There were two other airplanes that deserve some discussion.
The Citation V was built around 1984 or so after I had spent a season flying the Imitation using an Enya .46 four stroke. It was a lovely combination and I would literally fly the airplane just for fun many, many flights. The four banger never quit and provide the impulse to allow the airplane to fly recognizable patterns of almost any size. You could do everything except the wingover and overheads well under 45 degrees!
The Cit. V was based more closely on the Imitation in that it had a straight trailing edge but more swept leading edge (strictly for looks...it was actually a little counterproductive because I shortened the nose well over an inch to account for the greater weight of the Enya. Alas, the performance simply didn't translate and it was re-engined with, first, the then semi-popular OS FSR like Bobby Who won the Worlds with. I could never get it to run the same inside andoutside and thus gave up and dropped in one of my many ST .46s. That combination won the Walker Cup in 1986.
In 1992-3 I built my second Trivial Pursuit for the WCs in Shanghai (1994). It was called the Great Expectations and eventually flew well enough to come in fifth...behind the entire Chinese team and Paul W. The "trick du jour" for that airplane was the use of the then popular "flat stab with rounded leading edge" that was becoming universal for many of the top competitors...including Paul. On the T.P. it proved to be a dismal failure, not tracking well in level flight and difficult to fly consecutive maneuvers with. That sort of started the "playing with tails, especially leading edge shapes" trials that David eventually turned into a great article in S.N. called "De Tails". When the Gr. Expec. was ready to go to war with China it had 1/32" wires taped to the leading edge of the stab which pretty much solved all the problems. It flew very well in Shanghai. It also won the 1995 Walker Cup while still Red, White and Blue and sporting the "wired" stab.
That same airplane was later stripped and repainted in "Pond Scum" purples (thanx Bobby) and flew competitively for a number of years in that livery including winning the 2000 (I think) Nats and Walker Cup. When it was refinished I rebuilt and reshaped the leading edge of the stab making it very sharp and more of an actual "airfoil" shape. That proved to be a good solution. The Special Edition (in the pictures in this thread) design concept was informed by those tail/stabililty issues and sported the same sort of very sharp leading edge on an airfoiled tail which was mounted 1/2" higher in the fuse than previous versions. It was by far the easiest of the series to fly flat in level flight and it flew pretty well in its very short lifetime.
It was also the airplane that swallowed the famous "Bumble Bee" in Albany, OR. that Gerald Schamp alluded to earlier. Flying an official over the General Aviation Ramp I had just pulled out of the wingover (or it might have been after the inside loops) inverted when the engine flat quit like throwing a light switch. Three quarters of a lap later it was laying on its top in the grass between the ramp and the runway with stacked up tie down chains in front of it and behind it (they had been removed from the ramp so we could fly on it). Not a scratch on the airplane and after significant head scratching with the cowl off of it somebody asked, "Hey, what's that in the intake (OS VF .46 IIRC)? Somebody got a pair of surgical clamps with which I reached into the intake and pulled out a largely intact big bumble bee. It had somehow managed to slip right through the three blade prop spinning at 10K plus and did a swan dive into the intake. It was stopped by the spray bar!
I think those are the only designs/variations of any interest. There were a couple of others that were short lived and of little consequence and, frankly, I don't remember much of anything about them. One was an Excitation variant that I flew at the Reno Nats to a low top five finish but was otherwise not noteworthy and another was built especially for the Sweden (Oxelosund) WCs in 1982 but crashed when just getting trimmed out when the cable in my Gene Martine/Bob Baron handle snapped in the middle of a flight.
Thanks for the little trip down memory lane. Makes me wish I had cataloged more pictures like Al has done over the years...of course, he didn't bust most of his!
Ted
Almost forgot! For that Reno nats (very high density altitudes had everyone concerned about wing loadings and horsepower) I built a special airplane whos name I don't recall. Lots of trick stuff to keep the weight down like a balsa radial cowl and no spinner, built up and stringered fuse and an ultralight "fake I-Beam" 720 square inch wing covered with Monokote. Thought it would be the cat's meow for "hot and high". turned out to be a better imitation of a seagull than a stunt plane. Everything was so flimsy it went through the pattern like a big bird flapping its wings. It looked kind of cool though and after I stripped the monokote off I discovered the stab was also cracked at the root and threatening to spit itself out both sides. I said the heck with it and put in in the attic where it resided for 10 or 15 years until Paul Pomposo decided he wanted to take it home and recover and refinish it. So far, as far as I know, only the "take it home" part has come to pass. It's "flapping" weight was something like 43 oz with an FSR in the nose. Don't try that at home!
Topic: Teds Designs (Read 7635 times)