I was digging through my plans and found this set, which I thought I had!   It is the plans (I *think*) that Keith Trostle was talking about earlier.

As for a Scale Contest subject, I wonder.........  It is only an "engine control" airplane.  No flaps, no retracts, etc., etc., and I wonder just how well it would do contest wise.     

It would be a quick, simple build........

TIA!

There was a construction article for the Shoestring by Sam Calhoun Smith in the September 1952 issue of Air Trails.  It is not a particularly large airplane at 1 3/4 " = 1' for a span of 33 inches.  However, I think with suitable power and kept light, it would be a delightfull airplane to fly.  (I am shooting for less than 18 oz with an OS 15 FP.)  It is bigger than the Berkeley kit, also designed by S.C Smith.  I believe that this would be an excellent model for the Control Line Scale events. 

I am not arguing with what Chuck Snyder says in his post above.  (In fact, I pay a lot of attention to what he has to say about anything regarding CL Scale.  His Profile Scale version of the Hornet set the standard of what CL Profile Scale should be.)

In CL Sport Scale, there are 6 flight options that can be listed.  Even with a model only equipped with throttle control, it is easy to call out 6 flight options.  A touch-and-go counts as two flight options and a taxi demonstration also counts as two flight options.  The other two flight options would be "High Flight" as defined in the FAI CL Scale rules allowed in our Profile Scale event and a Wingover, also as defined in the FAI CL Scale rules and allowed in our Profile Scale event.  (Proper weight and power, the shoestring will do quite will with these two flight options.) The neat thing about flying an airplane like the Shoestring that does not have flaps or a retracting gear, is that there would be no downgrade in the Realism in Flight scoring for not demonstrating flaps and retract gear as would happen with a model of an aircraft that did use flaps and a retracting gear whereas the model did not employ these functions, resulting in a reduction of Realism in Flight score.  The Shoestring is immune to such almost automatic downgrades.

Now, there is not official AMA CL Precision Scale event.  I guess the Scale Contest Board decided that a separate AMA Precision Scale event was not necessary and if a contest was to be run for such scale models, that only the FAI CL Scale event is all that is necessary.  There is really no logic to have had the two separate events since essentially the models that would have competed in the AMA event would also compete in the FAI event.  This Shoestring could be flown in a "non sport scale" event, like what the previous AMA Precision Scale event was.  One would probably want to add some cockpit detail, but that is about the only difference one would need to successfully compete with other "precision type" models like what would be found in the FAI event.  A possible problem with the Shoestring would be the selection of  in-flight options.  Fortunately, the FAI CL Scale rules only allow 4 optional demonstrations (where the AMA rules allowed for 6, with no double counting as in Sport Scale which would make it difficult for a model like the Shoestring to call out 6 separate in-flight options).  So the Optional Demonstrations in the FAI listings could include High Flight, Wingover, Touch and Go, and Taxi.  Furthermore, for an airplane like the Shoestring which did not have retracts, there would be no automatic 25% downgrade of the flight score as required in the FAI rules for those models which do not retract their gear during the flight demonstration where the full scale aircraft did employ retracts.

Something to think about.  Besides all of the above, that S. C. Smith Shoestring is really neat.

Keith Trostle

The set of plans I have include the building article.  That's a nice touch! 
Decisions, decisions...............!