Randy Powells Lost Toad

[Oregon_Flyer]

Dear Fellow Members,

It would seem that Mr. Powells gorgeous and yet to be finished USA-1 which has been renamed "Toad" has vanished.  Yep, gone as in I wonder where.  Anyone knowing the whereabouts of this engineering marvel is urged to post notice of sighting it here.  Many of my comrades are aware of the neutering of this truly wonderful aircraft, I am of course referring to the replacement of those manly "Pants" and in their place, of all things Skirts    <snicker>  Now of course Mr. Powell is a very fine gentleman, but afterall just how much can one endure.  I urgently request an all out effort to locate this treasure.  If you spot newly turned earth, post it please.  All roof-top launches should be posted with as much information as the poster can muster  .  It goes without saying that I will personally wield my mighty Smiter thingy and smoke - errrr smite your applause gizmo repeatedly for best original reports, true or not does not enter into it just make it a fun read.  Little, Paging Mr. Little,  Was that a toadie launch in Muncie  , oooops wrong state 

Marv

[Bill Little]

The infamous Mr. Powell with his thinly veiled "original design" (ie:Toad USA-1) is rumored to have secluded himself in his dungeon secretly finishing up his diabolical creation.  He read "How to lay low to the Press" written by Paul "Bear" Bryant and applies it to describe how his "new" planes will be.  You know the old line: "we may be small, but we sure are slow........."
No one believed Bear, nor do we believe Randy's poor mouthing! 

[Randy Powell]

Marv (oh, and Bill I suppose),

Not to worry. It will make an appearance at the Northwest Regionals. Had some other stuff to do including making a coupe of headers for friends that requested such at VSC. Just about done with that.

I sometimes wish it were just a thinly veiled USA-1. The design started off as this famous design. But I just had to mess with it. The wing is thicker - about a 23% airfoil (though generally the same shape airfoil...more of less). More flap area. The wing is about 9% bigger overall (or around 750 square inches. Yikes! Maybe it just looks huge after looking at the Cobra for 2 months). The tail moment is some 3.5 inches longer and the tailplane is about 14% bigger. All up weight is projected to be, well, actually I'm not sure. With two colors on (and awaiting the next that will make it on this weekend...I think) it's under 60oz. If I can go easy on the rest of the trim and clear, it should stay that way, but we'll have to see. There are some other changes too, though not so dramatic.

I'll try to upload a pic. This picture taken today. The Cobra in the foreground ready to do battle again and the subject of this discussion, cleaned up and just about ready for the next color. Just to tide Marv over till I can get the rest of the trim on (4 more colors, as it turns out). And all my planes are called Toad until they prove they are not.

[Bill Little]

Sir Randy of Powell,
You are just like my closest friend.  he can't ever stick to building it as designed.    Always have to re-invent the wheel!
BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I hope it flys as well as it looks so far.

[Randy Powell]

Bill,

The one thing I didn't much like about the USA-1 was it's twitchness in corners. Maybe better described as roughness. I became convinced (perhaps in error) that it was being caused by it's relatively short coupling. I was also concerned about weight. The thing just couldn't carry much (though it flew pretty well if built light enough). So the "messing" I did was mostly to offset these concernes...at least to the style of flying I like to do.

I didn't have to be quite so concerned about insuring absolute minimum weight, the longer tail moment and bigger tail volume would give it a bit more authority and smoothness in corners and the styling changes (minor) appealed to my aesthetic sense, for whatever that's worth. The only radical change was the tail moment. And as it turned out, while the over all weight is probably going to be up as much as 8 ounces from the USA-1 I built (mostly due to the rather large increase in overall size), I ended up spending a great deal of time making everything behind the CG as absolutely light as possible due to the fears of a tail heavy plane.

Per scale, it will probably weigh close to what the USA-1 weighed. It is quite a lot bigger. I still want to build another USA-1 at some point.

[Bill Little]

Hi Randy,

You know I was just busting your chops. 
Bill used that design up through his last Geo XL (one with an "exact" USA-1 wing), with some changes to the moments, tail area, etc.  His Junars (except the *little* Junar) used the USA-1 wing, too.  Leading edges did get "blunter" as the design progressed.

Complications in real life kept me from building a piped USA-1 prototype to test our for Billy.  He went ahead and built one for the 2004 World's, but couldn't get comfortable with it in time.

Your's should be a great flting pane, and I like the cosmetics changes you made.  It is a sinister looking ship!

We need to chat over the phone again. 

[Oregon_Flyer]

Randy,

Ah ha!  so you are not lost in Arizona as some rumor mongers were gossiping? heh heh.  What a tease, not even a clear photo    however, the cobra sure looks good even if it does hide the topic of this post.  Wait!!  how do we really know if that is the real "Toad"?  maybe it's a ringer   

Welcome Back big guy

Marv

[Randy Powell]

Marv,

You can tell by the skirts

[Oregon_Flyer]

Randy,

Ummmm, errrrrr, Oooooops    Drat, thought I had ya  You sure them
scrawny things are skirts?   Anyway, glad you made it home okay.  Now next  year I sure would like to read a post about this humongous trophy you're holding 

Marv

[Randy Powell]

Marv,

>>Now next  year I sure would like to read a post about this humongous trophy you're holding<<

Snigger, snigger. Yea, right. Sure.