OH, heck. Everybody seems to know the T.P.s that came from Flying Cloud Isle were never "dainty" things.
The original, which is the only one I have left was originally 68 oz and flew pretty darn well with a VF .40. Came in second at its first nats in (I think) 1992 or so. It has since been flown with VF .46s, P.A. .61s and most recently a RoJett .61. None flew the airplane any better than the .40 but all were less stressed doing it. We've learned a bunch since the early '90s so I expect we could make the.40 happier with it now. The airplane is a good testament to the fact that it isn't necessarily cubic inches that make a stunt ship go. It's the ability to make the amount of power that is necessary to fly the airplane properly. Bigger C.I.s simplify getting that power.
The second T.P. was built for the 1994 WCs in Shanghai and a screwed up dope finish that had to be quickly covered up with Super Poxy led to another portly version, somewhere between 66 and 68 oz as I recall. It came in fifth in China (highest team member placing but just behind defending WC Paul Walker ... the Chinese ended up 1,2,3 IIRC). This ship also won the Walker Cup in 1995. Both events were powered by a VF .46. Sometime later, embarrassed by all the portly comments that airplane was refinished from the wood out in the ever popular purple colors commonly referred to as "pond scum". This process proved successful as the ship then weighed the lightest of any at 62 +/- a smidgen based on trim. It was flown wiith the VF, numerous P.A. 61s and a few flights with Brett Buck's original RoJett ... the last flight of which resulted in serious rekitting of the airplane and assorted bumps and bruises to Brett's engine (it was totalled and had to be rebuilt by Richard). The purple pond scum version won the 2000 nats with a P.A.
The last version was finished for the 2004 W.C.s in Muncie. It is the version kitted by RSM and had a lot of "character enhancement" in the form of fancy cowlings including a removable scoop over the pipe tunnel. It looked really cool until the wing folded in high winds between the end of the W.C.s and the Nats the following week. It also had the stab raised 1/2" from the original drawings to help alleviate some of the design's sensitivity to pitch trim (earlier versions could be induced to hunt in certain states of trim ... the purple pond scum had the flat stab modified to a sharp leading edge which largely solved the problem of the Shanghai airplane (it has been "fixed" by attaching a piece of 1/32" wire to the leading edge of the stab to "force" a consistent stagnation point on the original "rounded" leading edge). This last Pursuit was by far the best combination in terms of tracking and stability and the raised stab was the single most important change between the original PAMPA drawings and the last version in the RSM kit.
The original, by the way, had a fully airfoiled stab and elevator and did not suffer from the problems of the second version. This second version led to a lot of the experimentation that ended up detailed in Dave Fitz' "DeTails" article.
Oh, forgot the subject matter, the last T.P was around 66 oz.
That's the Porky Pig story of the T.P.
Ted
Topic: Max weight for Trivial Pursuit (Read 2113 times)