bigger with 5-lb wood than with 12 lb.

    In this case, near as I can tell, the "roll" problem was that the airplane was driven into a stall by excessive pitch rate enabled by the relatively short tail. Lengthening the tail slows the maximum pitch rate, gave it more acceleration to start and stop, allowing (later) larger flaps. How much of this he had thought through, and how much of it was just trial and error, hard to say, but he had to have had some notion because lengthening the tail moment is not at an obvious solution for a roll issue. It's actually quite brilliant compared to a lot of the thinking at the time.

     Whenever I asked him about stuff like this, he was a little vague, but I could never tell if it was because he didn't know, or because he didn't want to explain it, was hard to say. He was certainly no dummy, he definitely knew more than he usually let on.

    Anyone who hasn't read "Stunting can be smooth" has really missed something, it's as good a piece of engineering reasoning as anyone had done at the time, and you really need to see how far ahead of everybody else he was. Most of it is still relevant today, which is really saying something. The biggest thing that strikes me from is is that he sat down and didn't start with calculating minimum turn radii or reading airfoil polars, he first decided to figure out what he needed to do to get the highest score, and worked from that. I think that's how he avoided the trap that others, like (forgive me) Wild Bill, fell into.

     Brett

    

[Ward Van Duzer]

A few things we forget about the 'original' Nobler... The 1952 MAN plan is NOT the original Nobler. Like as not, neither is the Brodak kit. Go back and look at the old magazine ads. There is young George holding an uncowled model airplane! One very obvious difference. I'm not positive, but I seem to remember George with another airplane with a wind screen, not a full canopy. As for the roll issue, go back and look at the MAN plan. It shows the INBOARD flap enlarged by at least 3/16". No, The Nobler heritage does not start with the 1952 plan. (I believe I wrote this up earlier, with photos, on this forum) 

Ward-O

[Brett Buck]

As for the roll issue, go back and look at the MAN plan. It shows the INBOARD flap enlarged by at least 3/16". No, The Nobler heritage does not start with the 1952 plan. (I believe I wrote this up earlier, with photos, on this forum) 

Ward-O

  That doesn't explain how it was solved with a longer tail moment.

   Brett

[Trostle]

I do not claim to know the full story, but legend has it that George called Bob Palmer any number of times while he was laying out his design which became his Nobler.  By that time, several of Palmer's flapped designs were already flying including the Mars, Venus and Smoothie.

Keith

[Mike Scholtes]

I'm no expert on GMA but I do have a 51/52 "Original Nobler" by Brodak and have read (today) GMA's article "Stunting CAN be Smooth!" in which he freely acknowledges being influenced by Palmer's earlier designs and the concept of using flaps. The article is a great source to answer the inquiry that started this thread. Aldrich put a lot of thought into what qualities were needed to win stunt contests. He says he had earlier models but that the plane we know as the Nobler came out of his design analysis around 1950-51. The model he called the Nobler had a cowled inverted engine from the outset, not an open engine bay like some pictures of predecessor models show (and like the slightly earlier Smoothie). Some of his ideas did not work out, like the 2-inch asymmetry and the larger inboard flap, but he sure was applying an engineer's sensibilities to the task.

[Joseph Patterson]

  Like Dan said about George having (2) versions of the early Nobler, George told me the same thing a couple years before he passed away. I was calling him about some engine work and ordering original Nobler plans. He preferred the version that he redrew plans for in 1988, which according to him is the true original. He sent me blue line drawings right away and also included plans for the original FLITESTREAK and FLITESTREAK JR free of charge. If I understood him correctly I thought he said the original Nobler was severely damaged, but he did get some measurements from it, however,I may have misunderstood that part of the conversation. Below is the information that is on the data block of the bottom of the 1988 plans:
         ORIGINAL NOBLER (Circa Nov., 1950)
         Dimensions taken from original model 11-4-88
         FIRST MODEL BUILT 5-51, FIRST CONTEST 6-6-51, San Antonio, TEXAS
         Orig. Design By: George M. Aldrich
         Orig. Power: VECO 29; Switched to Fox 35 (6-10-51)
         Orig. WT.: 48 OZ.; SPAN: 50.375 IN.; AREA (TOTAL): 540.5 SQ. IN
         REDRAWN 11 -'88 By: Geo. M. Aldrich
   It appears that Mr. George designed the NOBLER IN 1950.
        I talked to Mr.George on one other occassion and always enjoyed talking with him. It seemed I always learned something new.
 Doug   
           

[Will Hinton]

George was always a delight to visit with.  The most memorable thing I cling to was during my interviewing him for the Personalities column for Stunt News way back when was his answer to my question; "If you weren't in your present profession, what do you think you would be doing?"
His answer blew me away.  "I would be a professional bass fisherman.  I love bass fishing!"

I also had the privilege of seeing the original R/C version of the Nobler fly at the Toledo show when it was still held at the Lucas County fairgrounds, that also blew me away.  It did unbelievable square figures as well as the rest of the C/L pattern!  George really hit it, didn't he?

[Andrew Hathaway]

There are pictures of Aldrich with several different Noblers.  The stunting can be smooth article shows one with wheel pants, and another with an eye piercing inverted star and bar, and also no cowl around the engine.  Who's to say which came first, or which is really right?