Q: Why?
A: Because I need a plane to practice on that's more rugged and hopefully more up to date than a Nobler

Q: Those 'plans' are teeny -- what are the dimensions?
A: 31 inches from spinner to tail (29.5 fuselage length), 45 degree span, 400 square inches wing area.  I'm planning on using 3/8" balsa for the fuselage, with hefty reenforcement in the nose for rigidity.  The blue bar in the plan view is 12" long.

Q: Why that size?
A: Because I have an OS Max 25 (the plain old loop scavenged version) on hand, and because with 52' lines I might be able to fly in my back yard.

Q: Why that plane?
A: Because V-tails are cool, because I like scale plane looks but not scale plane performance, because it's a plane that I like that was designed after WWII.

Q: What have you done to it?
A: Refined the height of the fuselage, made it a profile, moved the wing up and made it flat (not shown in the plans), shortened the tail and increased the projected horizontal area for a hair over 0.5 TVC, and decreased the height of the V for less side area.

Q: And you call that a Waiex?
A: Yes.  I'm shameless.  Besides, it'll be yellow just like Sonex's prototype (see http://www.sonexaircraft.com/aircraft/waiex.html).

Q: Don't you realize that it won't have really good performance?
A: Yes, the rectangular wing, straight leading edge, straight flaps, and wingtips all work against me.  I know this, but this may be my last chance to build this and have a plane that outperforms the pilot, so I'm taking it!

Q: And you still want us to comment?
A: Yes, please.  I understand that I'm making some sacrifices to keep the look (didn't either Sheeks or Rabe report hearing snide comments about "semi-stunt scale"?).  But within that I'd still like to hear comments.

Please.  And thank you.

Personally I like it.  I loike small and simple.....matches my personality!   Keep us informed of the progress.

Small and simple with the complication of a V tail -- I think I'm going to put horns on both sides of the flap, and use parallel elevator pushrods.

Alternatives that I can think of are to use an elevator pushrod with a 'Y', and a slot in the fuselage (which has the complication of unequal bending, but so does the two flap horns idea), or an elevator pushrod with a 'T' on the end (which has the complication of a sliding interface with the elevator horns, and it's own reaction to pushrod bending).

 Just eyeballing it, I might suggest lowering the aspect ratio of the tail, and lengthening the tail. I am a little concerned about the rigidity of the tail but the fact that the airplane is relatively small helps somewhat.

So basically keep the tail chord the same, but reduce the span, at the same time I set it further back?

I came up with that because that seemed to more or less match what I see in magazine plans -- although I could have gone too far in the direction of "big tail, short tail moment".  I'll have to check.  Fortunately "Flying Models" seems dedicated to bringing us a new CL stunter at least once a quarter; unfortunately it's hard to sort out which ones are really good fliers and which ones are either classic retreads or just plain duds.

What impact am I going to have on the square maneuvers if I lengthen the tail, keeping the tail volume constant?  Won't that tend to make the turns less snappy?  It'll certainly tend to make the straight lines smooth, which is good -- I know the RC pattern planes tend to have really, really long tails for that reason.  But RC pattern planes aren't constrained to doing a good looking pattern in a 'box' that's anywhere near as small as the one CL stunters fly in.

I'm planning on building the tail up, probably 5/16" thick, maybe 3/8", with diagonal ribs for strength and plywood dihedral braces on the leading and trailing edges for strength.  It impacts the "quick to build" desire of a profile, but it won't be that much building if I build it flat then sand it to airfoil.  It certainly should help stiffness.

 Just eyeballing it, I might suggest lowering the aspect ratio of the tail, and lengthening the tail. I am a little concerned about the rigidity of the tail but the fact that the airplane is relatively small helps somewhat.

I just checked it against a half a dozen designs in recent Flying Models magazines.  All of them have the tail moment (the real engineer's tail moment, from the MAC of the wing to the MAC of the tail) equal to about twice the wing chord (the real engineer's wing chord, from the leading edge to the trailing edge of the flap).  The tail aspect ratio matches, too.

What is different is that overall the tail just seems bigger.  Not a lot, but maybe 10% bigger in both directions, which means it's 20% bigger overall.  Argh.

I suspect that a lot of it is visual -- if you really look at them, you'll notice that the horizontal stabs on control line stunters are huge compared to just about anything else.  If I've failed anywhere, it's probably that in my effort to make the thing look like a Waiex, I've chosen a planform that makes it look chubby, instead of slim.

Perhaps I should make the tail removable, so I can try smaller ones.  Make a study out of it.  I could even be Stunt's next Al Rabe, except I'm a lot older than he was when he started, I don't have an early '50's Plymouth station wagon for aerodynamic tests, and I don't give a hoot.  (gee, I wonder which one of those barriers is the most important...).

Looks a bit like a V-tail RV.

Tim, I suspect your 3 view shows the tail laid out flat.  Keep in mind, with the V tail, it is also acting as a fin.  The usual practice it to use the projected area of the stab for stability calculations.  I think the most common angle is 110 deg. between the surfaces.

You might look at running the pushrod through the fuselage and splitting it about 2/3 of the way back to a horn on each elevator.

To stiffen up the fuselage I'd strongly recommend making it at least half an inch thick with 1/16 in. sides and either use a foam core or the more tedious 1/16 in. formers.

How are you going to make the Rabe rudder work?  chuckle chuckle.